Reflection #111 (7th September 2025 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)
A couple of weeks ago, I was on my way back from Hucklow Summer School, which is in some ways – for me, at least – a little slice of heaven. For one week a year we create this little bubble in which we try to live like we wish the world would live. Fifty-odd Unitarians (and Friends) squashed together in one place and doing their best to build beloved community – looking out for each other – attempting to work around each other’s foibles and accommodate each other’s needs as best we can. We often speak of affirming ‘the inherent worth and dignity of every person’ but in this setting we really try to intentionally embody that key principle and put it into action. We try to practice right relationship. It’s hard work, and we don’t always get it right, but it’s a space that brings me hope. It’s a little glimpse, a vision, of how things could be.
At the end of the week, inevitably, we all have to step out of the Summer School bubble and brace ourselves for re-entry into the world outside. It can be a shock to the system. Summer School nearly always finishes on the bank holiday weekend, and on many occasions in the past my dream-like post-Hucklow glow has been abruptly wrecked by the experience of stopping off in a motorway service station on the way home. The noise! The weight of humanity! The rudeness of people bumping and barging (after a week of people holding doors open for you – that was the thing I always used to notice – the lack of small courtesies – humanity is not generally seen at its best in a motorway service station on the August bank holiday).
This year, it was something different that burst my bubble. Sarah kindly gave me a lift home, and in the last few minutes of the journey, just as we drove over the Blue Bridge onto the Isle of Dogs I noticed there were a load of flags flying from lampposts. And someone had painted a red cross on the mini-roundabout. ‘What’s all that about?’, I wondered out loud. The week in Hucklow had been so full-on I hadn’t really been keeping up with the news. So Sarah filled me in. And my heart sank. We’ve been here before.
Back in the 90s the Island was at the centre of very unwelcome attention when a member of the British National Party unexpectedly won a seat on the local council. And for those who weren’t around at that time, the BNP were a splinter party from the National Front, an out-and-out fascist and white supremacist organisation, whose supporters were associated with racist violence and intimidation in the 70s and 80s. For my beloved Island, my home, to be suddenly associated with racists, was devastating. Repulsive. I was only a teenager but my instinctive reaction was clear: Not in my name.
After the BNP councillor was elected, the far-right became more visible in my area, including suddenly seeing skinheads in bomber jackets hanging around on the street, like a fascist cosplay convention. I don’t think they were locals, in the main – my impression is that lots of them were travelling from other areas to strut about the place – coming for a day out as if the Island was some kind of racist theme park for them to play in. But also, thankfully, anti-fascist organisations turned their attention to the area too, and a good number of previously indifferent people woke up, lent their energies to resisting this menace. Membership of the Anti-Nazi League and Anti-Fascist Action grew rapidly. And the councillor was voted out again within a year – though the number of votes he got increased, troublingly – but people who might otherwise have been apathetic about local elections got the vote out and voted to get rid of him. And many of us celebrated. That particular battle had been won. The ‘silent majority’ mostly wanted the racist out. The skinhead away-days fizzled out and they weren’t so visible on the streets any more.
But of course, sadly, that wasn’t the end of the story. Those attitudes are clearly still very much around. As an aside, when I went to check my facts about this historical event, on the BBC ‘On This Day’ website, the headline was: ‘1993: Shock as Racist Wins Council Seat’. That headline caught my attention as, it seems to me, reporting these days wouldn’t put it quite so plainly. Somehow it seems that much media coverage nowadays is complicit in normalising such views. The article also reminded me that part of the context for that electoral win was other, mainstream, parties – notably, at that time, the Liberal Democrats – playing with racist dog-whistles and anti-immigrant rhetoric in their own campaigning and helping to establish false and damaging narratives about the local Asian community in particular. As the mainstream parties and the media pander to these racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant attitudes, it shifts the Overton Window – that is, it shifts the range of ideas that are considered politically acceptable – and in recent years that window has been hurtling to the right. And the reading that Roy gave for us earlier, from Michael Rosen, reminds us of where that can ultimately lead.
