Is British history racist – or to be proud of? How we frame that defines our future

Since when did the Daily Mail start to welcome refugees? If you were taken aback by its front page this week – applauding Britons who wanted to take in Ukrainians – you were not alone. Wasn’t this the same paper that had scaremongered about refugees for decades?

It’s easy to point out the hypocrisy. It’s tempting to put that front page alongside the literally hundreds that have poured scorn on refugees displaced by war. I would have done it myself. In fact, I have done stuff like this on social media dozens of times. The problem is, now I’m not so sure it helps the people affected.

Britain has a very chequered history towards refugees. During the Second World War, this country refused to take in Jewish adults – even as they clearly faced genocide – and instead devised a scheme to take in just children (the “Kindertransport”). As journalist Jonathan Freedland pointed out, this wasn’t exactly “proof of a ‘noble tradition’ of welcoming refugees.”

But Britain also took in a quarter of a million refugees from Belgium during the First World War. The same country also took in 20,000 Vietnamese refugees in the 70s. We took in refugees kicked out by Idi Amin in Uganda, and those displaced by the Bosnian genocide. According to the Refugee Council, we have also taken in refugees from Libya, Somalia, Myanmar, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and over 20,000 refugees from Syria. We could have done more – a lot more – but this isn’t nothing.

The truth is that Britain has a mixed history towards refugees and immigrants. As a child of Indian immigrants – a product of this country’s imperialism in South Asia – I’m very aware of this history. My mum frequently told me chilling stories about the abuse they faced as newly-arrived children. But how we frame our history paints our future.

If Britain has always been racist, closed and unwelcome, it is easier to justify we stay that way. On the other hand, if Britain has a long, proud history of ethnic diversity and waves of immigration, it is easier to say we should carry on that tradition – and there is some research to back this up. Sunder Katwala from the think tank British Future found that support for helping refugees rose substantially after showing them a video lauding Britain’s “proud 70 year tradition” of doing just this.

Plus, British attitudes towards immigration aren’t as hostile as some think. The proportion of Britons who want a cut in the number of immigrants coming over has consistently fallen over the last decade.

In 2015, 77 per cent of Brits wanted to see numbers reduced. By 2022, that had declined to 42 per cent, even as the Brexit debate raged across the country. Britons have been generous towards non-European refugees too. In 2016, at the height of the Syrian refugee crisis, seven out of 10 Britons approved of accepting Syrian refugees. More recently, there was overwhelming support for taking in Afghan refugees and Hongkonger refugees. We aren’t as racist as some on Twitter think.

If we say that Britain has always been racist and closed to outsiders, we risk turning refugees into political footballs. We can crow: “Look at these hypocritical right-wingers!” but we need to forge a political consensus around the idea that helping refugees is important, not use them to score points.

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This applies to issues beyond immigration and racism. The Conservative Party has hardly been a champion on climate change in recent decades. And yet, in the last two years, it has grappled with the issue far better than most expected. Rather than criticising them for this U-turn, it makes more sense to encourage them to go further.

Research shows that to convince sceptical right-wingers on climate change, it is far better to emphasise how right-wing values (conservation, localism, energy security) align with the issue, than shaming them for not doing enough or changing their minds.

Appealing to people’s better nature is infinitely more helpful than condemning them. No one likes being called a hypocrite either. In psychology, it’s called cognitive dissonance. When that happens, we either justify it (this is different) or deny it (I’ve always been this way). We rarely admit our mistakes and change our ways – something that’s even less likely if our opponent is sneering at us to boot.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve fallen into this trap a million times. The adversarial nature of Twitter encourages us to fire off a tweet pointing out the hypocrisy of our political opponents. Admittedly, I was just hungry for retweets. But did it help anyone? It certainly didn’t refugees.

Appealing to someone’s better nature is always more successful than criticising them. If settlement of Ukrainian refugees is seen as a success, we can build on this narrative and encourage the continuation of this proud tradition. Wouldn’t that be a more positive result for everyone?