Tesco's Racist Sign

"WE'RE WATCHING YOU. 

This store is working with police/other retailers to identify thieves."  

In Polish.  How classy.  This lovely sign has pride of place in my local Tesco store at Diss in Norfolk.  I consider it to be completely racist*

Let's talk this through.  It's not unusual to have information signs up in different languages where there's a large foreign speaking minority who will see them.  When you catch the ferry to Calais there are safety signs up in English, French, German, Dutch and Polish.  It's the whole reason the international system of road signs was designed: so that essential information doesn't have to be translated into multiple languages.  If you can't use a symbol though, I've absolutely no problem with this: it's unquestionably sensible.

Let's see whether Tesco thinks it's a good idea to provide essential information for the convenience of its Polish customers.  There are signs up for "Parent Parking", "Reycling", "Customer Service" and "Toilets" in and around the Diss store.  All of them are in English.  Not one of them is translated into anything.  There are all the special offers, the "Every Little Counts" advertising slogan - all of it in English.  There are even signs setting out rules, such as saying you can only park for 2 hours there - but they're only in English too.  Nope, the only sign they've bothered to put into Polish is the "WE'RE WATCHING YOU" one. 

Tesco Diss.  You're welcome, if you're not Polish

Tesco Twitter Intervenes

Is there a corresponding DO NOT STEAL sign in English? Yes, there is.  It's to one side and I had to look for it.  It was the Polish one that caught my eye.  It's right in your face where you walk in.  I tweeted Tesco about the issue on 19 July.  They said they understood why I thought it was wrong and said they'd speak to the branch manager.  Just to be clear, I've no problem with a sign in English.  Every other sign in the store is in English and it is the language of this country.  I doesn't single any particular national group out as being potential thieves.

The net result of this intervention is that a Latvian sign has now appeared too.  If you're in any doubt which nationalities are being singled out as being potential criminals, they've neatly written the language on the back so we're all aware.  How thoughtful.  Lovely handwriting too.

What's more - it gets better - since my complaint they've added a SECOND "We're watching you" sign in Polish and it's double size.  It has absolute pride of place in the store: it's impossible to enter without seeing it.  Look here on the central door that closes and opens.  The single English one is to its right on the fixed panel on the side.

Why is this so offensive? Well clearly two nationalities are being singled out as being suspected of potential criminal activity.  They are being greeted in a sign in their own language (a rarity in this country) that tells them they're being watched.  Polish families with children entering might be delighted to see their own language, only to realise they're being told that Tesco regards them as potential thieves.  Welcome to Britain.  Welcome to Tesco.

What's next - "DO NOT STEAL" signs in Romani to fulfill another nasty, negative racial stereotype?

Local Poles

Perhaps Tesco has a major problem with this demographic locally.  I seriously doubted it, even before I had a delve into the official statistics.

The last census revealed just 1.1% of the population of the whole of the East of England region was born in Poland.   Lithuania registers at 0.3% of the population and Latvia is so small as to not even make the top 15 table.   Together there are more people born in Germany and the US in the region than there are Poles.  In addition, the bigger Polish speaking communities are not in this part of Suffolk/Norfolk, but up in places closer to the Lincolnshire border.  The only Poles I've personally ever come across in this area are the phenomenally hard-working local hand car wash guys, who have put up a large England flag to try to fit in.

What we do have locally is another fellow EU community: the Portuguese of Thetford.  Wikipedia comments : "During the late 1990s, a slow trickle of Portuguese immigrants started to arrive in the town of Thetford, East Anglia.  By 2004, the media were suggesting that there may be as many as 6,000 Portuguese-speakers in the Thetford area, where there are many Portuguese cafés, restaurants, delicatessens, etc.  This figure would represent around 30% of the local population." 

I note there is no "WE ARE WATCHING YOU" sign in Portuguese in the store, if this is all simply about providing information signs for second-language speakers.

Might there be justification?

However, what if the miniscule Polish and Latvian communities are however single-handed and disproportionately responsible for a outbreak of shoplifting in this area?

