"To such inhumanity how can we react?": Kindness & Hate in UK 2026

I received a lovely and quite unexpected gift today. It was from John, my granddaughter Sophie’s partner – an excellent young man who Pat and I love dearly. He had seen a book in a shop in Wolverhampton, where he and Sophie live, and thought it would appeal to me – how right he was. And that, of course, is one of the a real joys of receiving an unexpected gift, when the person giving it has thought of you and what would really appeal to you; it’s not something that you have asked for as a gift, or just been bought on the spare of the moment with little thought; as the old saying goes, “It’s the thought that counts”.

So, what is it? It’s a book of poetry, the poems all written by largely amateur and/or unpublished poets and it’s a real treasure trove. It’s called “The North & The Midlands” and all the poems have some connection with those two regions of our country – perhaps they are about the people and places of these areas or maybe the poet hails from the north or the midlands of the UK. For example, one of the poems is called “River Avon in Warwickshire” and another is titled “Village Life in the Vale of Belvoir 1923-2009” – an area that is only a few minutes drive from where I live.

And as I skimmed through the book over my lunch so many of the verses appealed to me and had a certain resonance – they are pieces that have meaning within the context of who and what I am; John chose very well when he sent this to me!

There was one poem, however, that leapt off the page as I skimmed through the volume – and on this occasion not because of the place or the author but because of the powerful words which seemed to me to be a terrible and profound commentary upon our UK world today.

It is a poem called “Holocaust” by a writer named Penelope Wood and as you would guess it’s a commentary upon the Holocaust and the terrible inhumanity and tragedy that the Holocaust was and is. It is searing in its intensity and in the moral questions that it poses to the reader but my eyes were drawn especially to the first verse which I immediately recognised as being of special and profound relevance to 2026 UK.

In the last week or two we have witnessed in the UK – as so often in the hot months of summer – not just a simmering discontent but outbreaks of malignant rage, violence, wanton destruction, and hate. Last year at this time we saw hotels across the nation harbouring asylum seekers being attacked by frenzied, flag waving mobs all claiming to represent their perverted version of patriotism. This year in Southampton and Belfast we have seen extreme violence and disorder as these same mobs try to claim the moral high ground after the murder of Henry Nowak by a Sikh man and the attempted murder of Stephen Ogilvie by a Sudanese man. On each occasion the mindless mobs have been manipulated and organised by extreme outsiders and their political rhetoric – Tommy Robinson, Nigel Farage, the Reform Party, the Restore Party, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, the right wing media and large sections of the Tory Party. In Parliament the Reform Party was described by an MP as representing “dirty grubbiness” – the MP was not wrong, but what we are seeing is far and terribly beyond that; we are seeing the manufacture of hate, the sanctioning of wilful violence and the terrorising of ordinary people being carried out on our streets by black "uniformed", hooded and balaclava wearing thugs, shaven headed, masked vigilantes, and tattooed criminal storm troopers all seeking some cheap violent thrill to give perverse "meaning" to their shallow anomic, nihilistic lives. And if we learn anything from history it is that this can soon become uncontrollable and worse, normalised. And when violence and disobedience to the law become normalised then society is on an existential slope into the abyss.

What have we become as a nation? What have we become as human beings? These are exactly the events that happened throughout Germany in 1938 and beyond when, for example on what became known as Kristallnacht – the November pogrom – saw Jews turned from their homes, houses and businesses destroyed, men, women and children dragged off never to be seen again, random murder committed by violent Nazi supporters all in the name of patriotism. We know where all that led to – and we are seeing it on our own streets: burning cars, bricks being thrown, houses invaded, innocent people being hounded from their homes, screaming mobs trampling into the dust the very things that make community life possible. These are the things that 16th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes warned us about in his great treatise "Leviathan", a mighty reflection on society, the law and good government; he warned us that when the law and good government fails then human life becomes "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" . This is the direction of travel of our current society and sooner or later we will all suffer as the Jews and other groups did in Hitler’s Germany

Penelope Wood’s poem reflects upon this and its powerful opening verse seems to me to be a terrible, terrifying testament to our current times:

“A race we bred to be so malicious

That man to man could be so vicious;

It seems really impossible to me

That such a dreadful thing could be.

But that it’s happening is a true fact -

To such inhumanity how can we react?…...”

The verse and the poem are prescient; this was how the holocaust began – with a loss of personal and societal morality, with common incitement, hate, street thuggery, the manipulation of easily influenced minds, rabble rousing politicians and wilfully evil trouble makers seeking to grab power for their own ends; and the equally wilfully ignorant mob mindlessly following. It is philosopher Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil" made real In which ordinary people become evil monsters simply because they are unthinking, easily led and easily influenced. In his novel “Kingdom Come” written two decades ago author JG Ballard forecast our 2026 United Kingdom ills; he envisaged a nation in which ‘People are deliberately re-primitivizing themselves’, where ‘Willed madness can infect a housing estate or a whole nation', and where ‘the mob glares at itself in the mirror while breaking its bloodied forehead against the glass”. We are now descending into that abyss, a world where simple everyday discontents, disagreement with government policy or a desire for something better has viciously turned into a terrible and unquenchable malcontent – a malignancy, a cancer eating away at the very fabric of humanity and community. We were warned but did not heed that warning.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu grew up and lived through the hate filled years of South African apartheid. He knew how hate and bitter resentment impacted upon individuals and society and he was clear, saying: "Resentment and hate are like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies." Hate and resentment solve no problems they simply and terribly destroy us and our world from inside and as Penelope Wood’s poem tells us “….that it’s happening is a true fact….”.

For me, I will not take the path of hate, I will not - to use JG Ballard's phrase - re-primitivize and regress to the primitive barbarism, the "dirty grubbiness", of these modern day nihilistic politicians, peddlers of hate like Nigel Farage, Donald Trump and the rest nor will I excuse or condone the street savages of Southampton, Belfast, or anywhere else; instead I will take the path of kindness, generosity and yes, love. The same love and kindness that prompted Sophie’s partner, John, to think of me and send me this lovely little gift – because it’s the thought that counts.

To quote Desmond Tutu again: "Hate and humanity cannot exist together; my humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together."

Amen to that.