Brent Times Letter of the Week: We must stand United against this affront to Civil Society

"We Must stand United against this Affront to Civil Society", Brent Times series, 8 Aug 2013. Image.

Text:
The Green Party shares the dismay of community and borough leaders and residents at the tactics deployed by UK Borders Agency teams in Kensal Green and Cricklewood. Home Office Minister Mark Harper subsequently sought to justify the tactics as both "intelligence-led" and based on "reasonable suspicion".

However, if the stopping and checking of individual commuters was based on specific intelligence then the arrest rate should have been far greater than it was. If instead people were being stopped randomly, saying there was reason to suspect them without convincingly explaining why does not make it so.

To the contrary, eye-witnesses consistently reported that individuals were stopped not randomly, but disproportionately on grounds of race. If true, then the exercise, far from being intelligence-led, enacted something far more sinister - an attempt to target people who looked foreign and to seek to justify this as both necessary and proportionate to the ends.

Since when did membership of a racial group itself constitute grounds for suspicion? The Home Office failure to recognise the inherent racism of its tactics is compounded only by their attempt to justify it.

The happenings of the last few days would have been alarming enough taken on their own. In the context of state-sponsored racist van slogans and anti-immigration rhetoric, they are a positive incitement to racial tension.

The people of Brent and beyond must stand united against this latest affront to civil society.

Shahrar Ali Spokesperson for Brent Green Party