Well, let's look at the national crime statistics for the area.  It seems that the East of England has one of the lowest regional crime rates in the entire country.   Life expectancy is among the highest in the UK and regional unemployment is one of the lowest.  My local village newsletter recorded a total of four crimes dealt with by the police in the whole of the last month.  FOUR.  It's not exactly the Bronx round here.

Okay, I don't live in the metropolis of Diss (5000 inhabitants!) so let's see their exact local crime figures based on Tesco's postcode.  Here we have it - a total of 82 crimes reported in May 2014.   One third were anti-social crimes (31.7%) and one fifth (20.7%) were domestic burglaries.  Shoplifting made up 3.6% of the total for last month: a grand total of 3 reported instances of it.  Bear in mind there are three supermarkets close to one another that total is split between: Tesco, Coop/Somerfield and Morrisons.

So we have 3 reports of shoplifting a month, typically, split across three Diss supermarkets (offenders' nationalities unknown), and Tesco responds with these in your face signs that give the impression there is a petty crime spree caused by two specific nationalities: the Poles and the Latvians.  It is utterly disproportionate, misleading, offensive, unclassy and I'm afraid, just plain nasty.

Moreover, even if there were a major problem with shoplifting that was borne out by figures, and these criminals were proven to belong to one or two national groups, it still absolutely wouldn't be appropriate to single them out in this way.  Hire more security staff, but do not label all the other members of the group as potential criminals to the world at large in this way.   It's the equivalent of saying that because you've had a problem with certain individuals, you're okay labelling every one of them by shoving up the "no Irish, no Blacks, no Dogs" signs of yesteryear.  Several, or even many members of a particular societal group might objectively give you problems, but in 2014 it is just not acceptable to go on to label all members of that group with a highly negative label because of this.  There's a simple name for it: racism.

And here we all are wondering how UKIP manages to persuade people the country is sinking under the weight of criminal East European immigrants.  I'm a lawyer who bothered to check up on what the actual local statistics are.  I wonder how many other people will just see the sign and just assume there must be a Polish crime wave locally because the sign is there.  It's inflammatory and perpetuates a slur against a national group (actually, two national groups in this case).  It's racial stereotyping, it breeds prejudice, and it's inherently wrong.

Shame on Tesco

Shame on you Tesco Diss.  Shame on you Tesco nationally for not stopping this.

Aside from the moral position, you've also not thought for a moment how this will offend and piss of not just law abiding Polish and Latvian customers but everyone else too.  This is idiotically avoidable bad PR that your business should be seeking to avoid.  Instead, after a complaint, you've decided to make the situation worse.






* A couple of people have questioned whether it's possible to be "racist" towards Poles.  Simple answer, yes.  At the highest level, national origins are expressly covered in the 1966 United Nations International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.  In terms of UK legislation, the definition of a racial group is "A group of persons defined by reference to race, colour, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origins." If you want an example of the legislation applying in an anti-Polish case of May 2014, please see here.





 

Germany's Jews - 75 years after Reichskristallnacht

I was walking through an U-Bahn station in Berlin last week and I saw a copy of "Jüdische Allgemeine" (you can translate it as "Jewish Weekly" if you like) on a completely regular subway newsstand.  It's a far cry from the situation almost exactly 75 years ago in Germany, when on 9 November 1938 the state organised pogrom known as Reichskristallnacht took place.  I don't think too many people are aware of the position (or even existence!) of the Jewish community in Germany today.  The combination of this anniversary and my seeing that paper have therefore prompted this post.

Winding the Clock Back

Let's wind the clock back, a little bit further than Reichskristallnacht, and go back 80 years, to 1933.  The German Jewish community stood at 505,000 at the time of the June 1933 census, a few months after the Nazis had come into power.

It's often not realised quite how small a percentage of the entire German population that the Jews made up: just 0.75%.  That's not vastly different to the percentage of Jews in the UK today, which at 292,000 is estimated to be around 0.47% of the general population.  In both cases, these are really small numbers and it's worth reflecting on that.  The Nazis were obsessed with the "Jewish Question" and the influence of this tiny group of people on German society.

