Glasgow is lawless? Thomas Kerr has missed the true spirit of the city
Reform UK thinks Glasgow city centre is lawless thanks to the number of immigrants. It’s a position that’s fairly brainless
The obvious explanation is that Thomas Kerr is simply confused.
The MSP and deputy leader of Reform UK Scotland can’t, surely, be looking at the same Glasgow everyone else is looking at and bandying about the words “lawless” and “anarchy” with a straight face?
For those of us who have been around the block, this reigniting of racial tensions in our city is tiresome and terrifying in equal measure.
A decade ago the arrival of the Roma communities to Glasgow’s south side whetted the appetite of hard right agitators.
There were well-founded concerns about resources, crime and cleansing but these became impossible to discuss rationally thanks to misinformation and malice.
That, though, seems like more innocent times.
In the last six months we’ve seen mothers learning English targeted by protests outside their children’s schools. Housing associations picketed because of a false belief immigrants are being prioritised.
The city’s BAME residents report feeling afraid to go out. International students have told me they don’t want to come to Scotland because it’s seen as being too hostile.
Ironic, given these protestors claim to be protecting women and girls. Instead they are creating, not dissipating, fear.
Because of course, Thomas Kerr is not confused. Reform UK knows exactly what it’s doing. The well-worn playbook of immigrants as scapegoat. When resources are stretched, far easier to distract the electorate with hate than draft effective policy.
Mr Kerr released a video of himself strolling around the bank of the Clyde behind the St Enoch Centre to illustrate the aforementioned anarchy and lawlessness.
The camera lingers on a neat pile of pink bin bags. This is not lawlessness, it’s commercial waste management. Though it’s perhaps unsurprising that Reform UK has a present particular interest in bins.
The camera also lingers on groups of people socialising. I cycle home along that route most days.
It’s a popular spot for skater kids. There are addiction and homelessness services nearby so there are often service users hanging around. Office workers sit on the grass. And on and on.
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Yet everyone in Mr Kerr’s video shares one fact: they are black or brown. Anarchy, then, is people of colour socialising outdoors.
Immediate aversion to seeing people of colour socialising outdoors has a name.
There is a political cohort afraid of the word “racist” because it alienates voters and immediately stymies debate while people take performative offence.
We must, though, name it in order to tackle it.
A woman was interviewed at one of the new flurry of protests. A counter-protestor, she was told to mind her own business given she, although Glaswegian, wasn’t from the area.
“I’ve lived here for 20 years,” she said. “So? You’re still not from the east end.”
There is an ingrained territorialism in Glasgow that in previous decades resulted in a still present gang culture.
I watched a young chap in the dock of the sheriff court not long ago as his lawyer explained he’d breached his bail conditions because the bail conditions were impossible.
He simply could not check in with his social worker because reaching the social work office involved crossing a street in rival territory.
Scotland cut gang violence with a public health approach. Resources - health, housing, care - were enhanced until there was no reason to fight, not that there ever had been. We live in straitened economic times and that has been weaponised.
Yet there is a pride in place that exists in Glasgow that could be turned to a powerful force for good. The energy of protest, the spirit.
Our politicians should only focus on funnelling that energy to better. But that takes work and it is plainly obvious not everyone is fit for that graft.
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