A few weeks ago, over 50 prominent Labour MPs, peers and trade union leaders joined Muslim and Jewish leaders in signing a statement to “Stand Up to Trump, Stand Up to Racism” and appealing to others to join us. Demonstrations are planned in London and Glasgow and other European capitals on UN Anti-Racism Day (18 March).
This is now more urgent after the killings at a Canadian mosque (Report, 31 January) and the burning down of a mosque in Texas which followed President Trump’s incendiary ban targeting Muslims entering the US
Every rightwing figure and organisation is rejoicing at the prospect of President Trump. The shameful list stretches from Marine Le Pen and the Front National in France, Geert Wilders in Holland, Norbert Hofer in Austria, rightwing leaders in Poland and Hungary to most of the Republican party and the Ku Klux Klan. In Britain Nigel Farage and Ukip are at the head of the Trump bandwagon with Theresa May and the Tories not far behind.
Racism – whether Islamophobia, or antisemitism, relentless scapegoating of migrants and refugees, the disregard for black lives or, shockingly, blatant belief in white supremacy – is growing significantly. Racial attacks and other hate crimes are worryingly on the rise. In addition, Trump’s election is encouraging and legitimising a backlash against women’s and LGBT+ rights – hard won over the past half century – not to mention the devastating prospect of climate change.
Well over a million people have signed the online petition calling on Theresa May to withdraw the invitation to President Trump to visit the UK. We call on everyone of goodwill – Muslim and non-Muslim alike – to join the campaign.
Peter Hain
Labour, House of Lords
• Some of your correspondents claiming “Double standards on Trump’s state visit” (Letters, 31 January) rather miss the point by crying “hypocrisy”. It may be true that some of those who signed the petition against Trump’s state visit – and who demonstrated en masse against his travel ban – have not protested against similar human rights abuses committed by other nations. But now these (mainly young) people have been provoked by the actions of the most powerful leader of the capitalist world, is the best response to berate them, or to educate them? Those of us who have spent much of our lives protesting against tyranny wherever it appears should be delighted to see such a mass response. We need to build this movement, share our experience and knowledge, and help connect the dots for those who are newly engaged in political action.
Professor Helen Colley
Honorary professorial research fellow, Institute of Education, University of Manchester
• Less than one-60th of the UK population has signed a petition against a state visit by Donald Trump; this is the vocal minority. The only way to find out what the British people really think is to have a referendum. Last time that happened things didn’t go too well for the liberal left who found that they were out of touch with the feelings of a sizeable portion of the population.
Andy Brown
Derby
• Despite a cross-party consensus that the US travel ban is “divisive, discriminatory and wrong”, we still despise the Tories. And they still ridicule us. Despite a “petition of the outraged” being massively outnumbered by a snap poll (over 30% approve of the travel ban), we still insist we speak for the nation (even though the petition responses are so overtly London centric). And despite the US knowing more about practical democracy than the rest of the world put together, we still believe we know best (at a time when the Labour party is in meltdown).
Surely, if we reduce ourselves to a party of flag-burners and placard-protesters, and continue to ignore the fair and reasonable forces of family self-interest, we will cede the protection of working people to others. One-nation fairness ought not to be an impossible balance.
At the end of the day the smartest political party is the one with the best arguments (and therefore the one with the most seats).
Mike Allott
Chandler’s Ford, Hampshire
• “We should promote democracy and human rights in Russia,” writes Paul Mason (We need a Dump Trump foreign policy – otherwise the UK faces catastrophe, G2, 31 January). We also need to offer strong and public moral support to those American citizens promoting democracy and human rights in the US. I refer to the dire need to restore full, constitutional voting rights to all American citizens, by restoring the Voting Rights Act 1965 to the condition it was in before being gutted by the US supreme court in its judgment of Shelby County v Holder (2013). The scale of “voter suppression” in the recent US general election has gone almost unreported in the UK. It’s about time we woke up to the retreat of democracy in that country.
David Whalley
Macclesfield, Cheshire
• I am confused by the logic of we have to invite President Trump because we have invited worse in the past. Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, perhaps.
Chris George
Seaford, East Sussex
• To temper Trump and to reverse the rise of the extreme right in Europe will not just require the “popular resistance” demanded by Owen Jones (Opinion, 31 January), but also a popular economic alternative. Donald Trump and the likes of Marine Le Pen know exactly what they and the majority want: less immigration and more protection of domestic jobs. Indeed, Trump is correct in his view that “Free trade’s no good” for the US. What most leaders fail to yet understand is that the same is true for all countries.
Trump is therefore right to have an “America first” approach to trade, but wrong to be a one-sided protectionist who still wants to export but not to import if it displaces US jobs. To avoid this rerun of the 30s when countries protected their own borders while trying to export to others will requires a new kind of “progressive protectionism” for all countries, one that reduces global trade and shifts the emphasis to protecting and rebuilding national economies and having managed rather than large scale migration.
Since Trump came to power there have been a lot of loose parallels made with Hitler, but the one thing they do have in common is they offered to their electorates what was seen as a solution to the all pervasive insecurity felt by their voters. Progressives need to concentrate not just on demonstrations which quickly lose momentum, but instead work out how to provide a sense of economic security for the majority before history repeats itself.
Colin Hines
(Author, Progressive Protectionism)
East Twickenham, Middlesex
• I agree with Owen Jones that the Women’s March that followed the inauguration, and the huge worldwide demonstrations against the banning of citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries entering the US, offer hope for those wishing to undermine Trumpism. But the very fact that so many people are demonstrating and indeed are free to demonstrate – many of them inside the US itself – should remind us that in contrast to any other world power, America, for all its faults, is still the only country that the free world trusts to safeguard the values that it holds so dear. Contrast this with Saudi Arabia, where nobody wastes their time demonstrating against that country’s refusal to allow Christians to openly practise their religion or to even enter the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
Stan Labovitch
Windsor, Berkshire
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