The German Jewish population in the years leading up to 1933 was small, then, but it was also highly integrated, generally secure and confident.  It had been in Germany for 1600 years: the country has one of the longest and richest Jewish traditions and history in Europe.  The traditional language of many European Jews was Yiddish: a High German dialect.  Many American Jews of course still carry German surnames: the Morgensterns, Silberbergs and Rosenthals came from Germany, via Poland or Russia, and on to the US.

There's no doubt that when most people think of the words German and Jewish they inevitably start at the end, with the unique and murderous catastrophe of the holocaust.  If you want a different perspective, I can highly recommend Amos Elon's "The Pity of it All" which beautifully describes the 150 year history of the Jews in Germany from 1743 to 1933.  Elon writes about a period of successful integration and individual achievement that produced a genuine Golden Age that peaked shortly before the coming to power of the Nazis.  He does not see what came next as inevitable by any means, and rejects the view that the German anti-Semitism which began with Martin Luther's vicious Jew-hating tracts had to end up in Auschwitz.  He convincingly sets out how the fate of Germany's Jews was uncertain until the end.  It could have gone differently.

Reichskristallnacht

Jews rapidly left Germany as the Nazis' grip on power intensified.  The boycotts, racial laws and increased persecution led to a flood of people leaving.  Over 300,000 left during the 30s, which meant that "only" around 36% of Germany's original Jewish population was eventually murdered in the holocaust.  Other countries, such as the Netherlands, who were not able to flee in the same way because by then the War had started, suffered up to 90% murder rates of their Jewish populations.

A major impetus for German Jews' leaving the country was the pogrom of 9 November 1938.  It's that anniversary that is approaching: 75 years ago.   In August 1938 Germany had announced that all residence permits of foreigners would be cancelled.  These included a sizeable number of Polish born Jews, who were faced with going back to Poland.  Germany forcibly expelled 12,000 of them on 28 October 1938 and shipped them off to the border in one night.  At the border, 8000 were refused entry to Poland.  They were made to live in temporary camps in the bitter cold and rain in no-man's land.

17 year old Herschel: an unlikely killer

Two of the deportees were Sendel and Riva Grynszpan, whose 17 year old son, Herschel, was living in Paris.  In desperation at their fate, on 7 November Herschel rang the bell of the German embassy to France.  The person who answered the door was an aristocratic career diplomat, Ernst vom Rath, who happened to be under investigation by the Gestapo for his anti-Nazi sympathies.  Herschel shot him repeatedly.  On 9 November he died. 

In response to the assassination, Goebbels sent out his famous message to all local Nazi party leaders from the Altes Rathaus in Munich that "the Führer has decided that... demonstrations should not be prepared or organized by the party, but insofar as they erupt spontaneously, they are not to be hampered."  The message was clear that local party branches should attack German Jewish targets.  They did so with a passion: over 1000 synagogues were burnt down across the country (many of them ancient, beautiful buildings), 7000 Jewish businesses were attacked, 91 Jews were beaten to death, and 30,000 were rounded up and sent to concentration camps (many temporarily).  The foreign press looked on in horror: the Times wrote of attacks on defenceless, innocent people and the disgrace that had blackened Germany's name.  It was a modern day, organised pogrom without equal.

The location of the former Heidelberg Synagogue

The name "Kristallnacht" refers to the tonnes of smashed glass of the windows of synagogues and Jewish businesses.  Across Germany today, from the largest city to the smallest town you will find plaques marking the location of the destroyed synagogues.  In places like the pretty university town of Heidelberg the synagogue foundation stones have been preserved to preserve the indelible shame of that night.    To add insult to injury, the German Jewish community was fined 1 Billion Reichsmark (£3.5 billion at today's prices, or £17,500 per person) for the clean-up operation.  That night was what many historians regard as the beginning of the holocaust.  The indescribably brutal fate of the six million is well-known. 

Today's German Jewish Community

Immediately after the War, it's a little known fact that many Jews from across Europe took refuge in Germany.  This is perhaps counter-intuitive, but it's because the American and British occupied zones were safe havens where, unlike the hostility and sometimes violence that survivors faced when they returned home, they could pick up the fragments of their lives and plan their futures.

