“Make Bradford British” / “Proud and Prejudiced”, Channel 4, 1/3/12

Make Bradford British, Channel 4

It is, of course, trash TV. “Make Bradford British” is a crude amalgam of various reality shows, cheap and not so cheerful fare like “Big Brother”, “Wife Swap” and “Come Dine With Me.” The premise is simple: various cultural, ethnic and religious stereotypes from Bradford – “Britain’s most divided city”, is the fatuous claim – volunteer to spend time living with each other in some sort of half-baked and nasty social experiment.

It is an execrable, faux documentary. The “diversity and community experts” are little more than commentators, adding the occasional sound bite to tell viewers what they should be feeling (“These people have to live together” we are told, just in case we hadn’t got the drift) and pronouncing the annual Scottish New Year celebration as “Hoggamunny” (“I don’t understand the question,” says a white girl, “what’s a Mahoggamunny?”). Meanwhile, the production values clutch at the sensational like the drowning man clutches at the proverbial: cue Rasheed, the jolly Muslim fundamentalist, giving up mosque to spend a day in some stately home with the group, praying in the car park, his nose almost pressed against the side of the minibus (couldn’t they find somewhere with a little more dignity?) while elderly liberal Maura weeps her new found understanding.

And yet… and yet…

I have a complicated relationship with the concept of “Britishness”, and not because, like many Scots, I see my identity as lying solely north of the border. No, it is more to do with my genealogy. My father, born in Lipine, near Katowice, in 1913, was Silesian Deutsch Volk; his status as a Pole was merely an accident of politics. So, after 1939, he joined the Wermacht, fought on the Eastern Front where he got frostbite and was wounded and was then transferred to the Western Front, where he was captured by the Americans to begin a whole new time line in the UK.

That, as a boy brought up in the jingoistic days of 1960s Saturday afternoon cinema (“The Battle of the Bulge”; “The Great Escape”), was difficult to accept for a while. How could I be British when my father fought for the ultimate bogey man, Adolf Hitler? How could I be British when the British would quite happily have killed my father on the battlefield?

Let there be no doubt: I’m glad my father was on the losing side. I think World War II and the overthrow of Hitler was one of the few righteous wars in history I would have volunteered to fight in, like the Spanish Civil War or The Opium Wars (on the side of the Chinese, of course). Certainly, there was a moral dimension to it that has been lost in the corporate imperialism of most conflicts since, such as Haliburton’s invasion of Iraq.

But it does rather complicate things. In the TV programme, mixed-race bar owner Audrey talks of the “scales falling from her eyes” when she realises the impact her own racist language has on others: something similar happened the morning my father took the twelve year old me aside and showed me his Iron Cross and explained how he got it. I realised that, in the great game of international politics, a whole nation of people could one day be our allies supplying our Kings and Queens, the next day be our deadliest enemy, and the day after that become our family.

One character in the programme, a black man of West Indian descent called Desmond (yes, that’s right) is interviewed before he meets his house mates: he beats his chest and says that being British is “in me heart”. Later, after hearing an uncomfortable discussion about language with a harmless but insensitive old buffer called Jens who claims that he was only joking when he used to talk to his former police colleagues about going out “Paki bashing” and referring to blacks as “black bastards”, Desmond finds a hole in that huge heart of his. For decades, he had, in his own words, pushed the casual, unthinking racism “under the carpet” in order to just get on with it; obviously distressed, he finds that there is no longer any space under that carpet.

I have no wish to suggest my experience as a white kid was directly comparable to Desmond’s, but I grew up with similar casual references to my difference. I was regularly called a “Polack” by schoolmates and even by colleagues up until the 1990s; teachers referred to me as “Banacek”, a nominally Polish detective on TV played by George Peppard. I have become somewhat sensitive when, on introducing myself, I am asked, “What kind of name is that?” “It’s a surname,” I replied once to a parent who asked me that question in the middle of a busy corridor at a parents’ evening. “Yes, but where does it come from?” was the retort, my irritation failing to make an impression. “My father,” I said, and I was looked at as if I was an uppity moron.

Britain is, for me, simply an organisational entity, and I “owe” it nothing more than that I pay my taxes and obey the law; in that sense, I am a much better Briton than many of the beknighted movers and shakers held up as examples of “Great” Britain, the Sir Richards and the Sir Alans who tax avoid like crazy or the chief police officers and civil servants and MPs mired in corruption. I believe I am a good citizen – I regularly give to charity and am as kind as I can be to others – not because I am part of a Great British Big Society, but because it is the decent thing for an individual human being to do.

