Letters | 11 August 2016

The hate is real

Sir: It is clearly an exaggeration to call Britain a bigoted country (‘We are not a hateful nation’, 6 August), but downplaying the recent wave of xenophobic and racist incidents across the UK as ‘somebody shouting something nasty on a bus’ is equally wrong. Verbal abuse in itself is worthy of condemnation, yet the character of recorded harassment is actually much more serious. In the past few weeks, Poles in this country were shocked by vulgar graffiti (West London; Hertfordshire; Portsmouth) and hurtful leaflets (Cambridgeshire) urging them to ‘go home’ in most offensive ways possible, while a family in Plymouth fell victim to an arson attack. The Polish community is a mixture of the descendants of wartime and anti-communist exiles and those who decided to move to the UK after Poland joined the EU, who all equally contribute to modern Britain’s culture, society, and economy. Now many of them feel unwelcome.