Fanning the flames of division: misinformation, misdirection and years of disaffection led to this month’s riots
CROYDON COMMENTARY: What lay behind the series of riots and civil disorder which erupted across the country this month, and saw the town centre on high alert? Disability rights campaigner PAULA PETERS offers her perspective
At last month’s General Election, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party took votes because people were fed up of two-party politics. They felt that they were being abandoned in their areas.
If you look where Reform got their MPs – South Basildon and East Thurrock, Great Yarmouth, Clacton, Boston and Skegness (coastal) and Ashfield (mining) – these are areas of high poverty, towns left for decades with high unemployment. The 14 years of Conservative austerity have driven many areas into the ground.
The political Establishment plays on this – blaming overseas workers for taking jobs, and driving up rents. They use the immigration card, they ramp up Islamophobia and hatred using the media to do it to push their agenda.
Brexit got through because Farage and Boris Johnson came out with the “populist” rhetoric. Many bought into the lie that the NHS would get £350million a week.
‘Disingenuous grifter’: does Nigel Farage ever buy a round?
They turn on disabled people, too, as well as refugees and migrants. Hate crime towards disabled people has risen by 50% these past four years. We’ve taken a lot of demonisation in the media these past 14 years, and it has got worse in the past few weeks and days, too.
People voted for Reform because they had enough of the Tories and hated Rishi Sunak. But Reform are Tories under a different name.
Since the election, Reform has 75,000 members, many of them attracted by populist ideas, like those on £20,000 a year not paying any income tax. Many low-paid workers bought into that.
But look at the dangers. Farage wants a French-style health care system. That would be paid for by insurance. He wants Britain to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, and bring in a British Bill of Rights. He’s touting a referendum on this as we speak.
He also wants to scrap DEI – diversity, equity and inclusion – in workplaces.
What Farage is also doing is pushing all parties to the right. So more austerity for everyone, but the rich create more division, more anger, more blame.
This needs to be addressed. Stand Up To Racism never mentions disabled people. They are not joining the dots on this.
Reform is after abolishing human rights, as we move to becoming a fascist state. If Britain comes away from the European Convention on Human Rights, there will be no access to the European Court of Justice when you lose your case at the Supreme Court.
We also need to look at government policy on war and the arms trade. We’re giving £3billion a year to war in Ukraine, while Prime Minister Keir Starmer wants to build four nuclear subs at the cost of £250billion.
War displaces people and disables people. Displaced people move elsewhere, fleeing war and persecution.
From the latest edition of Private Eye Magazine, available in all good newsagents, and some not so good ones, too
Then you have something which people don’t talk about: Eugenics. The blame game directed at disabled people and older people.
All too expensive to treat and keep. Only last month a new Assisted Dying Bill was laid at the House of Lords. This was passed through on the nod. Starmer agrees with it. So does Liz Kendall, the Work and Pensions Secretary.
You see in countries where assisted dying is allowed by law that safeguards are lax. In Canada, there is a 10-year wait for social housing but a 90-day wait for euthansia.
Quietly, without any fuss or protest, in Britain DNRs – do not resuscitate notices – are being applied often without patient knowledge or consent. This practice has been used by the NHS, particularly so since covid.
All of these issues are interlinked. All of it underlined by division, placing one group against another.
- Paula Peters is a trades unionist and disability rights activist and chair of the Croydon and Bromley branch of DPAC – Disabled People Against Cuts – who is writing here in a personal capacity
Croydon Commentary provides a platform for any of our readers to offer their personal views about what matters to them in and around the borough. To submit an article for publication, just email us at inside.croydon@btinternet.com, or post your comment to an Inside Croydon article that has caught your attention
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
As featured on Google News Showcase
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here
Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network
- Inside Croydon works together with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as well as BBC London News and ITV London
ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
All four Croydon MPs voted in favour of the Assisted Dying bill today, but the vote was only 330 – 275, so who/where were all the MPs voting against it ?