Letter: ‘Diane Abbott was wrong’

Criticised: Diane Abbott

Diane Abbott was wrong to argue that Jewish people, Travellers and the Irish community do not experience racism in the same way Black people do. All of these communities experience racism on a daily basis.

But those in the Conservative Party trying to make political capital out of her error need to remember that they are the party of the ‘hostile environment’ and the Windrush scandal and that they plan to traffic asylum-seekers to a concentration camp in Rwanda and that their former Home Secretary, Priti Patel, slandered the Traveller community as “criminals” and criminalised their way of life and that their current Home Secretary Suella Braverman has vilified asylum-seekers as “invaders” and has habitually labelled the Albanian community as “criminals”.

Only two weeks ago Bracknell Conservative Party put forward Andrew McBride, the former full-time regional organiser for British National Party (BNP) and ex-deputy leader of the Britain First Party as their candidate for the up-coming council elections.

It is less than two weeks ago that racist remarks of Conservative councillor on Pembrokeshire County Council, Andrew Edwards, came to light in which he declared “All white men should have a Black man as a slave or Black woman as a slave” and went on to argue that Black people are more “lower class than us white people”.

Diane Abbott has acknowledged that her letter to The Observer was mistaken.

She has retracted it and apologised for it. Good.

There can be no ‘hierarchies” when it comes to racism.

Racism is social poison and must be challenged and fought whatever form it takes.

And it is a fact that Diane Abbott has devoted her political career to the fight against racism.

Sasha Simic