Ken Livingstone has warned that the “toxic climate” of racism against Muslims is a threat to all our basic freedoms.
In a call for delegates to the upcoming challenging racism and Islamophobia conference, the former London mayor writes:
The economic downturn and deepest cuts to public services in decades will not only do enormous harm to our society. It is also creating fertile conditions for reactionary ideas to thrive.
The English Defence League (EDL) wants “to intimidate all Muslims and denigrate Islam – a religion followed by more than a billion people”.
This racism has dark echoes of the past when “fascist thugs marched against Jews and their places of worship in the 1930s”.
Livingstone called on antiracists to challenge this scapegoating and defend “the values of freedom of thought, conscience, religion and cultural expression which allow us all to live our lives as we wish”.
Conference details
Book your place for the One Society Many Cultures conference, Saturday 11 December, 10am–6pm, Mary Ward House, 7 Tavistock Place, London, WC1H 9SN