In 2026, remember this: Britain is much better than it was in so many ways. Don't swallow the right's lies | John Harris

"A couple of the more disruptive boys in the class put red laces in their Dr Martens, because someone had told them that was how you showed your support for the National Front. Jew was an everyday insult and the N-word was in regular circulation. There were no more than four or five non-white kids in the whole school: I can recall one Asian girl finding her art folder had been covered in racist abuse,"

"He wasn't: he looked at the ground and rushed away, full of the hurt he must have felt every day. This was what it was like in a Cheshire comprehensive school in the early-to-mid-1980s. Teenage racism was there in plain sight, and there was a scattering of people who seemed to take their prejudices presumably passed down from parents and elder siblings very seriously indeed."

Red laces in Dr Martens signaled support for the National Front among disruptive boys. 'Jew' and the N-word circulated routinely. Four or five non-white pupils faced repeated racist abuse; an Asian girl's art folder was defaced and a black boy was publicly taunted. A sixth-form counsellor used racist epithets, backed the National Front and aspired to be a policeman. The chant 'There ain't no black in the union jack/Get back, get back, get back' exemplified mainstream playground racism. Accusations about Nigel Farage's school behaviour have prompted many people to recall similarly overt schoolday racism and its enduring echoes.

Read at www.theguardian.com