I am afraid you fail to understand that the European court does not agree with your views, as the right to freedom of speech is always balanced with my right not to be offended by what a racist or fascist might say.
Peter Herbert, Chair of the Society of Black Lawyers and of the London Race Hate Forum, The Guardian, Saturday September 25, 2004.
A leading race campaigner has blamed London’s upsurge in shootings and carjackings on a moral vacuum inhabited by many black people. Young men have been sucked into a “multimillion pound economy of drugs and guns which subverts mainstream morality and social responsibility,” says Lee Jasper, an adviser to mayor Ken Livingstone.
The Observer, Sunday February 17, 2002.
[D]iversity is indeed a strength and not a threat.
Queen Elizabeth II, Christmas Day Broadcast to the Commonwealth, 2004.
Thirty years after Afro-Caribbeans in Walsall successfully fought off white skinhead thugs, their children face a fresh wave of attacks – this time from Asians, reports David Harrison.
Friday night in Walsall town centre. As hundreds of young people pour into the town’s pubs and clubs a small group of Asian youths stands apart on a piece of wasteland 100 yards from the high street.
There are about 12 of them, all ethnic Pakistanis aged between 15 and 20, wearing casual clothes and surly expressions. They are not interested in partying, because they have something else on their mind: black-bashing. Their targets are Afro-Caribbean youths and their weapons are racial abuse, baseball bats and knives.
In recent months Pakistani youths have threatened and assaulted dozens of Afro-Caribbean teenagers, according to leaders of the black community. Some have been roughed up; others seriously injured.
The town’s 4,500-strong Afro-Caribbean population is increasingly concerned: they say that the attacks are racially-motivated and are becoming more frequent and more vicious. [...]
The Sunday Telegraph, 7th December, 2003.
Racist tension between different ethnic groups in Britain is at its worst level for 50 years, according to a television documentary to be broadcast tomorrow.
Darcus Howe, one of the country’s most respected commentators on race issues, says in the Channel Four programme that violent confrontations between West Indians and Somalis in south London, and West Indians and Pakistanis in the West Midlands, are now endemic.
Mr Howe, who was born in Trinidad but has lived in Britain since the 1960s, documents a huge increase in stabbings, beatings, attacks on private property and street fighting between the groups.
The film paints a particularly bleak portrait of black-on-black violence between Somalis and West Indians living in the Woolwich and Plumstead areas of south London. Even while making the programme, entitled Who You Callin’ A Nigger?, Mr Howe’s film crew were attacked by a Somali “community worker”.
Later, Jobie, a 16-year-old West Indian, recounts how he was set upon by a large group of Somalis he recognised from his area while he attended an anti-racism concert in Greenwich. The damage to his skull was so severe that it nearly killed him.
Thousands of Somali asylum seekers, fleeing the civil war, settled in Woolwich in the early 1990s. Tensions between the arriving Somalis and more long-standing West Indian residents have now boiled over, the programme suggests.
Jobie says: “When I talk about them it makes me want to be sick. I think they are vermin. They are not a civilised people. They are black but a different kind of black. To me they are like dirt. We have to clean up the dirt.” [...]
The Sunday Telegraph, 8th August, 2004.
A businessman involved in funding the Notting Hill Carnival has been criticised by race campaigners after calling for the event to be a more “civilised experience”.
Andrew Morris, who heads the Earls Court and Olympia Group, made his comments during a review of the plans for this year’s carnival. Speaking at City Hall in London, he said: “I think it’s got to be seen as a civilised experience for all persons. It’s got to maintain safety and security.”
But Jennette Arnold, cultural adviser to the mayor of London, said: “I think it’s disgusting use of language and totally inappropriate in this day and age. It’s like something that comes from pre-slavery times.”
Claire Holder, who ran the event for 13 years until being sacked by a new management team, said: “I am shocked at the idea that it should be more civilised. What was uncivilised about it before?”
The Guardian, Thursday March 11, 2004.
A teenager has been arrested in connection with one of the two murders at the Notting Hill carnival. The 19-year-old was arrested on Wednesday and bailed pending inquiries.
Scotland Yard expects to make further arrests in connection with the attack on Abdul Bhatti, 28, who was set upon by a gang of between 40 and 50 men when he tried to help a friend who was being robbed. The salesman, from Hounslow in west London, was punched to the ground and died 24 hours later in hospital.
The Guardian, Friday September 29, 2000.
With so many dark currents swirling, it’s possible to sympathise with the Home Office’s suggestion that far-right supporters should be banned from being civil servants. You can hardly expect a fascist to treat black and brown Britons fairly, and when he is given the coercive powers of a police, prison or immigration officer the results will be violent assaults or miscarriages of justice. The far-right likes nothing better than to dress-up in uniforms and exploit the benefit of the doubt given to law enforcement officers. A blanket ban seems a sensible precaution.
The Observer, Sunday September 26, 2004.
Presented with the flimsiest of justifications for an assault on the basic principle of liberalism that ideas must be subject to free debate, a significant section of liberal opinion has crossed over to the other side. Or to put it another way, things have come to a pretty pass in England when we have to rely on the Tory Party to stand up for freedom of speech. But that, I’m afraid, is the state we’re in. In the whole debate, only the Tories demurred and sensibly pointed out that the law would be impossible to enforce.
The New Humanist, Monday September 6, 2004.
Fiona Mactaggart, Home Office minister, 2005.
The Holy Qur’an, Surah 4, An-Nisa (“The Women”), verse 35 (translation at Al-Islam.org).
A bakery has unwittingly found itself embroiled in a race relations row after putting a sign up in its window which criticised the traditional French baguette and extolled the virtues of the homemade English version. Daryl Barke was astonished when three police officers approached the counter of his family-run bakery in Wickford, Essex, and ordered him to remove an advert from the shop front because it could be considered offensive to the French. The tongue-in-cheek sign which featured an advert for baguettes with the word French crossed out and replaced by English followed by the slogan “none of that French rubbish” had provoked a complaint from a member of the public.
The Guardian, Friday July 27, 2001.