A later show, “Prejudiced and Proud”, continues the theme, looking into the lives of Tommy Robinson, founder of the English Defence League, and Sayful Islam, of whatever banned group he leads this week. Neither man has little substance outside his ego: both are filmed smiling with smug satisfaction in the midst of the anger and chaos and violence they preside over; both claim moral authority, yet a moderate imam points out Sayful’s total lack of intellectual credibility for the position he has set himself up in, while Robinson wanders the streets, drunk, baiting people with references to Anders Breivik who, of course, declared war not on Muslims but on the children of white liberals. The leads are merely self serving opportunists, but it is the wider cast of characters I find most confusing – the Muslim boys who look lost and terrified at the venomous reaction they generate, the tattooed skinheads who, like Hitler’s bierkeller shock squads, inextricably link bullying drunkenness with political agitation. The notion of finding common ground with such people based solely on a shared skin colour or language or religion or place of birth seems utterly strange to me; I see nothing that I would identify as my “culture” in any of them.

But I am undoubtedly Scottish. I cheer on the Scottish football team (and anyone who is playing against England) and, in certain situations such as English pubs, vamp up my Scottishness. I am as prone, I suppose, to tribalism as the next man or woman. However, I am also aware that I have no Scottish “blood” in me, whatever that means, and have therefore made a choice. Perhaps that is why we seem to have even more difficulty defining what is “Scottish”, why we feel Scotland as a place that includes all, why we find it impossible to define a Scottish writer any more clearly than as someone who was born in Scotland or who lives in Scotland or who writes about Scotland or who…

But would I die for Scotland? Never. I may fight for a moral or political cause I think is right, or to protect the weak, or to stand up for liberties I valued. But I cannot see myself ever putting my life on the line for some indefinable, amorphous collection of human beings whose only common bond is that they find themselves bounded by the same arbitrary geopolitical borders on a map. Neither can I imagine ever asking young people – who, it has to be said, are rarely the sons and daughters of the rich who start wars in the first place – to go off and put their lives on the line in my place

Britain, England, Scotland – whatever the country, that indefinable notion on its own just doesn’t seem to be worth it.

Law and the institutionalisation of racism

The imposition of a ban on face coverings in France this week leaves a nasty taste in the mouth because of its obvious attempt to criminalise freedom of religious expression. As Viv Groskop notes in her excellent Observer article, this ban is a mealy mouthed attempt to appeal to racist and anti-immigration voters.

Let me be clear: as an atheist, I have no more sympathy for Islam as a religion than I do for Christianity. What I do have sympathy for is a marginalised, excluded Muslim community, scapegoated by majority media and politicians and demonised by an ignorant public. I would feel the same way about minority Christians treated badly in countries ruled by other religions, as they undoubtedly are in other parts of the world. To make someone unemployable – or worse, criminal – for wearing a crucifix or a hijab is purely and simply a discriminatory act. I may disagree with those who would condemn me to everlasting Hell for not agreeing with their religion, but, as Hell doesn’t exist anyway, I will defend their right to do so.

The French law is not, of course, about promoting freedom by banning “covering the face”;  it is about persecuting Muslims. Will any Japanese tourists be fined for wearing their cute little medical masks? Will any leggy French woman be marched off to a magistrate for wrapping her expensive designer scarf around her mouth in cold weather? Of course not. The only women with anything to fear are those who wear the hijab for religious reasons. The irony is that anti-Islamists try to convince us that such women cover their faces out of fear of their husbands in the first place. Even if that were true – and the evidence that it is not is mounting – what on earth are we doing putting vulnerable women right in the middle of a rock (Sharia law meted out by their husbands) and a hard place (secular law meted out by the police).

But let’s not get all righteous about this. Today, the Church of England issued new guidelines to clergy to help them spot and avoid “sham” marriages. Who is this aimed at? Of course, it’s those people who come from “non-European” countries. Will ministers be suspicious of Australians? Doubtful. They will, of course, look more askance at people like… oh, well, I don’t know… black Africans, perhaps?

What is a “sham” marriage anyway? I can think of no better, no more generous reason for marrying someone than to prevent them being sent “home” to deprivation, persecution and torture. Just yesterday – this stuff comes thick and fast – a woman who was trafficked to this country, rescued and then returned to Moldova where she was gang raped, tortured and re-trafficked back into the sex trade won substantial damages from the Home Office, damages paid for by taxpayers like you and me. Now, if someone offered to marry this woman so she could stay in this country to avoid such horror, should we blame such a person for entering into a “sham” marriage? And should we applaud the clergyman, registrar or civil servant who prevented such a marriage so that she could be sent back to a situation that is a real Hell?

I know what I would describe as a sham marriage. An older man marries a young, naïve woman in order for her to produce babies. Meanwhile, and throughout the marriage, he continues a sexual relationship with a woman who has a husband and who is therefore also in a sham marriage; in fact, he marries said woman after the untimely death of his young wife, who divorces him after years of being cheated on. And yet, that gentleman, Prince Charles himself, will, on his mother’s death, become Defender of that Church of England faith.

It seems only penniless, hunted, despised black people are capable of “sham” marriage, though. The hypocrisy is stunning and vomit inducing.

