One a recent trip to the village shop, I was greeted by the sound of a middle-aged man – not unlike Nigel Farage in appearance – loudly proclaiming his personal strategy for stopping asylum seekers crossing the English Channel:

“Do you know what I would do? I would literally get a flotilla of boats and station them in the middle of the channel in a long line and block all the traffic coming across.  Or, or, right?  The government should hire a bunch of thugs to sink any of these boats as soon as they leave the shore in France. That is what I would do.”

This monologue seemed to be directed at the shop assistant behind the till who, clearly embarrassed, just laughed it off. I however couldn’t see the funny side of a casual threat to let desperate migrants drown at sea. I was debating whether or not say anything when another customer came in and changed the subject to the more important question of the weather and the pros and cons of hanging the laundry outside on a windy day with both sunshine and showers forecast.

Since I had just done my own laundry, I decided to join this discussion and ignore the racist asshole in the corner. This passive aggressive move may have got the message across but I doubt it. As I left the shop, I felt some stronger action was required.

This corner of England – the closest point to continental Europe – is at the sharp end of immigration, and xenophobia and racism have always been prevalent but, for me, these comments were a troubling escalation in and broadening of hate speech.

When I was growing up here in the 1960s and 70s, it was the National Front that was the focus of anti-immigrant sentiment. It was a small extremist group with no impact on national politics. Whenever they organized marches, they were always outnumbered by counter-protesters. When they tried recruiting at my high school, we chased them off quite easily. People across society joined forces in campaigns like Rock Against Racism to stop hate speech in its tracks.

Enoch Powel was the only mainstream politician at that time to publicly call for immigration curbs and condone racial discrimination in his infamous “rivers of blood” speech, and he was sacked from the shadow cabinet immediately afterwards. Even that arch-enemy of liberals and progressives, Ronald Reagan in the 1980s could understand and appreciate the value of migration.

Fast forward to 2024, and anti-immigrant views are now in the mainstream. In the recently concluded general election, my constituency of Canterbury was held by Labour with a reduced vote share of 41%. The anti-immigration Reform party came third with 14%, just behind the anti-immigration Conservatives with 23% of the vote. And while I would hesitate to describe Labour as anti-immigration, it is so scared of losing the vote of those concerned about the level of immigration, it has vowed to create a more effective system of controlled migration.

Tellingly, our MP, Rosie Duffield, resigned from the Labour Party just two months after the election citing the “cruel and unnecessary policies” of the leadership.

In my brief stint of canvasing for Labour prior to the election, it was instructive to see just how concerned long-time Labour voters were about the rise in immigration, and how careful candidates were to acknowledge and legitimise those concerns.

And, I would argue, it is precisely because mainstream politicians are willing to listen to, and even pander to, these “legitimate concerns” of the voting public that the more extreme, hate-filled minority feel emboldened to openly and loudly espouse mass-murder in the village shop.

Which brings me back to the question of how best to respond to such vile sentiments. Can you take direct action, and if so what would it achieve? I sympathise with the approach advocated by the American YouTuber, Natalie Wynn, who in an instructive and nuanced discussion of how “legitimate concerns” are used to cloak bigotry, suggests that when people make shameful, bigoted comments they need to be shamed – their cloak of legitimacy must be removed. There is no point trying reason with them because that implies the comments are reasonable.

She cites one the most famous responses to bigotry ever seen, when the anti-gay activist Anita Bryant was hit in the face by a pie at a campaign event in Iowa in 1977. It was a wonderful example of how to humiliate a bigot and illustrate the ridiculousness of their stance. Anita Bryant became a laughing stock, and she remains so today.

But tempting as it is, I don’t think a banana cream pie was the the best instrument to use in my particular case. Confronting hate-filled strangers on their bad behaviour is a very risky strategy. All too often they will become defensive and aggressive. I remember once asking a young man to pick up the McDonalds wrapper he had thrown on to the pavement, only to be met with a torrent of abuse.

Simply telling someone that you find their comments offensive or even abhorrent is unlikely to work either because it just puts the onus back to justify the offence taken.

The response I had been rehearsing in my mind was to politely advocate a policy of completely open borders so that anyone could come here, help develop the economy, and contribute to a more diverse and tolerant society. Who knows how he would have responded to that. There are simply too many unknowns to assess whether or not an intervention of any kind would be beneficial.

In retrospect, I think a more productive approach would be not to worry too much about irredeemable assholes, and focus instead on those with empathy who are still willing to listen. In this way, you can attempt to gradually move the mainstream narrative on migration away from fear of the Other to a place of acceptance and understanding.

We have to recognise the concerns but at the same time challenge rather than legitimise them. It going to be an uphill struggle but a friend offered some concrete suggestions on how he responds to his occasionally racist neighbours in discussions over the garden fence:

“I acknowledge their views, then give some ‘on-the-other-hand’ balancing information about, for example, the lack of an effective legal route to seek asylum, how they are being exploited, the need for migrant workers, that they want to work, the taxes they’d pay if they could work, the crime statistics that show they are less likely to commit crime than ‘the rest of us’, and finish off with a ‘put yourself in their shoes, what would you do to support your family?’ kind of appeal to empathy.”

“When people are fed a constant diet of biased views, reinforced by their family and social circle, they end up believing them and don’t think to question them. It doesn’t help to contradict them, they need to be drip-fed balancing information over time by someone they trust or respect, so they begin to see that there are two sides to this story.”

I hope he is right.