Dear Members of Parliament and parliamentary prospective candidates, can we, the nation, ask you not to divide us any more than we are now.
I will not say that Brexit was right or wrong for Britain, that is a matter for each person in our great rainbow nation.
It is, however, hard to ignore the fact that the country was split into two roughly equal halves last June, those that were in favour of Brexit and those that were against it.
On top of that, we had the shameful conduct of some individuals – Nigel Farage with that poster (again, where was and is the EHRC?), and we had deeply upsetting anti-Semitism within the Labour party. We had the Zac Goldsmith camp bolstered by then PM, David Cameron making what I consider to be Islamophobic remarks in relation to Sadiq Khan.
It was a bad few months with some dirty tricks, political bashing of migrants and indigenous minority groups, bashing of people from minority religions as well as playing up to the wrong type of Populism.
I have been around long enough to know that most of our Politicians saw the use of this language as a short term means of achieving an aim – win the Brexit vote or win the Mayoral election.
I don’t believe for a minute that these Politicians are ideologically racist. I don’t believe that Nigel Farage or even Donald Trump is ideologically racist.
But the common factor with all these politicians is that they all used race and religion to make people upset, fearful and angry enough so that they would vote for a person that apparently will protect them from being swamped and from the harm that foreigners or people that are different would allegedly bring.
They all played to a human primal survival instinct, but this type of policy is dangerous. It sets off a chain reaction in society, which leads to boiling point anger, harassment, attacks and even murder.
I believe that Teresa May, Boris Johnson, and even Nigel Farage and others were taken aback by the Post-Brexit reaction, and all of them have behaved differently in the last few months.
Teresa May has done it rather better than the others, but we need her now to be a strong leader and make it clear that no one will stoop to those levels in her party on her watch. Labour and UKIP need to do the same.
I, therefore, implore you to stick to your principles and do not get drawn into a dirty tactics campaign. Do this for our country, do it to protect our reputation abroad, do it for votes – whatever motivates you to do it please just do it.
Yours Sincerely,
Solat Chaudhry, CEO
The National Centre for Diversity
