Why are broadcasters still legitimising Farage as a voice on immigrants?

By Positive Action in Housing

In recent days, Nigel Farage has used national platforms to target Glasgow’s multilingual children and to stoke fears about immigrant communities.

Scotland’s First Minister has already described Farage’s remarks about Glasgow’s children as “quite simply racist”. The Prime Minister has called him “a toxic, divisive disgrace” who is trying to tear communities apart.

At the same time, a growing number of former pupils and a teacher from his old school, Dulwich College, have come forward with detailed accounts of racist and antisemitic behaviour. They describe a pattern of harassment of Black and Jewish children. They include Yinka Bankole who says he felt compelled to speak out.

These are not anonymous social media rumours, they are named testimonies, published after careful investigation by national media, and they are deeply concerning.

Recent national polling shows that almost half of respondents believe Nigel Farage is racist, and that a similar proportion view his party as generally racist. The concern is no longer confined to anti-racism campaigners. Taken together, these deeply concerning investigations and polls form a serious public record about Farage’s conduct and views on race.

Given this, a simple question now faces mainstream broadcasters. Why is a figure with this publicly reported, deeply concerning track record on race and antisemitism still being presented as a neutral voice on immigration and on the children of migrant and refugee families?

When radio and television stations invite him to discuss “culture”, “integration” or “English as a second language”, they are not hosting a balanced debate. They are offering a powerful platform to a man who is under serious, detailed and deeply concerning allegations of racism and antisemitism, whose political project depends on inflaming fear of immigrants.

Schools, minority communities and the children of refugees and asylum seekers are left to absorb the consequences. They are the ones who deal with the racist bullying, the playground taunts, the graffiti and the harassment that follow when attacks like these are normalised as just another opinion. Have no doubt that Nigel Farage’s racially charged attacks on children of colour and on those from refugee and immigrant families will be felt mentally and physically in school playgrounds across the city by many Glasgow schoolchildren.

It is telling that more than 1400 Glaswegian schoolchildren speak Gaelic as a first language, yet they are not the target of his outrage. Gaelic–peaking children are overwhelmingly white. This exposes that his attack is not about language, it is about race.

For Scotland’s First Minister, John Swinney, publicly naming this for what it is, “quite simply racist” carries essential weight. His intervention signals that children cannot be dehumanised for political gain and that the state has a duty to safeguard them from racially charged hostility.

Racially coded phrases and words that pretend at neutrality but clearly are designed to portray people of colour, refugees and migrants as a negative in our society have to be exposed and called out. We have to hold the line. Migration is what Scotland is made of going back hundreds of years.

Responding to Nigel Farage’s claim that Glasgow’s multilingual pupils are “not diversity” and instead represent the “cultural smashing” of the city, Robina Qureshi, CEO, said: “To every multilingual child in Glasgow and beyond, we say bravo. The evidence is clear that growing up with more than one language is linked with cognitive strengths in attention, flexibility and problem solving. We need more multilingual children, not less. And don’t take notice of the bigotry and prejudice of grown adults who should know better but clearly do not.

“No child should be used as a political punching bag. Farage’s attack on Glasgow’s multilingual pupils is a coded attack on the children of people of colour and of refugee or immigrant backgrounds. It is harmful and dangerous.

“Speaking more than one language is a huge advantage. Targeting migrant children, in a climate where racist abuse is already a daily reality for many, is another deliberate dog whistle and a disgrace.

“Farage is also mired in fresh controversy over detailed allegations from former classmates and a teacher that he used racist and antisemitic language throughout his school years.

“Farage played this game with Brexit by stoking fear of immigrants and he is doing it again. His racially coded attacks on Glasgow schoolchildren follow a well-worn pattern. He is not getting away with it this time: it is time for decent people of all colours to unite and push back on his racially coded and dangerous rhetoric.”

Broadcasters and regulators cannot treat this as a private matter between Farage and his accusers. They have duties of care. They have obligations not to promote hatred. They need to explain, publicly, why a figure with this track record is still treated as a go-to pundit on immigrants, rather than as a political actor whose record on race is in serious question.

Positive Action in Housing is an independent anti-racist homelessness and human rights charity based in Glasgow. Each year we support over 4,300 refugee, migrant and minority ethnic families facing destitution, homelessness and racist harassment.

We see directly how hostile rhetoric against immigrants and their children turns into bullying, fear and exclusion in classrooms, workplaces and neighbourhoods.

As a charity, we have a legitimate role in speaking out when public discourse harms, or risks harming, the people we exist to support.

We will be writing to senior editors and to Ofcom to ask how these decisions are being made, and what safeguards are in place for the communities and children who have to live with the fallout. We urge our supporters to raise these concerns too.

Positive Action in Housing is a Scottish refugee homelessness and human rights charity based in Glasgow. Through our Room for Refugees programme—the UK’s longest-running refugee hosting scheme—we provide safe shelter for refugees and asylum seekers in crisis, including Palestinians.  https://www.paih.org

Image: Nigel Farage .https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nigel_Farage_(32766369000).jpg Source: Nigel Farage . Author: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.