A Pressing Matter
This weekend our road in Totnes held a wonderful event. For the third year in a row, the apple press was barrowed out of our street Share Garage for our annual apple pressing. The sun shone and the apples were abundant. They were the best yet. The instant the scratted apples were placed in the press, the juice flowed. All ages were there but it was the youngsters who jumped in to get the first taste of the heavenly juice whilst boards of apple choppers filled a long table on the drive of one of the houses. Happy, neighbourly chatter filled the air. An idyllic scene. It was Totnes at its best.
Hate Speech
As I emptied a scratted load of apples into the press, I caught a tale a young woman was relating about an experience that had shocked her. Her mother and their visitors from abroad were in the middle of Totnes High Street when a woman on the other side of the road screamed, “Go home you fucking Pakis!” and threw a bottle towards them which shattered just a couple feet away from my startled neighbours. I woke up thinking about this incident this morning. I remembered the woman telling the story, whose country this is in every way a country can be yours, saying that in all her years of living in London nothing like this had ever happened. She went on,” … people are being given the licence now to do things like this.”
Community
A few days later, I told a woman from Surrey about our street apple press and what a great communal, annual event it is. Her response was “…very Totnesian.” It is. I feel privileged to live where I live where a community as diverse as our street comes together over its apple harvest.
A couple of months ago, there were the massively successful Totnes Fringe and Sky Rise festivals. As part of the fringe, I ran the Respect weekend at the beautiful and community-run Leechwell Gardens. Mutual respect is the stuff of community, the glue that binds our diversity. Respect for each other and for the world that provides for us in every way.
No complacency
So, when I hear of neighbours being subjected to a violent and ignorant (there was nobody from Pakistan anywhere near the incident) racist attack in our town, I feel the need to say something about it. Community is not a given. It’s a quality of relationship that requires attention and care. This necessarily involves inclusion. Exclusion leads to division. We are living in times where exclusion is being exploited as a political tool and minorities of any visibility are suffering increased abuse.
Totnes is a lovely bubble of a place but we can’t afford to bury our heads in Totnesian sand. These isolated moments of hate are insidious and given licence, they will grow; even here in our organic, fair trade little haven by the Dart.
Respect is not just for a weekend festival. It’s all year, for ever and for everyone.
But people can waltz around continually in Totnes with Palestinian flags. The flag of a ‘country’ that voted in a genocidal terrorist origination: Hamas. The sheer hypocrisy of the self-righteous ‘wokes’.
A lot of assumptions. I have not waved a Palestinian flag in Totnes. I do not approve of Hamas or Netanyahu. I have valued friends who are Palestinians and Israelis. I hope that both will be able to live in peace.
That aside, I can’t see how it’s self- righteous to advocate respect in our town for one’s neighbours and not use abusive language. My assumption was that respect for others is a basis of cohesive and functional community. If that assumption makes me “woke” – whatever that means – then I must be. It doesn’t make me self-righteous though.
As long as ‘respect for our neighbours’ doesn’t shut down concerned debate about the impact of mass immigration (government supported or plainly illegal) from very different cultures on this country. The concern, after all, of the vast majority of the British population.Or shouting ‘fascist’ and ‘far right’ at everybody who opposes this immigration, or, indeed, who also supports the right of Israel to exist and defend itself.
And you’re right. People now feel they have been given the freedom to make racist remarks quite freely and we must join together to oppose that appalling behaviour.
Couldn’t agree more.