In Kielce, in Poland, for example, 42 Jewish holocaust survivors were stoned to death in a river on 4 July 1946, charged with the abduction of a Christian boy and medieval blood libel allegations.  For the few surviving Polish Jews this was the end of their future in the country, and they moved to the protection of the Allies in Germany, before heading off to new lives in the US or Palestine.

The swell in Jewish numbers in Germany was therefore temporary.  By 1989 the Jewish community of West Germany stood at around 30,000 - about 1/20th the size it had been in 1933.  In East Germany there were only a few hundred: most took the rare opportunity of emigration to Israel in the 1970s when it was offered to them.  Both communities were introspective, private, elderly and tended to be very private.

Then came Reunification in 1990, and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1992.  Germany opened its doors to Jewish immigration from the East once more.  In 2003 the Social Democratic chancellor, Schröder, signed an important and highly symbolic agreement with the German Jewish Central Council that placed Judaism on the same semi-established, elevated status as the Catholic and Lutheran Churches in Germany.  Also in 2003, ten new rabbis were ordained in Berlin: the first since WW2.  In 2006, the new rabbinical seminary in Potsdam ordained three reform rabbis: the first since 1942. 

Russian Jews with Yiddish surnames, whose families had started off in the Rhineland, and who had moved eastwards in the early Middle Ages, started to come "home".  The trickle became a flood.  The renaissance in Jewish life as a result, right across Germany, has been remarkable.  In a mere twenty years the Jewish population has grown around 300% to around 200,000.  There are 120,000 active, practising members of the faith.  Germany's is the fastest growing Jewish population in the world.  There's an annual net emigration from Israel to Germany, mainly because Germany is seen as a much safer place to live.  The irony of that fact is striking. 

Synagogues are opening up across the country, not just in the major urban centres of Berlin and Munich.  Hamelin, of Pied Piper fame, a small, sleepy town in northern central Germany, very close to where I grew up, has just opened the first new reform synagogue to be built in the country since well before the War.  Its Jewish population in 1933 was 153 members.  Now it stands at 200, which is the same level as at its heyday in 1880.  The new synagogue is on the exact location of the one destroyed on 9 November 1938.

The Ohel Jakob "New Main Synagogue" in Munich

The Jewish population of Munich is similarly back up at pre-Third Reich levels.  I visited one of the synagogues there with Harriet, an English Orthodox friend, a few years back.  She was blown away by the number of people attending on an ordinary Thursday night, and her reaction was a quiet and reflective "ultimately they didn't win, did they?"  Remember, this was in Munich, the capital of the Nazi movement: Hitler's favourite city.  I always take people to visit the magnificent New Synagogue there, which was opened on 9 November 2006.  The roof represents the tents used during the biblical flight from Egypt, and also reminds us of the original Temple in Jerusalem.  It is flooded with light inside.

Of course, not all is rosy.  There are xenophobic and anti-Semitic far-right attacks in Germany, as elsewhere in the world.  The difference is that here they automatically grab the world headlines, because people are so sensitive about them.  Attacks on synagogues or Jewish graveyards in France, a worryingly regular occurrence, don't have the same press impact, so don't make the headlines in quite the same way as any in Germany might.

Long May It Continue

Germany now has the third largest Jewish community in Europe again (after France and the UK).  Nothing can replace those who were murdered, or "make good" the harm of those 12 terrible years of the Third Reich.  But the fact that Jews are once again choosing to live in Germany (after all, they really don't have to) because it is considered a good, safe, stable place to bring up their children makes me, as a half-German, enormously proud.

This 9 November I shall, along with millions of others, reflect on the events of 75 years ago and what was to follow.  I shall also think about the present and the future of Jews in Germany, and how positive things once again look.  It is a testament to the efforts of politicians and ordinary people in the Federal Republic that we have reached this point.  Long, long may it continue.

Immigration

We've seen a wave of people across the country voting for UKIP recently.  Political commentators are reading all sorts into this and the potential impact on government policy.  Some Tories are calling for action both on an EU referendum before the next general election, and further tightening up of immigration.  Labour has repeatedly said it will "listen to voters' concerns" in this area, fearing that if seeks to argue against this, rather than pander to these prejudices it will lose out at the ballot box.

