I AM a Londoner who would like to send a message of thanks to the people of Glasgow who blocked Kenmuire Street in Pollokshields on Thursday to stop UK Border Agency officials and the Greater Glasgow police from forcibly removing two men.
For over a decade the racist Tory party have demonised and vilified asylum-seekers, refugees and immigrants. The Tory “hostile environment” over the last 10 years has encouraged racism and led to the shameful treatment of the Windrush generation and their children.
The xenophobic Home secretary Priti Patel insists on incarcerating asylum-seekers in Napier barracks where conditions are so bad they even prompted the former Tory immigration minister Caroline Nokes to condemn them as “ghettos”.
Patel is very keen on forced deportations and is attempting to deport Osime Brown, a severely autistic 22-year-old who came to the UK when he was four, “back” to Jamaica, a country he can’t remember and where he has no family or support.
The UK has a Prime Minister who has a long record of using racist language and a Home Secretary who is so xenophobic she would have stopped her own parents from entering the UK had she been in office in the
early 70s. So how wonderful it was to follow the demonstrators in Pollokshields who refused to allow the state to get away with its brutalisation of two immigrants. Those who blocked Kenmuire Street with the cry “let our neighbours go” were humanity at its best.
And they won!
This was a great victory for decency, common humanity and the power of solidarity. It was a great lesson in people power for Priti Patel and the whole toxic Tory Cabinet.
Thank you Glasgow from the son of a refugee.
Sasha Simic
London
I WAS profoundly moved by the actions of fellow Glaswegians at Kenmure Street – and proud to live in Glasgow and Scotland.
As a community nurse in the poorer areas of Glasgow in the 1980s. I remember as colleagues and neighbours standing and watching evictions and other high-handed activity. I was struck how effective positive presence and bearing witness to “official” punitive action is. Whether this is done as a community public servant accompanying a client/patient to a formal meeting – or as neighbours standing in the rain in solidarity.
The events on Thursday perfectly describe the peaceful meaning of our Scottish motto: “Nemo me impune lacessit”. No-one provokes me with impunity.
Often used in a “war-cry” manner, it’s more powerful meaning is one of ensuring accountability and that wrong done to the vulnerable and needy will not disappear without consequence.
Professor John Atkinson
Bishopbriggs
I READ your report on the dawn raids in Kenmure Street with tears running down my face. Tears of pride, because Scotland has shown it will not allow the fascists in Westminster to continue to treat human beings as dross.
Of course it reminds me of the actions of the Glasgow Girls of 1995. In fact, correct me if I am wrong, but is Kaukab Stewart, elected to the Scottish Parliament last week, not one of those Glasgow Girls?
My first job was in Pollokshields, and the people were so nice.
It just goes to show, Conservatives can’t be trusted, but Scotland has shown its compassion on this matter. This is the kind of society we want to create. So keep it up Scotland!
Margaret Forbes
Inverclyde
A SOCIOPATH is the only apt description of anyone who would plan and authorise a dawn immigration lift raid in a Muslim community on Eid. That is the calibre of the Westminster Tories and the filth they deliberately hire to plan and execute their dirty work.
After independence we must purge such types out of any Westminster jobs we inherit. These people just destroy individual lives and communities – and they enjoy the pain they inflict regardless of any excuses or protestation that they don’t. Absolute filth with no place in decent society.
Ben Power
via thenational.scot
THE Scottish people voted and the result is a majority of MSPs in favour of Scottish independence. While this wasn’t a referendum on independence per se we saw Unionists using their votes tactically to try to prevent the SNP from gaining a supermajority by itself.
The SNP clearly won the election even if it will need the support of the Greens to form a Government. People like George Galloway, the Family Party and the fascists of Britain First were annihilated by voters.
We, in Scottish Republican Socialist Movement don’t think that the SNP will deliver a socialist workers’ republic nor that all its policies are socialist. But right now, and even before the last election, the SNP stood as the biggest party in favour of Scottish independence – and right now our task is to side with the people of Scotland.
Independence isn’t exclusively about the SNP, nor any other single party. Independence will be for all the people living and working in our country.
We urge the people of Scotland, regardless of party membership, to come together and discuss and rebuild a strong pro-independence movement leaving past bitterness and divisions behind.
We hope the new government will deliver a new referendum and we assert the Scottish people’s right to national self-determination.
Only the people of Scotland can choose what will be our future and as republican socialists we will fight until Scotland gains its independence and we’ll fight to build a republic based on the teachings of Connolly and Maclean.
Giacomo Gioga, press officer
Alan Stewart, national officer
Scottish Republican Socialist Movement
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