My point is simply this. ‘The problem’ does not lie with ‘non-Whites’ (I use John B’s term here) and their ability to ‘co-exist’, but with how the idea of liberalism is used in modern society. Liberalism never seems to interfere but always shapes the underlying agenda. As stated in my letter, ‘liberalism and its core value of freedom of speech is not anti-racist’. When it suits – and I was referencing the example of the recent protests round the Birmingham Rep’s staging of the play, Behzti – ‘non-White’ communities are routinely hurled the ‘liberal’ argument that their protests are anti ‘freedom of speech’, and as such are deemed to be narrow-minded and hypercritical. Liberalism and its key tenet, ‘freedom of speech’, is used here as a tool to position ‘non-Whites’ as cultural outsiders, and as such, is racially-coded. What we need to ask, is who has the power within our society to lay claim to ‘being liberal’ and how is liberalism used?

In relation to my use of the word ‘black’: I have only ever used this term in my work to reference those of African, Caribbean and South Asian descent – and do not use it to include ‘Arab, East Asian, Romany, Irish and anyone else we’ve forgotten about’. The term ‘black’ although not without its limitations and degrees of non-identification, developed from a set of anti-racist struggles that gave rise to it within a British political context about two decades ago.

There are of course good principled reasons for people’s reactions to the different cases. But you can sort of see how a recently arrived Martian might conclude that the key difference was that we liberals and democrats behaved a bit differently when it was our ox that was being gored.

Or rather, he said that while he felt that it was true at the time he wrote it, the subsequent Irish economic miracle has rendered it meaningless.