Community, Service

"Who are the community leaders for white people?" used to be a rhetorical question posed by members of ethnic minorities who could not see why they needed these self-appointed spokesmen, and by white people who could not see why their neighbours should have them. They were both making the same argument. It was correct, as it still is.

Yet this week, even the Today programme, no less, has called the organisers of the anti-migrant protests "community leaders". And you had better believe that these things were organised. Some of us have been politically active for a very long time. We know how meticulously anything spontaneous has to be prepared, and prepared for.

So the question has been answered. The community leaders for white people are Britain First, Patriotic Alternative, the Homeland Party, and Company, Limited In Intellect. They have said so, and without asking who or what they were, even the most exalted of media have taken them entirely at their word. This is how it always works.

After all, who else is there? The ostensibly High Tory Sir John Hayes, who wants schools and hospitals to fly the Flags even though they did not have flagpoles, since they were located neither in the French Republic nor in the United States of America?

Or Zack Polanski, who imagines that "Most working-class people who are truly working-class don't own a car at all", recalling Cyril Smith's defection from Labour to the Liberals because the appearance of cars outside the council houses of Rochdale had led him to conclude that the whole Socialism malarkey had gone too far?

If there must be community leaders, then better faith actors need to step up. Not exclusively, but not least, to reassert their community members' equal British citizenship by presenting themselves to them at the ballot box, challenging rival claimants to do likewise.