The week just passed has been a bizarre and indeed sad one.

At the start of the week, I was expecting to speak at an event yesterday which was a celebration and recognition of work which had been carried out to address issues of racial discrimination in the delivery of care at home services. The project had involved members of staff from the Black and Minority Ethnic and Asian community, indeed mainly international colleagues, and had focused on addressing some of the discriminatory behaviour which unfortunately they had been experiencing in the local community.

The project was a wonderful example and evidence of what can happen when anxiety is addressed, when myths are dismissed and when collaboration and communication happen.

I should have been at the launch and celebration event for this work yesterday and at the start of the week I was preparing a brief address on why addressing race and ethnic discrimination was and is a part of compassionate care and support. The event was cancelled because some of those frontline BAME staff were anxious about coming to a venue where because of rumours of a potential demonstration nearby they were worried about their personal safety.

The past week has witnessed some appalling disturbing and distressing scenes in England and Northern Ireland. At a distance we have watched our television screens as right-wing activists and others have sought to destroy communities and have burnt down libraries, looted shops and businesses, and engaged in vandalism and hooliganism against people and property. It has been evidence of the worst of our humanity.

In Scotland we have seen some local incidents but have not thankfully witnessed any such scenes but what we have experienced is a growing level of fear and anxiety amongst our colleagues from the BAME communities who deliver care at home and social care and those who live in our communities. So instead of preparing a talk to celebrate the ability of people to come together and to address discrimination head on, what I was doing this week was writing support material for those who are delivering care support and trying to support staff who are anxious and fearful for their own safety.

I was brought up in Glasgow at a time in the late 60s in the 1970s during which the presence and prevalence of open racial discrimination was all too evident. I went to a school which had a huge diversity and knew at second hand the experience of abuse and violence which my fellow classmates of colour had to endure. I thought those days had left us. I had hoped that alongside many others that the malign mistreatment of an individual because of their skin colour, their culture or their religion was something we had largely dismissed into the pages of history. However, I have known also of the sad reality that racism is only slightly under the skin within our Scottish communities. I have written in the past about my own experience as someone working in equality and diversity over two decades of how over the years I was being met with increasing hostility and rejection rather than increased acceptance and inclusion.

It would appear that every generation has to learn the lessons of tolerance, compassion and kindness to neighbour. It is clear that every generation regardless of location has to learn the insights of what living and being in community is all about.

Addressing the racist undertones of Scottish society requires robust moral, ethical and political leadership at all levels, whether in a social care organisation where the issues are not dismissed but taken seriously, or political leadership where tone and language is sensitive to the way in which those with ill-intent will use fear and anxiety to stoke hatred and suspicion.

I have commented a lot about the way in which the amazing women and men who have come to Scotland to work in social care from all parts of the world have contributed to enabling us to become the communities, society and the nation we are and would want to be. They have enriched our humanity by the giftedness of their compassionate care and expertise.

I have commented on so many occasions how the toxic hostile culture created by the previous UK Government has fed into a negative narrative around immigration, not least their decision to refuse to grant visas to the dependents of those who are coming to Scotland under a social care visa. My fears about the impact of such a toxic negative and hostile response to immigration were affirmed in the last few days.

The Home Office published data this past week to show that there had been a sharp reduction in UK visa applications from care workers. There was a year-on-year drop of 82% with 2,900 people applying for a health and social care visa in July. Whilst some have suggested this is because recruitment has reached its peak, the experience of many Scottish providers is that we are still in very real need of the pipeline of international recruitment because of the particular demographics of Scotland with our ageing population and ageing workforce.

Those of us working in social care are very concerned that the toxic and hostile experience created by the previous UK Government around immigration, and the fear created by the events of the last week, will both serve to reduce the number who might want to come to Scotland to join us in caring and give those already here cause for reflection.

Creating inclusive communities where all are welcomed, affirmed and given a place; where people are allowed indeed encouraged to celebrate their unique cultural and ethnic diversity does not just happen by accident. It has to be worked at, resourced and encouraged. Community is created it doesn’t fall from the sky.

In the weeks and months ahead, I hope we will all of us endeavour to work hard to reduce the fear and anxiety and increase the sense of affirmation and welcome to all across Scotland. I hope our new UK Government will walk the talk and dial down the negativity around immigration, and one way of showing that is to remove the obscenity of the dependents of social care staff not being granted a visa to join their partners and be family.

As regular readers to this blog know I often read poetry as a means of escape, and for illumination and insight and before this week had begun, I had decided to buy the latest book of poems ‘May Day’ by Jackie Kay who was made Scotland’s Makar or National Poet of Scotland in 2016.

She’s written an amazingly insightful new book of poems dealing in no small measure with the issue of bereavement and grief but over the years she’s also written about what it was like to be brought up in Scotland as a biracial child and one of mixed heritage; she’s reflected on the perversity of discrimination, the name calling, the bullying, the stone throwing, the denigration and dismissal which is the fruit of racism. So, as well as reading her beautiful new work I picked up some of her other older poems because I think they express the experience of so many today.

Scotland is not immune to hatred. We have our own shadows which lurk in the corners of our civic existence. Our communities have been riven and split apart by divides, both artificial and real. To suggest that we are somehow immune from the hate of the other is to deny that reality. But we are also a nation which can mirror the truthfulness of our connection one to the other, people whose humanity can become the vehicle of our togetherness.

I hope we are as a social care sector a community where the essence of compassion is lived out in inclusion, where the difference of another is the source of celebration, where the contribution of someone from a different culture and background is recognised as the enrichment of our whole experience and that together we are stronger.

I end this week with the beautiful affirming yet challenging work of Jackie Kay and her poem

My Grandmother

My grandmother is like a Scottish pine,
tall, straight-backed, proud and plentiful,
a fine head of hair, greying now
tied up in a loose bun.
Her face is ploughed land.
Her eyes shine rough as amethysts.
She wears a plaid shawl
of our clan with the zeal of an Amazon.
She is one of those women
burnt in her croft rather than moved off the land.
She comes from them, her snake’s skin.
She speaks Gaelic mostly, English only
when she has to, then it’s blasphemy.
My grandmother sits by the fire and swears
There’ll be no darkie baby in this house

My grandmother is a Scottish pine,
tall, straight-backed proud and plentiful,
her hair tied with pins in a ball of steel wool.
Her face is tight as ice
and her eyes are amethysts.

Copyright © Jackie Kay,
Bloodaxe Books, www.bloodaxebooks.com

Poem: My Grandmother by Jackie Kay – English 1 – NDLA

Photo by DJ Paine on Unsplash

Donald Macaskill