When I was in infant school,
a polish family moved onto our Council estate.
Their young lad started at our school.

He was a complete novelty being a foreigner..
..and we'd piss ourselves laughing every time we heard, or tried to say his hilarious unpronounceable foreign name..

Our estate also had a Welshman and an Irish family..

Some might have said that was too many foreigners already...???

Many years later I saw my first black person walking on the estate.
He was a postman.
That got neighbours talking...

"Mother was a local girl,
she went with an American GI stationed here during the war - the scandal of it..
..but he's a nice postie all considering his colour.."

From then on he was the novelty friendly black postie.
Can't have been many other towns in Scrumpyshire that had one to compete with ours..

Then word got round, the next nearest bigger town had just got themselves an Indian doctor and his entire family..

Locals were split between those who feared being swamped and taken over like Enoch was warning;
and others who thought them an exotic new status symbol..

Back then our estate was solidly working class, most families working in the factory our homes were built to service.
Where my dad was a shop steward.

The factory Social club was the hub of the estate..

Our extended family was solidly Labour voters.
I'd presume most of the rest of the estate was as well.

But let's have no illusions about white working class labour voting ordinary folks.
On the whole I remember my estate being reactionary, small-minded, and thuggish..
As soon as I was selected for grammar school, I became shunned by my old school pals, and marked as a target..

.. and we were one of the better class estates in the area.
The respectable working class..

But I'm no historian or sociologist,
You'll just have to give my anecdotal account the benefit of the doubt
(Or not, I won't bother arguing)..

That was half a century ago.

When I was a teenager, Rock against racism and the anti-na@zi league put my head straight;
and rescued me from the institutionalized racist norm of my council estate childhood
But I was in a minority of college-educated local kids,
becoming politicised by radical ideas propagated via London music scene magazines...

It was only when I was 18 or 21,
that my mum summoned the courage to break it to me that I was part Jewish by blood.
The family had kept their dark secret from me all along that my Dunkirk hero grandad wasn't my real grandad after all.
I no longer had his DNA strengthening my body and being.
My real grandad who I'd never met was in fact a young feckless Jewish flash Harry who'd taken a fancy to my grandmother..

Mum implored me to keep the secret to myself..

Complex reasons too far back in time to ever fathom out...???

Fast forward a few years,
thatcher started selling off the council houses to factory workers on the estate, bribery for their votes..

Then the factory was suddenly closed down and everybody made redundant.
And those who could not keep up their mortgages, homeless..
Their homes sold on to all kinds of incomers to the estate.

Fortunately, my parent's political principles would not let them buy our council house.
Which is why I'm sat typing in it now,
as I am clearing it out in readiness to hand back to the housing association.
To hopefully continue for as long as possible as good quality social housing for a new young family...

These days, I honestly believe my old estate gradually became less overtly racist,
for various reasons throughout all the turmoil of the 1980s and forwards.
The estate is now more rainbow colours with black and mixed-race families.
Most of the town takeaways are kebabs pizzas Indian and Chinese.
It was a novelty when a proper fish and chip shop opened recently.
(Owned by a local Asian businessman).

Evidence of some genuine progress.

But I think it's safe to assume the build up to brexit has to a significant extent brought largely dormant incipient racism back to the foreground...???

Perfect hunting ground for far-right recruiters and their pernicious social media propaganda.

My cousins use racist language in casual conversation.
Total lack of awareness.
They are not thick or thuggish people.
Put it down to to environmental upbringing and quality of education...???

One of the west country's prominent far-right YouTube influencers lives in our vicinity...!!!

After I moved back from London to Scrumpyshire 20 years ago, I drank regularly in a local old established workingmens club.
I was seen as just another white middle-aged bloke who looked normal, liked his cider, and kept quietly to himself.
So their views were not withheld within my ear shot.

Times had changed, and they must have been aware that they could no longer make racist comments openly in public about Black, Asian and other Ethnic communities without risking getting into trouble.

So the Polish were a godsend to them.
Poles are white, so it was ok, they were fair game for endless old fashioned bitter racist hatred diatribes..

It was too easy to see direct links with the newspapers they were reading and the bitter dislike for Poles taking all our building jobs and rented accommodation..

Cue the onset of brexitering...


That is why Tommy Robinson and his ilk have been so successful..

And something the Labour party needs to take on board when profiling potential candidates for ex labour voting old traditional working class constituencies...

That is the obvious reason why I ask where are the lefty "Tommy Robinsons"...???

Not fukwit racist extremists, but solid working class motivated and inspiring blokes and blokettes who locals can identify with..

So in conclusion, bollocks to all the bollocks..

Let's keep our sense of humour and not fall into pointless stupid divisive bickering amongst ourselves..

We need our strength for fighting tories and their even worse allies...!!!