AA view from a far

 

Subject: A view from afar.



Listening to Stela Braverman speaking at the Commons Dispatch Box yesterday afternoon reminded me of the Witches of Salem and also of the 1960’s when our politicians felt more at home answering questions on law and order matters. The national landscape has altered out of all perspective as we fictionalise and fabricate the society today,  we have to tread very carefully on matters concerning our complex social mix and we continually look over our shoulder to see if anyone is listening, even our thoughts are interrogated for critical thinking. The influx of refugees, asylum seekers, people seeking a better life, is a red hot potato to some people whilst to others it’s an inditement of a weakness in our trying to absorb the generational mutation which these days makes up the multiplex character of a nation.  The thousands who risk their lives crossing the Channel, are on arrival housed in hotel accommodation but eventually drift off to find a  home, probably with their own cultural ethnicity in some other part of the country, somehow continue to be our responsibility for historical misdemeanours which weren’t seen as misdemeanours back then.

Some people wear their ethics and moral umbrage with pride and feel that the concept of a ‘national boarder’  is not appropriate in a multiethnic world.  Others would rather deal in concepts of inter-nationality and national responsibility and would insist we have control of who enters onto our patch.

It’s also interesting that politically the most vociferous in defending our borders and questioning the right of others to come in, are the current and previous Home Secretary’s, both members of the Indian diaspora who, as the children of people born outside this country see things much more vividly than the person who has lived here in relatively security for many generations. Could it be true that those who are now  the beneficiaries of a settled environment know better the damage an unsettled environment brings and are more aware of the danger than we who sleep walk into a world not of our making. The important point is, ‘it’s not of our making’, it’s a series of conditions  imposed on us and mostly outside our control. It  is artificial and in many cases alien to our culture, however we are told that our culture is a multicultural, multi-ethnic hotchpotch affair which requires maintenance and a rejig. The constant effort and strain imposed on an already strained benign national psycho has no history precedent.

If for instance their past is based on a religiosity which is at odds with ours and, being more militant more demanding of the individual, our watered down religious system is in no position to contest and we ourselves must make the adjustment.

If someone comes from a country where violence and guns are common  then we must still give them the benefit of the doubt until our police force is engulfed in violence which our unarmed police are ill equipped to confront.

If patriarchal dominance, is the ethos we have to try to invent some sort of hybrid social construct so we can effectively turn our gaze away from what, 50 years ago, we would deem unacceptable but because of the cleft stick in which we find ourselves, we prefer to demure and look away, assume we still need to educate ourselves about the ways of the world, a world which is now its on our doorstep and living next door.