body-container-line-1
01.07.2013 Feature Article

The UK, Visas, Immigration and Racism

The UK, Visas, Immigration and Racism
01.07.2013 LISTEN

The Fallout from the British government's decision to charge Ghanaians 3,000 pounds as a condition to entering the UK is becoming all too apparent with Ghanaians be they politicians or members o the public appalled at this decision taken by the UK Home Secretary Theresa May.

However this should not be a great surprise because what many Ghanaians especially the political elite do not know is that the issue of immigration to the UK has become such a hot potato - in fact the issue of immigration HAS ALWAYS been a hot potato and given the severe recession that is currently hitting the UK, the issue of immigration has come to the fore.

This is because due to the ongoing recession which is now in its 5th year, the mainly White population of the UK have unfortunately bought into the British media hype about immigration, that Britain is being swamped/flooded by immigrants especially from Eastern Europe who are seen to be taking British peoples jobs, to the extent that immigration and migration has become the issue of the day for many British voters.

Indeed before the last local elections that were held in May this year, immigration was the number two issue, behind the economy, that preoccupied the minds of White British people.

In actual fact as a result of this fear of immigration, a political party called the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) polled an astonishing 25% of all the votes at the recent local elections just narrowly losing out to the Conservative Party but beating both the Labour Party and the coalition partners the Liberal Democratic Party.

The success of UKIP has forced ALL the political parties in the UK especially in England, to take a hard line on the subject of immigration. In fact when one takes a look at UKIP's manifesto, their is a whiff of racism about it because they hate all immigration into the UK and in fact want the UK to leave the European union (EU) so that it can decide its own immigration policy rather than be dictated to by Brussels.

Historically speaking there is no such thing a pure white British as those who claim to be White British are in fact a cross breed of Afrikan, Viking, Roman, Anglo Saxon and Germanic bloodline ( there was a programme on the discovery channel some time ago by funny man Eddy Izzard called the English: A mongrel nation). The Queen of England Queen Elizabeth II has Afrikan blood in her via her great, great, great grandmother, Queen Charlotte Sophia.

Even the leader of UKIP Nigel Farage is himself proof of this as he is not pure White British but has ancestry which comes from France - in fact his Grand parents who are French Protestants, escaped religious persecution from French Catholics and sought refuge in the UK. Therefore everybody in the UK is an immigrant of one sought or the other.

However this history has not been fully told to the masses of White British people and because of this lack of history, many White British people think/believe that they are the original people of Britain but again historically speaking this is a flawed perception/notion because believe it or not but the genetic and anthropological records are there to prove this, but the original/indigenous people of the UK/Britain are Black/Afrikan people.

In fact Black/Afrikan people have been in the UK for more than 2,500 years and have in fact ruled Britain. An example of this is the Afrikan Emperor Septimus Severimus, born in present day Libya, ruled Britain between 193-211 BC and is buried at the York Cathedral. It was this great Afrikan who re-built Hadrian's Wall, which divides Scotland from England.

There have been in fact many books written by White British historians such as Peter Fryer, Gerald Massey and Basil Davidson that state that Afrikan people at least have been in the UK for more than 2,500 years.

To buttress this point, the groundbreaking publication New Afrikan published an issue in October 2010 as part of its Afrikan/Black history celebrations about the Roman Afrikans who built Britain/UK

This lack of history has created the false impression that all non-White people in the UK are immigrants and that White people themselves are not immigrants. This notion has created a myth that Britain was/is a white country that is now being swamped by non-whites who have changed the landscape and the way of life of Britain/UK.

It is this racist belief that has been carefully and systematically cultivated in the British media and education systems to such an extent that it has become Gospel.

And this racist belief has been seized upon by racist anti-immigration and anti-Afrikan political parties like Oswald Moseley's British Union of Fascists (BUF) in the 1930's through to the Teddy Boy movement of the 1950's, to the Nazi National Front (NF) in the 1970's and early 1980's through to the Nazi British National Party (BNP) in the 1990's to today in the form of UKIP who are now the acceptable face of racism, xenophobia and an irrational and false sense of English nationalism - there are other anti-immigration and anti-Afrikan political parties that operate in the UK such as English Defence League (EDL) who it is alleged bombed a Somali Community centre in retaliation for the death of a white man Drummer Lee Rigby, to other fringe parties like Combat 18, White Wolves and Blood and Honour all of whom are anti-immigration and anti-Afrikan.

Even the Conservative Party are not immune from this racist perception of pure Englishness as one recalls former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher making unsavoury comments about immigration and Afirkan people before and during her stint as Prime Minster and elements of the Conservative Party like Enoch Powell (Rivers of blood speech) and Norman Tebbit (infamous cricket test speech) have made disparaging remarks about immigration and Afrikan people.

So given the above it is not a surprise to see why the Conservative led coalition Government has stooped to this racist policy to charge Ghanaians the sum of 3,000 pounds to enter the UK. And it is a racist policy because they have singled out non-white countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Jamaica and Bangladesh. The reason why they have not touched Kenya is because of the recent Mau Mau case and the reason why the have not touched South Afrika is that it is politically insensitive to do so.

In addition to this they have NOT sanctioned so-called White countries like Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

This should show to Ghanaians of all persuasions that there is a racist agenda behind this draconian policy - why target non-white countries and not white countries?

It should also serve as a wake up call to those who naively think that the UK is a development partner. Is this what a well intentioned development partner does?

The irony of this is racist visa policy is that the money obtained by the British will be recycled back to Ghana as so-called development aid.

May be the Government of Ghana should think twice about viewing the UK as a development partner.

body-container-line