But where are we now? And what is ours to do at this moment in time? This moment when a small minority of individuals are spraying red crosses on anything that stands still long enough and weaponizing this nation’s flag to galvanise the forces of hatred. It’s worth acknowledging, I think, that this country’s flag does not actually belong to the far-right – though for many of us they have indelibly tainted it by association – but some anti-racists are trying to reclaim it. This week Billy Bragg, for example, has been giving away little stickers for people to stick on lampposts with the flag of St. George and the words ‘No to Hate – It’s Our Flag Too’. Others are changing their social media profiles to this image. Billy Bragg voiced his concern that ‘the people responsible for the recent spate of flag-flying are seeking to divide our community into Us and Them’ and said he hoped that his stickers would ‘make it clear that the flag belongs to all of us and should not be used to stoke hatred and division.’ And with a little ironic nod to the bad-faith claims of some protestors, he concluded: ‘Given that those who put the flags up claim this is not their purpose, I’m sure they will welcome this clarification.’
When I read accounts of anti-immigrant protests – including one on the Isle of Dogs just last week (which ended with a police officer being punched and four being arrested) – I am sorry to admit that I felt frightened. Which, I think, is what they want. When I see social media dominated by the voices of bullies, I am scared of being abused. It makes me want to keep my head down. Which, I think, is what they want. Simultaneously, I knew what this week’s service had to be about, and I was nervous about speaking out.
What finally nudged me into action was this: An old friend from my schooldays, Ajanta, lives in Epping, and she’s lived there happily for many years. She doesn’t post a lot on social media but she shared something from a local group called ‘Epping for Everyone’ who describe themselves as ‘group of residents from Epping who are deeply committed to building a community rooted in respect, compassion, and facts not fear.’ It lifts up the voices of locals – of all races and origins – whose lives are being blighted by the so-called protestors. These seem to be, in many cases, trouble-makers travelling in from afar to harass and intimidate not just the refugees that are the focus of their blame, but anyone who gets in their way. It is racially-aggravated antisocial behaviour, and drunken disorder, and the majority of Epping residents want nothing to do with it. And that’s where this group, ‘Epping for Everyone’ comes in, as it aims to give voice to this ‘silent majority’.
One simple but meaningful gesture they have initiated is to invite supporters, people of goodwill, to tie colourful ribbons to railings on the high street, as ‘a reminder that our town chooses love, hope and community over hate.’ This visible symbol of unity matters. If all we can see, if all that is portrayed in the media, is images of rage and intimidation, we might be tempted to think this is the majority view – it can normalise extremism. If this goes unchallenged, even more people might be tempted to give credence to the lie that immigrants and asylum-seekers are the cause of all our country’s problems, rather than seeing that they are being cynically manipulated into making scapegoats of them.
If this is not the world we want to see – then we need to do something about it – and what that looks like might be different for each of us according to our circumstances. It’s no good being a ‘silent majority’, disapproving behind closed doors, and hoping it will all blow over without us having to get involved. I find myself thinking of the saying from Howard Zinn: ‘you can’t be neutral on a moving train’. He clarifies: ‘The world is already moving in certain directions. And to be neutral, to be passive, in a situation like that, is to collaborate with what is going on.’ Saying or doing nothing is, functionally, complicity.
As we heard in the reading that Julia gave for us earlier, from Meagan Henry, some of us are called to direct action and political engagement. We do need people who are courageous enough to put their bodies on the line, who will turn up at counter-protests, or go on the March Against Fascism which is taking place in London next Saturday. But this is not the only way to make a difference. We can speak up in our personal lives – and this also takes courage – if people in our circles are spreading misinformation, or scapegoating, or engaging in hate speech – we must not let it pass without comment. Sometimes social awkwardness is an obstacle to doing the right thing. Be brave. I’m not suggesting you should get drawn into bad-faith arguments on social media – I suspect most keyboard warriors are not especially susceptible to reason or compassion as the motivation, the psychological entrenchment, is more about belonging to a group – and getting embroiled in the culture wars is a demoralising, exhausting, distraction.
Instead of being reactive we might be proactive – positively articulating our own vision of how the world could be – re-affirming our values – building beloved community. And doing that out loud – as an embodied example and an encouragement to others – ‘being the change we want to see in the world’ as the well-worn saying goes. And I think that’s what we’re doing here, together, as a congregation, week-in-week out.
I want to close with an echo of the words we heard earlier from Victoria Safford: ‘Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of Hope… a different, sometimes lonely place, the place of truth-telling, about your own soul first of all and its condition. The place of resistance and defiance, the piece of ground from which you see the world both as it is and as it could be… and we stand there, beckoning and calling.’ Amen.
Reflection by Jane Blackall