Gary Younge's Blog

Esther Addley on why the union jack and St George’s flags are appearing on lamp-posts, bridges and roundabouts in England. Gary Younge explains why not everyone is happy

Nosheen Iqbal travelled back to her home town of Peterborough. A small city an hour from London, it’s a classic political bellwether seat and, like so many cities, towns and villages in England this month, it is suddenly covered in flags: the union jack and St George’s cross.

She spoke to people in the city about what they thought of it. Quickly the conversation turned to immigration. “People coming over, it’s a bit too free-flowing … I think it’s been a long time coming,” one man told her. Another woman explained that while she liked both the union jack and St George’s cross, the current crop was being put up “by a lot of racist thugs that are totally misinformed by the media”.

Former Guardian columnist Gary Younge reflects on the pressures faced by minority journalists to focus on certain types of stories, and how they can break free of ‘the pigeonhole'

“We have people who can write about this,” the journalist Gary Younge remembers an editor once telling him about a column he had written on Bosnia. “Can you add an ethnic sensibility to this?”

For Younge, being one of the few black columnists in the British press has not been easy; rather, it has been a constant struggle, he explains, to avoid being pigeonholed as a journalist only ever interested in race. A struggle, he tells Helen Pidd, that would have been easier if he hadn’t also been very interested in race as well.

Former Guardian columnist Gary Younge reflects on the pressures faced by minority journalists to focus on certain types of stories, and how they can break free of ‘the pigeonhole'

“We have people who can write about this,” the journalist Gary Younge remembers an editor once telling him about a column he had written on Bosnia. “Can you add an ethnic sensibility to this?”

For Younge, being one of the few black columnists in the British press has not been easy; rather, it has been a constant struggle, he explains, to avoid being pigeonholed as a journalist only ever interested in race. A struggle, he tells Helen Pidd, that would have been easier if he hadn’t also been very interested in race as well.

The heroism of soldiers from India, Africa and the Caribbean is too often airbrushed, as is the struggle of those who resisted colonial powers

On 8 May 1945, as the allies rejoiced at Germany’s unconditional surrender, some local people in the market town of Sétif in Algeria gathered not to celebrate their freedom but to demand it, carrying Algerian flags and placards calling for independence from France. The French police opened fire, unleashing a spiral of violence resulting in a notorious massacre. Algerian independence militants retaliated by killing about 100 settlers and wounding hundreds more over the next five days. Similar disturbances erupted in the nearby village of Guelma. The colonisers responded with brutal disproportionality – bombing small villages, shelling the area from the coast and running amok, inflicting collective punishment. Official estimates for the number of Algerians killed vary widely, ranging from about 8,000 from some French historians to 45,000 from the Algerian government.

This was no isolated incident. There were similar protests that month against French colonial rule in Syria and Lebanon; six weeks later came a general strike in British-ruled Nigeria; six weeks after that, Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta declared Indonesia’s independence from the Dutch, sparking a vicious four-year war; two weeks later, Ho Chi Minh announced Vietnam’s independence, which would not be fully achieved for another three decades. VE Day might have marked the cessation of fighting and atrocities in Europe, but it did not signal the end of Europe fighting or committing atrocities.

The heroism of soldiers from India, Africa and the Caribbean is too often airbrushed, as is the struggle of those who resisted colonial powers

On 8 May 1945, as the allies rejoiced at Germany’s unconditional surrender, some local people in the market town of Sétif in Algeria gathered not to celebrate their freedom but to demand it, carrying Algerian flags and placards calling for independence from France. The French police opened fire, unleashing a spiral of violence resulting in a notorious massacre. Algerian independence militants retaliated by killing about 100 settlers and wounding hundreds more over the next five days. Similar disturbances erupted in the nearby village of Guelma. The colonisers responded with brutal disproportionality – bombing small villages, shelling the area from the coast and running amok, inflicting collective punishment. Official estimates for the number of Algerians killed vary widely, ranging from about 8,000 from some French historians to 45,000 from the Algerian government.