My response to this that I like immigration.  I think immigration is absolutely essential to the health of a society.  I love seeing people who are of different skin colours and races and hearing those who speak different languages.  They bring variety, they bring different ideas, perspectives and they enrich our country.  Fear of the "other" is to me the most primitive emotion.  In essence it goes back to cave people: "you're not in my tribe, keep out".  I don't believe babies are born with hatred of others in them.  I believe they are taught it, and the more varied and cosmopolitan the range of influences they are exposed to, the less likely xenophobia and prejudice will be.

A nation of immigrants: more so than most in the world

I can argue about history, and how Britain is a nation of immigrants.  We all know full well that wave after wave of new people has settled here since well before Roman times to create over centuries the identity we have today.  Saxons, Jutes, Vikings, Normans, Hugenots, Jews... Each group came in turn and was eventually accepted into British society.  My father's family came from Holland in the late seventeenth century.  I'm sure they were shunned as "weird foreigners" with a funny name and religion who didn't fit in when they settled in Sussex.  My mother is from Germany.  She certainly had a massive helping of prejudice, both from strangers and from my English family, when she moved here in 1961.  Now by virtue of some magical privilege of time, people don't see our family as foreigners and my family has the right to vote, if we wanted, for the likes of UKIP, in order to demand that others are shut out.  It's worth remembering the simple fact that the family heritage of virtually every UKIP supporter will be the same: we are all immigrants to this country.

I can argue about economics, and how both skilled and unskilled labour are a huge benefit to us.  So many successful economies have realised this, from the Netherlands and Prussia inviting in the religiously persecuted in the 17th and 18th centuries to huge benefit, through to more recent "immigration nations" such as the United States and Australia.  Skilled workers are always focused on, but unskilled ones, who are prepared to work hard doing jobs that others feel are below them, are important too.  They do vital service jobs, often for low wages, pay taxes and spend money just like everyone else.  Blaming them for our economic situation is simplistic, stupid and spiteful.  If our unemployment is too high or our growth is too low, let's look at the way we as a society, and successive governments have run our own economy, rather than the knee-jerk reaction of blaming immigrants for our woes.

I can argue about the enrichment of our culture.  People of different backgrounds bring different cuisine, music, art and other hugely broad-ranging influences.  How many anti-immigration supporters' favourite food is a curry, kebab or Chinese takeaway; and how many love downing an East European beer?  I spent my first 12 years abroad and it's not tricky for me to remember just how limited the choice of anything non-British was in the average supermarket in 1983.  It was absolutely striking.  There has been a sea-change in this time, unnoticed, I suspect, by most people.  Modern day Britain is an absolute cultural melting-pot and I adore the very real variety this brings in my day to day life.

Hitler loathed Vienna.  It was too Slavic, too Jewish, too multicultural and too cosmopolitan for his tastes.  When he moved to Munich he declared "Finally, a German city".  After the War, (by now ethnically cleansed) Vienna was by all accounts a stiflingly dull place.  It's how I remember the city in the early 80s on my first visits.  Then, after 1989, it again became the cultural crossroads it always was, and it's a far, far more pleasant and interesting place for it.  For a regular visitor such as me, the change in 20 years is absolutely striking.  It is a brilliant embodiment of how immigration can enrich and change a place in a very short space of time.

I can argue on the grounds of basic humanity.  I don't see what gives me the right to regard all the good fortune I have, by accident of birth, as being my right to the exclusion of all others.  There are people who suffer terrible misfortune and persecution in their own countries: it was the Russian pogroms that brought the wave of Jewish immigration here in the early 19th century despite the spite and hatred spewed out at the time by the right-wing press.  It is the right thing to do for us to take in people who face hardship elsewhere, I am proud to be part of a society that agrees, and I think we will also benefit in the long run.

Ultimately though, UKIP seems to have tapped into a simple emotional, basic response.  Their supporters just don't like immigration.  If they have the right to argue on this simple, basic level, so shall I.  I like immigration.  We have always had it, and long may it continue.  The more of us who agree and who state this clearly, the better.  It is our society, and our country, and we deserve to be heard too. 

70s German slogan: All people are foreigners. Almost everywhere.