Roma

Honeyball’s Weekly Round-Up

Labour Party

Tensions ran high this week after Gabor Vona, leader of far-right Hungarian political party Jobbik, came to the UK to speak at a central London rally.  Despite 14,000 signatures being added to a petition to Theresa May calling for Vona to be banned, the leader of Hungary’s third-party was eventually permitted to speak. In a letter to May London Assembly member and former Labour MP Andrew Dismore wrote, “I think it’s very important to send the message that we won’t have hatred spread on our streets”, and as I wrote for Shifting Grounds earlier in the week, I believe we should not have allowed him to come.

Jobbik’s visit to the UK was designed to woo the 50,000 Hungarians currently living here. With elections approaching, Vona – whose party have 43 seats in the parliament there – is looking to win the absentee votes of Hungarian ex-pats. Jobbik’s policies are highly controversial, echoing the language and rhetoric of Fascist movements in the 1930s and 1940s. Travellers and Jewish people come under particular attack: “The integration of gypsies has failed. In most cases, segregation would be the most effective way of educating these people,” Vona is on record as saying.

In the end Vona’s speech, which had been scheduled to be held in Holborn on Sunday, had to be relocated after Unite Against Fascism (UAF) gathered there and prevented his supporters from leaving the station. UAF’s Sabby Dhalu said Jobbik’s views “had no place in a modern society”, adding that “Wherever fascists have a presence, racist, antisemitic and Islamophobic attacks increase”. Vona eventually managed to find a platform in Hyde Park, where he spoke for around an hour, addressing the crowd in his native Hungarian.

It is easy to associate Jobbik with a strain of Fascistic Eastern European politics which has no equivalent here in the UK. The BNP, after all, is a faded force which has never won a single parliamentary seat, let alone 43, and the EDL appear to have lost support. Yet we must not be complacent. The widespread scaremongering over Christmas about a Roma ‘invasion’ is just one illustration of how, in straitened times, dangerous myths can gain traction. With the issue of Europe acting as a lightening rod, those who oppose the EU and want a more insular Britain often play into people’s worst fears.

Vona himself eschews the traditional left-right perspective on politics, saying “The true division is between those who want globalisation and those who do not”. Just as UKIP are seeking electoral success off the back of an unholy coalition of white collar Eurosceptic Tories and blue collar voters worried about immigration, Jobbik have garnered their support from both ends of the political spectrum.

This is not to compare UKIP with Jobbik – although it is worth noting the number of UKIP representatives who have flirted with right-wing politics – but rather to point out the danger of allowing populist narratives to take hold. In a European Election year those of us on the left must engage with voters who feel alienated by globalisation, and make a positive case for why Britain does better by working with its neighbours.

Earlier this week, meanwhile, the trial of footballers Franck Ribery and Karim Benzema began in France. The two players, who are accused of having sex with an Algerian-born prostitute while she was under 18, face prison sentences if found guilty. In a week where my prostitution report (which recommends the Swedish Model) went through the parliament, the Ribery-Benzema case illustrates the need for a change in how we tackle prostitution. The sad fact is that, had the woman in question been a year or so older, it would have been perfectly legal for two multimillionaire footballers in their late twenties to buy her body for sex.

We must fight hard to contest myths about the EU

Labour Party

The Daily Express provoked anger at the start of this week by wrongly claiming that the EU are attempting to bring in compulsory quotas for female Roma MPs at Westminster. The article quoted Ukip’s London MEP Gerard Batten, who called the supposed plans “politically incorrect nonsense”.

Batten is right – at least in his description of the story as ‘nonsense’. There is no truth whatsoever in the claims. I wrote a letter to the paper explaining this, and suggesting that the story was poorly researched and ideologically motivated.

The paper replied with their ‘evidence’ for the article. This turned out to consist of a single recommendation in a 98 page study by an academic. To portray a bullet-point in an academic piece as an impending edict from Brussels is misleading at best. A disclaimer in the report made it clear that the opinions it expressed did not “represent the official position of the European Parliament”, but this was overlooked.

