In Wales, Racism Must Be Defeated This Thursday – Editorial
What kind of Wales do we want?
That question was posed sharply recently when one of Reform UK’s most prominent figures publicly questioned whether a Black person from Butetown, Cardiff, could ever be Welsh.
For as long as many of us have lived in Wales and known it as our home, the idea that Black people cannot be Welsh has remained the preserve of a small number of racists on the fringes of society.
In fact, each generation will have different individuals and figures in their mind when they think of famous people who are Black and Welsh. Depending on your age, it might be Shirley Bassey, Colin Jackson, Betty Campbell, Ashley Williams or Tumi Williams.
Who has the right to strip any of these individuals of their Welsh identity because of the colour of their skin? The answer of course, is no one.
But that is precisely why the Senedd election this Thursday is so crucial. It is about whether we allow such blatant racism to flourish in Wales, or whether we kick it back into the gutter where it belongs. Because the person who made that statement and who felt they had the right to strip Black people in Wales of their national identity was not an isolated online troll or some random racist individual.
He was Arron Banks, a millionaire insurance mogul from Hampshire and one of the key figures behind Reform UK, the party led by Nigel Farage and which is currently on course for a historic breakthrough in the Senedd elections. Just last year, Banks was Reform UK’s candidate to become the directly elected mayor of the West of England. He is no fringe figure, rogue candidate or opportunistic member, but a core part of the entire Reform operation.
When Elbashir Idris, a Welsh-Sudanese man, fronted an election video for Plaid Cymru (pictured above), Banks shared it online with the caption: ‘Welsh Lad?. But it wasn’t a question, it was a statement. An attempt to shift the parameters of public discourse to the point where any Black person can be harassed like this.
Because for Banks, it didn’t matter who Elbashir Idris was. Banks had no interest in having an honest political debate with him. All that mattered was that here was an articulate Black person who had something to say about Welsh politics. That is what appeared to be so egregious to Banks.
There will, of course, be some of Banks’ supporters who deny that any racism was at play at all, and claim, as he has, that it was some kind of joke. These are the same people who claim that it is others who ‘play the race card,’ when in actuality, it is them who invoke race at every possible opportunity.
In fact, as Banks’ social media post gained traction, these people came out in force to try and ‘disprove’ Idris’ Welshness and delegitimise his very existence. Is this the kind of Wales we want, where Black and Brown people are constantly being told they have to justify their own identity to satisfy a group of people who despise them anyway?
Reform’s Aaron Banks was attempting to shift the parameters of public discourse to the point where any Black person can be harassed like this.
And we can see how widely Banks’ opinions are shared within the very top of the party’s operation in Wales. Dan Thomas, the party’s leader in Wales, has refused to even distance himself from Banks’ comments after being given multiple opportunities to do so.
Since Banks’ outburst, there has been a fresh announcement from Reform UK. On Sunday, the party announced a new policy of building masses of new immigration detention centers to imprison what they call illegal immigrants. The intention is for a Trump style operation that targets anyone it deems ‘alien.’
The fact that this is a UK policy and an area that is not devolved is irrelevant. This is a piece of political propaganda with the sole intention of driving up hatred and racism against all perceived migrants in the here and now, regardless of how they came here.
And we have to ask ourselves this: if Reform wins, who will get to decide who is ‘illegal’ and who isn’t? Who will be the ones to decide which people are taken into vans and locked away in a detention centre?
It will be the same people who believe they have the right to tell a Black person from Wales that they aren’t Welsh. The same people who want to make every minority in our country feel like their very existence is under threat. That’s who will be in charge.
It will make every migrant, whether they are parents on the school yard or an Evri delivery driver, a potential target.
Is that the Wales we want?
After all, it is impossible to sum up the contribution that migration has made to Wales, but let’s focus on one thing.
By December 2020, at least sixteen frontline healthcare workers in Wales had died of Covid 19. These were people who kept caring for those who needed it, even as a deadly virus was ripping through their hospital. It’s no exaggeration to say that they paid the ultimate price to keep us safe.
But amongst the sixteen dead in Wales, over half were non-white or from an immigrant background. In other words, the very same people that Reform constantly whip up hatred towards. Six years on from their deaths, we cannot allow a party that openly despises their very existence in our society, let alone our health service, to win.
It will make every migrant in Wales, whether they are parents on the school yard or an Evri delivery driver, a potential target. Is that the Wales we want?
There are deep problems facing communities across Wales, from chronic child poverty to poor housing. We have spent the past seven years highlighting these issues through our own journalism, and are not aligned to any pollical party. We’d be lying if we said the crisis we face will be solved by voting a particular way on Thursday.
But Reform offers no solutions to the problems we face, and in fact the record of the party’s leader in Wales, who was previously a leading Tory councillor, only shows that they are likely to make things worse. But what Reform do promise to deliver is hatred and hostility to anyone in Wales that doesn’t fit its narrow racialised version of Welshness.
That alone must be motivation enough to get out and vote to stop Reform from gaining a decisive foothold in our politics. In most cases, that can best be done by voting for either Plaid Cymru or the Greens, or other candidates on the left, such as the independent socialist Beth Winter, depending where you are in Wales.
On Thursday, voters in Wales have an historic opportunity to reject racism and virulent, anti-migrant hatred in Wales. We must take it, and send multi millionaires like Arron Banks packing.
