Letter from William F. Ward
Our town is a pretty quiet place. The local paper runs stories like “Wheelie bin set on fire”, which wouldn’t even get a mention in the papers in Liverpool, Leeds or Manchester. Nevertheless on Wednesday August 7, the town, like many others, was named as a target for a racist ‘protest’ centred on a street with an ethnic minority presence. You know the sort of street – one with takeaways, fried chicken shops, East European food outlets and ‘international mini-marts’.
Local people, black, white and brown were worried. The Brownies, Scouts and Cadets were cancelled. Shops closed early. At about five o’clock, messages began circulating on Facebook and WhatsApp: “Don’t go to town there’s a riot starting” and “It’s all kicking off outside Freshco”.
But a drive down the street in question revealed nothing much going on. Outside many of the shops stood groups of three or four men, ready to defend their property. Even our chippy had a handy looking Chinese guy stood outside playing on his phone.
At Freshco itself, named by the racists as their assembly point, you could see a couple of policemen. True, there were a number, maybe a dozen, of lads in black sports clothes scattered along the street. But were they racists or just passers-by? One was definitely up to no good, because he was arrested for carrying a knife.
But really nothing happened. It was mainly because the racists did not turn up to their own event. But just by publishing the meet-up, they created fear and tension in that community. How is that OK? And the presence even of a few dozen people ready to challenge them meant that to succeed they would have had to turn up mob-handed from the start.
It would appear that a few, in the region of single figures, teenage racist lost souls turned up, hoping that something would kick off that they could join in with – and feel big for a few hours.
Now life continues – a diverse community where everyone is just trying to make a living. Why do these racists hate that so much? Nothing happened. But it could have been different.
Picture top: aftermath of riot in Hull, August 4. Wikimedia Commons, here.