Football and racism: joined at the hip?

After  a reasonably good game in which Scotland did what was expected of them against a much more talented Brazilian side, it was depressing to hear young striker Neymar’s claims of racist abuse being dismissed by the Scottish football authorities.  Most ludicrous of all is the rent-a-quote expert Pat Nevin, who seems to be able to read the minds of several thousand individuals at once by claiming that “They were furious with all the diving about, rolling about feigning injury.”  Another godlike talent exposed, Pat.

I was at Love Street in 1983 to watch St Mirren play Feyenoord in the UEFA Cup.   I was there for a last chance to see Johann Cruyff, but ended up being mesmerised by a young Ruud Gullit.  He stole the show in much the same way Neymar did on Saturday, scoring the only goal of the match, and he received the worst racist abuse I have ever heard for it.  This wasn’t just banter or hazing: it was outright hatred of a man because he was black and because he wasn’t wearing a St Mirren shirt.

I found myself sticking up for him, cheering him on, telling those around me to leave him alone and let him play.  I was looked at as if I came from Mars.  I was in the stand, I was wearing a black and white scarf, I spoke with a Scottish accent  – therefore I should be using words like “black fucker” and “nigger shite.”

It was one of the most uncomfortable evenings of my life, and given that Gullit – a hard man, capable of dishing it out along with the best of them – still calls it the worst abuse he has ever faced, it must have been much more uncomfortable for him.

The fact is that on the terraces, the most obvious abuse comes unguarded to the lips of the “fans”, whether it be references to colour, sexual orientation, religion or the size of a particular WAG’s breasts.  In the heat of a football match, self-censorship is the last thing on a spectator’s mind.

And it’s not helped by a whole sub-culture in which the odious Richard Keys calls a black footballer a “Choco Jocko” while fellow white panellists laugh uncomfortably rather than challenge it.  When Keys says he is not racist and has personal friends who are black, I have no doubt he believes it, just as I have no doubt he doesn’t “smash” his wife when they have sex: it is the pack machismo that allows him to blurt such garbage, and if he can’t resist that mentality, then he isn’t intelligent enough to comment on the weather, let alone something as integral to the national consciousness as sport.

So was Neymar racially abused?  Having been on those terraces on September 14^th 1983 and heard bile of such invention that the KKK would have been proud of it, I find it inconceivable that all Scottish football fans have moved on so far in such a short period of time.  We should be honest about that, refuse to become smug and complacent and take a talented young man’s complaints seriously.

A blessing in disguise for the BNP?

At first, I couldn’t help celebrating the decision of the courts to uphold the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s action against the BNP for discriminating in favour of  ”indigenous Caucasians”  in its membership regulations.  I had the image of  blacks and socialists and Asians and anti Nazi Leaguers and Muslims joining just for the sheer delight of fucking up the whole stinking party and its raison d’etre.

However, I’ve had second thoughts.  If, as seems probable, the thugs rewrite their constitution, it affords them a legitimacy that they can never deserve.  It gives validity to  those reprehensible views that start with the phrase, “I’m not a racist, but…” – and now they can point to their constitution to prove it.  If this happens, the BNP will more and more be accepted as mainstream commentators, and will be offered their place in the mainstream media.  It has already started with the Question Time question , and youth members of the BNP being welcomed on Radio One in an almost criminally soft interview.  With the patently outrageous membership qualifications removed from the constitution, the BNP looks all the more respectable, even if it still stinks to high heaven.

The best weapon against racists is their own racism itself.  It is ridiculous, patently false, based on assumptions that are blind and deaf and, in one sense at least, dumb.  The work of Searchlight over the years has been unrivalled in calling out the violence, the hypocrisy and the venality of the right wing in this country and all over the world.  It’s philosophy is simple – show everyone what the bastards are really like.  It is well worth the subscription.

And just to prove my point, two unbelievable stories from the USA appeared on Huffington Post this week.  First, can you believe that, at the start of the 21st century, you’d still have a Justice of the Peace being able to deny a mixed race couple a marriage licence?  Going by the name of Keith Bardwell, his words sound like something from the 1960s – which is perhaps where Louisiana still is:

“I’m not a racist. I just don’t believe in mixing the races that way… I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else.”

His trump card – he’s worried about what the children will suffer.  No doubt from fuckers like him.

And to show that right wingers are equal-opportunity bigots, the second story concerns Ceara Sturgis, a 17-year old lesbian who has been told by her High School Principal that she can’t dress in a tuxedo for her yearbook photograph.  So often, right wing nutjobs complain about our world having gone “PC mad”, forgetting that their own brand of ideology has always been and always will be absolutely barking mad in the ways it hurts people, from the worst atrocities of genocide to the pettiest of petty restrictions placed on human beings simply to destroy their self-worth.

So, I say let them keep their racist intentions intact and visible, so that we might continue to shout them down, beat them back and marginalise them from civilised society.