'History repeats itself'

Minority ethnic Britons on fears of far-right rise

- Chris Osuh Community affairs correspondent

I remember my father marching against the National Front in the 1970s. It felt like it was a minority. The majority of people are still decent. But now, the far right seems legitimised and popular," Dabinderjit Singh, a retired senior civil servant, said.

Singh was reacting to Tommy Robinson's 13 September far-right "Unite the Kingdom" rally, which drew 110,000 people to London.

The rally's attenders say they have a variety of concerns. But for some minority ethnic Britons, Saturday's scenes were reminiscent of far-right marches 50 years ago.

Hetticia McIntosh, 70, from Manchester, was returning from holiday via Heathrow when she was warned by a WhatsApp "community safety alert" to "avoid travelling into London ... especially if you are from an ethnic minority".

For McIntosh, an ex-servicewoman, the times evoke memories of her east London, Windrush generation youth - when "we lived through the skinheads" and racial abuse was daubed on walls. She knows where racist sentiment can lead. The Home Office inexplicably refused to renew her and her husband's British passports in the 1970s and 1980s, forcing them to leave the country for St Lucia for decades.

Amid talk of "remigration" from the far right, hardening attitudes to legal migration in Westminster and a government struggling to convey a positive message of unity, she now fears that "another Windrush scandal" could happen.