When 52 percent of Britons voted to leave the European Union on June 23, few may have expected that the vote would spark a right-wing movement and xenophobia. Five months later, the country’s immigrant community is faced with anti-immigration graffiti and derogatory comments.
This behavior shows a dangerous shift in the attitude of British citizens. With the refugee crisis plaguing Europe and right-wing parties gaining support throughout the continent, a rise in anti-immigration behavior could harm the country in the long run.
According to a report published by the European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance, the United Kingdom witnessed a significant increase in racial and religious hate crimes.
According to the report, there were 52,528 hate crimes recorded by the police in a one-year period between 2014 and 2015. Of those, 42,930 were race-based hate crimes, while 3,254 were based on religion. This shows an 18 percent increase from that same period between 2013 and 2014, with the largest increase–43 percent–found in religious hate crime.
However, there is also an issue with unreported hate crimes. The report cites a survey conducted by the Crime Survey for England and Wales, which found that there is an estimate of 222,000 hate crimes per year, 106,000 of which are driven by race. This, the document states, means that only one in four hate crimes are reported.
The report claims that hate crime is caused by hate speech, which has been steadily increasing in the past few years.
“ECRI considers hate speech particularly worrying not only because it is often a first step in the process towards actual violence but also because of the pernicious effects it has on those who are targeted emotionally and psychologically,” the report states.
As a result of this behavior, many immigrants–including the estimated 850,000 Polish immigrants who live in the United Kingdom–feel as if they are no longer welcome in the country.
Major publications, including The Washington Post, published stories about the growing hostilities. The article cited one incident in Cambridgeshire, East Anglia, where people distributed laminated cards with “Leave the EU/No more Polish vermin” written on them in English and Polish.
The ECRI also reported a high number of violent race-based hate crimes directed at the United Kingdom’s Muslim community. In one instance, an 82-year-old man was murdered on his way back from Friday prayers. In particular, the Muslim community in the United Kingdom is often accused of not integrating with the British values.
The report states that a lot of this behavior is caused by the politician’s rhetoric, especially when coming from members of the UK Independence Party who tend to speak out about immigration. When Bulgaria and Romania got their rights to visa-free travel within the European Union, politicians affiliated with UKIP and the Conservative Party claimed that people from those countries would “flood” and “invade” the U.K. labor force.
However, the response in hate crime is not even across all of United Kingdom. According to the referendum results, 62 percent of the Scottish electorate voted to remain in the European Union. Bernard Agrest, who spent his past year in the University of Edinburgh earning his master’s degree, admitted that while the country’s attitudes toward other races and religions remained largely unchanged, he did notice that the messages sent by the pro-Brexit groups were, at times, xenophobic, especially when it came to the Syrian refugees.
“The Syrian Refugee Crisis was also a tipping point,” Agrest said. “The leaders of the Brexit movement–Farage and Johnson–came up with an ad of a ‘breaking point’ for the country and it showed a line of refugees.”
Agrest added that the Brexit campaign as a whole was filled with inconsistencies.
“When you look at the leaders of the UKIP party … they really propped up a lot of sketchy statistics and facts to say how much the U.K. was losing by being part of the UK,” Agrest said in an interview.
Back in the days, people used to say that the sun never set on the British Empire. Its colonies spanned the entire globe, from the 13 American colonies to India and South Africa. It ruled over dominions and protectorates that spoke many languages and followed different cultures than Britain’s. In many of those places, the British have a dark past, from Boer concentration camps to the famines in India.
After all that violence, the British people are, once again, committing violent crimes against the people who immigrated into their country. Some of those people come from the countries that were previously colonized by the United Kingdom. Others, like Poles, came to United Kingdom to find a better future.
The United Kingdom is made up of multicultural countries that have welcomed foreign resident for decades. Now, when the economy is not doing as well as it should, groups and parties like UKIP decided to put the blame for the country’s situation on immigrants.
Immigrants, however, contribute to the economic success of the United Kingdom. The same people who face xenophobia on daily basis work as construction workers, plumbers, salespeople, technical workers and waitresses, along with other positions. They work the jobs that they are qualified for and live their lives alongside other British citizens in order to give back to the country that gave them a more financially secure life. It is wrong to blame the country’s economic problems on people who are simply trying to lead a better life.
Instead of blaming the immigrant communities for the United Kingdom’s economic standing, the U.K. government should work with its immigrant communities to improve the situation of the country as a whole.