We were once content to direct our bile at innocent individuals and label them witches’ so that we could inflict all manner of horrors on them. Individuals would be identified for a range of trivial reasons and persecuted. After all if someone else is the target then you are safe. Don’t speak up or you will be next. A modest estimate is that tens of thousands of innocent people were killed in this way. Turns out there is no such thing as witches but we never learned any lessons, did we? To think that whole communities would stand back and allow atrocities to be committed in their name because a few powerful and influential individuals were so absorbed with their own self importance, so twisted by power that it suited their purpose. We wouldn’t do that now. Would we?
And yet we continue to marginalise, stigmatise and breed resentment. We fuel distrust and fan the flames of hate. We do it to immigrants in this country just as we have done it to foreign countries in the past. We build fear in the community so we can justify our outrageous bigoted behaviour. We have waged war on Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan. In fact, we have destroyed communities throughout the Middle East and the continent of Africa. The U.K. empire has been constructing and manipulating wars for centuries. And when the armoury is full we unleash death and destruction on the demonised targets of our own construct. Sometimes the barbaric action conceals the reason. Just like burning witches.
Ronnie Cowan MP 