Britons of colour feel backlash as migrant politics fuel tension
After nearly four decades in Britain, Ali Haydor says he wants to hide his brown skin as anti-migrant politics spill into daily life for Britons of colour.
After nearly four decades in Britain, Ali Haydor wishes he could hide his brown skin on some days. The Bangladesh-born resident moved from Bangladesh at age five and has become one face of a backlash that is moving beyond asylum policy and into the daily lives of Britons of colour.
The anger sharpened after Vickrum Digwa, 23, was jailed for life on June 1 for killing 18-year-old Henry Nowak in Southampton after falsely claiming Nowak had launched a racist attack. A video showing police handcuffing the dying victim helped ignite outrage, and a protest in Southampton on June 2 turned violent, injuring 11 police officers. Nowak’s family called for a review of knife laws and the exemptions that allow Sikhs to carry ceremonial knives, while pressure grew to scrap police guidance that treats people differently on the basis of ethnicity.
A week later, masked men went door to door in Belfast after a white man there was stabbed multiple times and lost an eye in an attack by a Sudanese immigrant. Ministers blamed far-right online agitators for stoking racial tension after the stabbing.
The Royal College of Nursing's advice line received racist-abuse complaints that rose 55% in three years, with staff from global majority backgrounds calling about discrimination at work. It was receiving about three calls a day on the issue and expected its advice-line total to exceed 1,000 in 2025. The Department of Health and Social Care has acknowledged an intolerable rise in racism against NHS staff in recent years, and the NHS operates a zero-tolerance approach to racism.
The British Social Attitudes survey has run every year since 1983. In a Migration Observatory briefing from April 2023, 52% of respondents said immigration numbers should be reduced and 32% said immigration was a bad or very bad thing. A London School of Economics and Political Science analysis found that small boat crossings have a disproportionate impact on immigration attitudes and can significantly reduce support for immigration.
Haydor put the pressure in blunt terms: “Anybody of colour is at risk at the moment.”
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