Diane Abbott

Travellers wouldn’t be looking for accommodation though, which is where that sign would be displayed (mostly).

I don’t know what Diane Abbott was thinking, putting that response out without making sure her meaning was crystal clear.

@MrsBennetsPoorNerves to me you appear quite patronising, and lack some perspective. The world is a huge place and by asserting your privilege no matter where you might be in the world is one of the reasons why discrimination in its many forms is still around in the UK. The media is partly to blame. Many black people in Africa would have not a clue what you're talking about, have no interest in the West or being in the West and live happy lives without having to worry about bigotry and difference. That's what I mean.

What annoys me is some people are using the Abbott incident to score points. It is rich from Conservatives trying to attack Labour to be a party of racists when they have people like Johnson who was racist to many groups of people but still got elected as PM. Racism unfortunately exists in all parties. The same people online are also the same people when other groups of people e.g. Muslims face Islamophobic attacks say things like "Islam is not a race" or that "it is made up and it is rational to fear and hate Islam." We also do see continuing suffering particularly to black women with quotes like "aggressive" "playing the race card" "slavery was a long time ago why are you bringing it up" "don't race bait" etc...

All forms of discrimination/racism etc should be called out I am glad she was suspended. But some people do have agendas e.g. making it a right vs left issue or this vs that when it should be called out for what it is.

I meant in the 50s and 60s which were referred to. I think they are viewed separately now but tended to get lumped together back then but that might be where I grew up.

I still thought the common sign was No Blacks No Irish No Dogs. On googling it that is what comes up lots, I just tried it, and the travellers much less so.

High time she was booted out, absolute embarrassment to the party

@Flowerly
''Why do you assume that pointing out the (huge) issues with the LP means that one must automatically vote Tory? It's a very bizarre mindset.''

Because you are being disingenuous.

This is about Abbot, not with the Labour Party itself.

The fact that you are making this about the whole of labour rather than criticising her as an individual smacks of Tory propaganda.

That's not his finest hour is it.

Or she is not a member of the right ethnicity.

Neither am I apparently eh MNHQ?

@Abhannmor

Making racist comments is not " freedom
Of Speech" neither is supporting it. You're complicit. Congratulations.

Race vs ethnicity is just semantics. Most genocides in history have been based upon ethnic or religious differences rather than differences in skin colour e.g. the Bosnian genocide, Rwandan genocide. It really bothers me when people try to minimise discrimination based on ethnicity/culture and imply it's not worth paying attention to. To compare the oppression and poverty that Traveller people in this country face with prejudice against red hair is unhelpful and nobody benefits when you try to play the Oppression Olympics game.

Have you ever spent a day walking around London as a black man.

No? Thought not.

This shouldn’t be a competition as to who has it worse.
Maybe there is an argument to say that not all Jewish or traveller people appear to be so at first glance and in some instances you wouldn’t know what someone was unless they told you. This is obviously different from non white people and therefore all non-white people could be immediately discriminated against without them saying anything.

BTW I’m not for a minute suggesting that anyone should have to hide what they are just saying that it’s not always obvious and that this is a point of difference.

Yes. What of it ? Got a problem with free speech?

Baddiel has done gypsy/pikey comments as well.

It's ironic that Baddiel is annoyed when he did the exact same - belittling any victims of the Holocaust who weren't Jewish. They are both too enmeshed in US identity politics and removed from the systemic racism and prejudice in the UK.
Abbott was wrong. Baddiel was wrong. The GRT communities experienced and still experience horrendous racism and prejudice - that is still enshrined in law in the UK.

It might be regional variations. In my area travellers and Irish are definitely viewed as 2 distinct but equally hated groups.

What a thread. It's certainly reinforced my view that some ethnicities feel they get a free pass to make racist comments (old fashioned racism, not Critical Race Theory racism). And Diane Abbott has just found out that that is not the case.

Yes he hasn't really got the moral high ground has he.

I don't understand why Labour keep her around. She's a MASSIVE liability for them, basically Manna from Heaven for the Tory media. They need to get rid, put up another candidate in Tower Hamlets, they might lose a few votes there but Abbott loses them votes all over the country.

I thought it was No Blacks, No Irish, No dogs? Weren't travellers usually lumped in with Irish?

I think it's about time . Every time that women opens her mouth nothing but utter crap comes out .she's an embarrassment.

I think the history of slavery goes back a lot further than that.

@Abhannmor what zionist lobby?! As a Jewish woman, in the UK, I experienced anti-semitic hate crimes growing up, as did the rest of my family on multiple occasions. It was not simply 'prejudice' as Diane Abbot suggests; there is security in all Jewish schools and nurseries (on all spectrums of religious observance) not because we experience some 'prejudice' against us, but because there are real, credible, documented, ongoing threats against my community. Calling out Diane Abbot's minimisation of what Jews (and Irish and Traveller people) face has nothing to do with a 'zionist lobby'. Why are you a) conflating Jews and Zionists, and b) assuming that if JEWS speak out against anti-semitism, it must be driven by some all powerful 'zionist lobby'?

I would say it felt a little bit worse than 'prejudice' when at a London pro-palestinian rally some supporters shouted "Fuck the JEWS. Fuck their daughters. Fuck their mothers. Rape their daughters", and JEWS were targeted and attacked. Jew does not equal zionist. Something you, as they did, clearly fail to grasp.

What’s a bit scary to me is that clearly her views are so acceptable to the people she associates with that she felt it was okay to put them in writing and publish them.

When serious allegations starting being levelled at the Labour Party and Corbyn, I was really sceptical as I assumed in this day and age antisemitism was so unacceptable it couldn’t be possible at such an institutional level. Clearly, I was very wrong.

It must be very scary for British Jewish people.

Are there really people on here defending this bloody woman?!

😱 that's horrendous, absolutely awful. I'm so sorry you were subjected to that.