Mayor under attack
Sir: Both as an anti-racist and a Jew I think it a mistake to employ comparison with Nazi crimes as a form of abuse or to equate all reactionary politics or racism with the Nazis. Such currents should be opposed on their own terms without resort to the Holocaust as a shock shortcut.
However, I feel growing outrage at the wave of hypocrisy against Ken Livingstone. He has a longstanding record of opposing racism and fascism; he has put local authority resources into anti-racist and anti-fascist events and has been vilified by the press for 'waste' for doing so; he has consistently opposed the vilification of refugees.
When my father's parents fled the Pale of Russia (as did Oliver Finegold's) the press vilified Jews as beggars, thieves, scroungers and carriers of disease. When my mother arrived from Hungary in the 1930s the Mail and the Express attacked 'refuJews', calling for their exclusion. One quote from the Mail, 23 March 1938 should suffice: 'To be ruled by misguided sentimentalism would be disastrous. Once it was known that Britain offered sanctuary to all who cared to come, the floodgates would be opened and we would be inundated by thousands seeking a home.'
The call by the Jewish Board of Deputies and Holocaust survivors for Livingstone's 'apology' is tragically misplaced. When did refugees past or present ever receive an apology from the newspapers now demanding Livingstone acknowledge his 'offence'?
The agenda here is to tarnish and diminish genuine anti-racism in order to give those who pander to prejudice a freer rein.
ROB FERGUSON
London E17
*I know I'm a fine one to talk of perspective when this is my three-hundred and forty-seventh post (give or take) on the same overblown molehill of a subject.
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