This was no isolated incident. There were similar protests that month against French colonial rule in Syria and Lebanon; six weeks later came a general strike in British-ruled Nigeria; six weeks after that, Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta declared Indonesia’s independence from the Dutch, sparking a vicious four-year war; two weeks later, Ho Chi Minh announced Vietnam’s independence from France, which would not be fully achieved for another three decades. VE Day might have marked the cessation of fighting and atrocities in Europe, but it did not signal the end of Europe fighting or committing atrocities.

As the Long Read turns 10 we are raiding the archives to bring you a favourite piece from each year since 2014, with new introductions from the authors.

This week from 2015: After 12 years in the US, Gary Younge is preparing to depart – as the country’s racial frictions seem certain to spark another summer of conflict. By Gary Younge

The MP is used to facing down hostility, from Tory attacks to racist bullying. But this year’s ‘humiliating’ treatment by her own party was different. She talks breakthroughs, battles and not backing down

• Politics, dating, media intrusion – read an extract from Diane Abbott’s new book

In Diane Abbott’s Westminster office, alongside a picture of her with Jesse Jackson and the framed front page of The Voice from 1987 declaring “A New Era” with a picture of Abbott, Bernie Grant, Paul Boateng and Keith Vaz – the four newly elected Black MPs – there are a number of large empty packing boxes. Abbott points at them and laughs. “Ordinarily I wouldn’t bother. But when they called the election we didn’t know whether I would be allowed to stand, so I had to get ready just in case,” she says.

It has been a heady few months for Abbott. So much so, in fact, that the memoir she has written, A Woman Like Me, is already out of date. It includes the story about Tory donor Frank Hester, who had said Abbott made him “want to hate all Black women” and that she “should be shot”, which happened in March. “At first I couldn’t take in his words,” she writes. “It was a clear incitement to violence.” But the book was finished and at the printers before her intense battle with the Labour leadership to keep her seat and her consequent elevation to mother of the House, the honorific title bestowed on the female MP with the longest uninterrupted service.

This goes far beyond a Tory donor’s racist comments about Diane Abbott, and Labour’s opportunistic response

“The very serious function of racism is distraction,” Toni Morrison argued in a lecture in Portland, Oregon, in 1975. “It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend 20 years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says that you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says that you have no kingdoms, and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”

So, in the furore over Frank Hester’s comments, let us not be distracted by the question of whether they were racist. Let us not demean ourselves by explaining why the statement “you see Diane Abbott on the TV and … you just want to hate all Black women” is racist. We do not need to explain that this is not a question of rudeness. Racism is an issue of power and equality, not politeness and etiquette. Those who don’t get it, won’t get it.

Gary Younge is a sociology professor at the University of Manchester. His most recent book is Dispatches from the Diaspora: from Nelson Mandela to Black Lives Matter

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please .

The artist has finally chosen to address the tragedy – with Requiem, a vast work depicting a flaming building, fleeing souls and an ocean of tears. He explains why he placed an artist who died at its centre

In May 2017 Chris Ofili was at a gathering on the Lido in Venice, following the opening of an exhibition, when he was told a young artist wanted to meet him. Ofili, 54, cuts a lean, muscular figure, but with more salt than pepper in his hair, he is feeling his years professionally. “When you get to this age you’re a little bit disconnected from the younger group,” he says. “And I thought, ‘That’s really nice. Somebody would actually formally like to meet me.’”

In the near distance, he saw 24-year-old Khadija Saye, whose work was being exhibited at the Biennale with other emerging artists as part of the Diaspora Pavilion. “She had this really radiant presence,” recalls Ofili. “There was an undeniably genuine, honest presence about her. And I said yeah, of course I want to meet her. We did a brief selfie and maybe exchanged a few words. But it was enough to realise, ‘That’s a good person there and I hope she makes really good art, because that combination can be quite special.’”

Slavery is a central and indisputable fact of the nation’s past. But our failure to remember what really happened is more than mere forgetfulness

Slightly tucked away from Manchester’s main thoroughfares, in a quiet square that bears his name, there is a statue of Abraham Lincoln – as it happens, just outside the windows of the Guardian’s offices in the city where the newspaper was founded nearly 202 years ago.

Manchester acquired the sculpture by chance. It was meant to appear outside the Houses of Parliament in London, as a symbol of Anglo-American cooperation – until the American donors were riven by fighting over its “weird and deformed” depiction of the famously homely president, and a more “heroic” statue was sent in its stead.