THE FRONT PAGE of Friday’s Herald led with a story of rare unity among Labour and SNP leaders: Keir Starmer, Anas Sarwar and John Swinney all denounced Nigel Farage’s remarks about Glasgow as “racist”.
But what exactly is “racist” about Farage’s comments? He said one in three school children in Glasgow did not speak English as their first language. This is presumably a verifiable statistic.
He then added: “This is not diversity, this actually is the cultural smashing of Glasgow. It is turning into a completely different city in every way. My question is: who voted for this? Who told anyone in Scotland this was actually happening?”
Again, what is racist in that? One might disagree about the relatively rapid and substantial influx of non-native people to Glasgow in recent years. Is it a welcome diversification of Glaswegian culture or does it represent a loss of indigenous culture and community cohesion?
That is a legitimate point of debate. Shouting “racist” at anyone who raises it will not make the concerns go away. People worry about the social impact of continued, uncontrolled immigration, particularly from Muslim and developing-world countries, and these worries only intensify when they are ignored.
Nevertheless it has become a reflex response in politics, media and our wider culture to accuse anyone raising the issue of immigration in a way that does not signal full approval, of racism or bigotry.
This tendency reached the height of absurdity in October when a Reform councillor in Falkirk, Claire Mackie Brown hit the headlines after she commented in a TV interview on recent protests outside a local migrant hotel that she was “born and bred here”. The clip went viral and prompted an anonymous complainant to compile a 22-page dossier on Cllr Mackie-Brown which was submitted to Police Scotland and the Ethical Standards Commissioner for Scotland. The police have now announced that “no criminality has been established”.
So far, so good – and reassuring, one might think. But the incident should not be dismissed so easily because it shines a light on the insidious way in which everyday speech on contentious issues is now routinely politicised and policed.
This has a deeply chilling effect not just on public debate and discussion but also on private discourse. Watch what you say! Even accidental wording could see you accused of prejudice and facing the police.
The most remarkable thing about Cllr Mackie-Brown’s interview was that she herself felt she had said something wrong.
Reflecting on the migrant hotel protests, she said: “There is true unrest and it’s scary. It’s scary. And as a local resident, someone who’s born and bred here.”
Flustered, she then muttered: “I shouldn’t have said that.”
That self-policing invited the interviewer to pounce.
The interviewer interjected: “Well, do you see why people sometimes think that Reform are very much against having people here …”
The councillor attempted to clarify: “That just came out, that just came out, that just …”
The interviewer persisted: “That’s unfortunate for you, I guess. But ultimately do you see why people who aren’t from here but have maybe made their home here are annoyed when they hear an elected official say that people are born and bred here?”
There is a good chance that if she hadn’t shown guilt, the remark would have passed without comment. So why did she attempt to self-censor herself and why did the interviewer amplify her supposed wrong-speak?
The question is all the more pressing given that politicians at all levels routinely advertise themselves as “born and bred” in a locality. Humza Yousaf wrote in 2017 that he was “born and bred in Glasgow” and Nicola Sturgeon described herself as “Ayrshire born and bred”.
The difference of course is context: Cllr Mackie-Brown said it in the heated environment of protests around illegal migrants. In such a climate, merely noting that someone is local rather than newly arrived can be construed as racist.
The fear of being labelled racist inhibits people from talking about race or immigration at all – which of course suits parties like Labour and the SNP who do not want attention paid to these matters or their own policy failings.
What this means in practice is that problems arising from uncontrolled immigration and failed integration cannot be addressed. The most egregious example is the continuing scandal of grooming gangs largely consisting of men of Pakistani and/or Muslim heritage, and the failure by authorities at all levels to recognise the racial, religious or cultural element and seek justice for their victims.
A tiny example from Fife. A few years ago established taxi drivers in and around St Andrews grew concerned about an influx of foreign, mainly middle-Eastern drivers on the rank. Some were ripping off customers and giving the trade a bad name. Complaints were made to Fife Council’s Licensing department who dismissed the operators as racist – in fairness, taxi drivers tend not to be the most scrupulous users of language.
Ignored by the Council, the problem of the foreign drivers grew, with complaints from female passengers about sexual advances, police involvement and press coverage. Consequently the Licensing department held a meeting with operators to hear their concerns. What drivers wanted was marshals on the rank, checking meters and fares and catching out dodgy drivers. This was of course beyond the department’s budget. Instead taxi tests, a sort of supercharged MOT licensed taxis have to undergo annually, suddenly became a lot stricter in NE Fife than in other areas; the rumour was that the Council knew a lot of the foreign drivers’ cars were ropey and this would be a way of “doing something about them”. Failure rates soared, far above the rest of Fife.
Members of the Regulation and Licensing Committee were not happy and called all the owners of failed taxis for a meeting to discuss how such high failure rates could be ameliorated. However, the Committee papers had published the names of all the operators whose taxis had failed, and an analysis showed that operators with foreign-sounding names were responsible for more than 42 per cent of failed taxi tests – over twice the failure rate of native operators.
Full disclosure here: I was at that meeting as an owner of taxi firms in St Andrews and I raised the issue of the comparatively high rate of foreign-origin driver failure, suggesting the Council investigate the cause. Language barriers, difficulty navigating bureaucracy, or unfamiliarity with UK taxi standards could be part of the issue. Then targeted solutions like workshops, translated guides, or plainer-English materials could raise pass rates significantly. I was immediately shut down by the Committee Convenor for being, yes, you’ve guessed it, “racist”. I went to the local paper. A journalist warned me I might be publicly accused of being a racist by the Council. In the end the paper backed off and did not publish.
The fear of being labelled racist – by officers, councillors and media – means the problems on the rank created by foreign drivers persist, foreign drivers will continue to fail their taxi tests at a much higher rate than native drivers and the animosity between the two groups will not lessen. This story could be read as a microscopic parable for the problems of immigration and integration, and the role of many of our officials, politicians and media in deepening them.
Nevertheless the tide is turning. The complaint against Cllr Claire Mackie-Brown was widely ridiculed, and the demonisation of Farage is doing nothing to dent support for ReformUK. Immigration ranks as the number one issue for around half of UK voters, while more than one in five Scots now count immigration as one of their top three concerns, up from 4 per cent just two years ago. Despite the best efforts of Starmer, Swinney et al, the Overton Window on talking critically about immigration is shifting inexorably.
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Photo of Nigel Farage speaking at Grangemouth from the Reform UK YouTube live feed.
