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Opinion

Community unity is all too often drowned out by the bile of the right-wing and far-right

02 Jul 2025 5 minute read
Muslim woman – Image: Canva

Peredur Owen Griffiths MS

Earlier this year I attended a special event at the Pill Millennium Centre in Newport. Called ‘Working Together to Make Equality a Reality’ the event was also a celebration of 40 years of championing equality by the charity Race Equality First (REF).

Over the course of a morning session, we heard about the impact that the charity is having in our communities.

There was also a Q&A by Jane Mudd, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Gwent. Dr Kasim Ramzan from Muslim Doctors Cymru also delivered a Q&A session in the afternoon.

I was particularly captured during the session by Active Lives who are a recently established group dedicated to empowering and connecting Muslim women of all ages in and around the city.

Gathered together, these women delivered a poem which focused on the unity and common purpose that binds us all, regardless of religion, skin colour or background.

The lines within the poem that resonated most were:

‘Accept that our blood is like yours, it is red,

‘Let’s sit together and let’s break bread,

‘Our faith is our pillar of peace and light,

‘With every heart, our souls unite,

‘In every heartbeat, we walk side by side,

‘With love as our compass, and hope as our guide,

‘Peace is our purpose, in every embrace,

‘Active Lives shine bright, a beacon of grace.’

Moving

It was a particularly moving experience to see these Muslim women standing before the audience in the hall, delivering a heartfelt message of community cohesion that sums up the Wales that I and my party Plaid Cymru aspire to create.

Unfortunately, we are not there yet. Here in Wales, we may have escaped the kind of abhorrent violence that was seen in the riots across the border last summer, but there is still racism in our communities.

There are also people who are actively trying to exacerbate racist sentiments and deepen division.

Apart from the very young children in the room, every person of colour at the REF event put their hands up when asked if they had experienced racism.

We know from research conducted by the Children’s Commissioner for Wales that bullying for BAME children in our country is a real concern.

The statistics for Wales do not make for great reading: there was a 26% increase in religiously motivated hate crimes in the year ending March 2023 in Wales and 3,727 reported race hate crimes in Wales in the year ending March 2023.

Despite the prejudice many in the room have faced throughout the years, people of colour were still prepared to come together in the name of unity.

I found that heartening and humbling in equal measure. It is this beacon of hope that all right-minded people, all progressives, all people who want to live in an equal society, must take heart from and seize upon.

Tacking to the right – which is what the Labour Party under Starmer have done in the wake of the rise of Reform – is a fundamental mistake.

I believe this is one of the reasons why Plaid Cymru are doing well in recent polls and Labour are haemorrhaging support.

The truth is, Newport has long been a multi-cultural society and none more so than Pill (or Pillgwenlly to give it its full name) where many of the workers that came from abroad to work in the docks ended up staying and raising a family.

Welsh

Many of these people acknowledge their heritage but call themselves Welsh…and rightly so. I have always believed that anyone moving to Wales to settle down has the right to call themselves Welsh if they so wish.

The grifters seeking to create hatred and set one group of people against another, cannot undo that rich history of community cohesion that we have had in parts of our country for generations.

This was brought home at the last Plaid Cymru Spring Conference where I sponsored an event that celebrated the contribution of Welsh Muslims to civic society.

During that session we had talks from Abyd Quinn-Aziz who is a lecturer in social work and chair of Plaid Cymru BME, Dr Mohammad Alhadj Ali who is a consultant physician and chair of the Syrian Welsh Society as well as the afore mentioned Dr Kasim Ramzan.

During the event, the trio spoke of the projects and efforts they have been involved in to better civic society in Wales. Mr Quinn-Aziz spoke about the centuries long history of Muslims in Wales as well as his decades of work in social work.

Dr Ali talked about his pioneering youth work with refugees in Cardiff to resettle them and promote in the a love of Wales and its culture.

Finally, Dr Ramzan outlined his amazing voluntary work during the Covid pandemic to counter vaccine myths and increase immunisation among ethnic minorities.

At a time when there are dark forces gathering, aided and abetted by some pernicious bad actors with deep pockets and unprecedented avenues in which to spout their hatred, we should focus on the valuable contribution that people of all backgrounds make to our society.

Community unity is a story that is all too often drowned out by the bile that comes from right-wing and far-right quarters.

It is also vital that we resist racism whenever it rears its ugly head, as well as focus on the unity we want to grow here in Wales.


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Fi yn unig
Fi yn unig
8 days ago

Diolch Peredur. Reading this article felt like I was writing it myself with my heart pouring through the pen onto the page. The poem is a piece of rare beauty, kindness and human solidarity. Such a thing is so touching and immensely important at this time in our history and following the Jon Alcock article yesterday titled ‘The valleys need grafters, not grifters’, we need written pieces like this daily under the heading ‘Thought for the day’. In fact, they are essential as the machinery needed to combat the hurricane of hate battering all of us from all directions.

Chris Hale
Chris Hale
8 days ago

Good article. It is old fashioned to say it, but we need to work together and not allow those with money and power to sow divisions around falsehoods.

Rational and polite and reasonable debate rather than lies and abuse.

Amir
Amir
8 days ago

Beautiful article, poem and aspirational. I pray we become a country indifferent to colour and celebrate our differences rather than making them a division.

Fi yn unig
Fi yn unig
8 days ago
Reply to  Amir

All day long, all life long.

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