Moreover, as the European Commission’s Mark English pointed out, the EU’s remit “does not include the power to intervene in how candidates for national elections are nominated.” So even if the EU had wanted traveller quotas for domestic governments, it has absolutely no power to legally enforce them.

In a week which has seen Ed Miliband and his father subjected to savage attacks by The Daily Mail, it was sad to see first hand the way the right-wing and Euro-sceptic press are able to bolster myths about the EU. It makes it all the more important, in the run up to the European Elections in May, that we contest these falsehoods and make a clear, positive argument for Europe.

“Tolerance within” Dr. Ban Ki-moon makes veiled attack on France

Labour Party

Speaking to Members of the European Parliament today UN Chief Dr. Ban Ki-moon raised the spectre of immigration in Europe. 

“As a friend of Europe, I share profound concerns,” he told MEPs, and went on to explain that the story of the 20th Century had been the narrative of winning peace in Europe, but now that the peace was won, the 21st century was about the struggle for “tolerance within”.  Dr. Ban then said that integration and equal opportunities for different cultures were never easy but they are profoundly important. People claiming to be liberal “accuse immigrants of violating European values”, but in actuality, the accusers were the violators themselves. 

Anyone who has been reading the news in recent months will know that these comments were squarely pointed at the French government and their recent actions towards the Roma.  These controversial and by all accounts illegal actions have led to Commissioner Reding likening Sarkozy’s Roma policy to the actions of the Nazis, and have prompted an investigation by the European Union in to their legality.  It may also have been inspired by Merkel’s very troubling remarks about multiculturalism.  It is almost too predictable that in times of economic turmoil people turn on those at the fringes of society, but I would certainly have hoped that we in Europe had learnt our lessons a long time ago.  Dr. Ki-moon’s comments were very welcome by a large section of the parliament today and I hope that both Sarkozy and Merkel will hear them.

Dr Ban’s theme was that the United Nations and the European Union were natural allies.  He discussed the various ways in which we can work together to make this a better world,  focusing on the Millennium Goals which he believes are in danger of slipping from us.  I was particularly encouraged by his declaration that the Global Strategy for women and children is his number one priority, stating that “the hardest to reach people in hardest to reach places” should remain the focus of the UNs energies.

Tories mealy-mouthed on Sarkozy’s Expulsion of Roma People

Labour Party

French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s expulsion of Roma people from France is utterly appalling. It is discriminatory and in breach of EU law. It also smacks of ethnic cleansing, not to mention reawakening memories of World War II atrocities. I and most other civilised Europeans wholeheartedly condemn Sarkozy’s actions. 

Tellingly, when the European Parliament debated this matter earlier in the week not one of the MEPs from Sarkozy’s own political party, the UMP, took the floor. 

 Equally telling, in the midst of condemnation of Sarkozy from the all the centre-left parties in the European Parliament, Tory MEP Timothy Kirkhope asked MEPs to wait until the Commission made a formal ruling on the legality of the measures. “Then we can make an informed judgement based on all the facts and decide how to focus on better integration of the Roma people, rather than pre-emptively condemn a fellow Member State”. 

I was truly shocked by this mealy-mouthed Conservative point of view.  It therefore came as no surprise when the ECR – European Conservative and Reformists – Group, the majority of whose members are British Tories, abstained on this resolution  which, amongst other things, deeply condemned the measures taken by the French authorities as well as by other Member States’ authorities targeting Roma and Travellers and providing for their expulsion, urging them to immediately suspend all expulsions of Roma while calling the Commission, the Council and Member States to intervene with the same request.

The resolution, voted in the plenary session of the European Parliament earlier today, was, in fact, carried with 337 MEPs in favour, 245 against and 51 (mainly ECR) abstentions.  This shows that , fortunately for everyone living in the European Union, the majority of MEPs are reasonable people with strong humanitarian instincts.