Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has warned the current generation will have failed if his future grandchildren experience racism.
Mr Sarwar said tackling hate and prejudice “must be a fight for all of us”, as he used his first party conference speech as leader to describe how he went to bed crying when his son first experienced racism.
The son of Mohammad Sarwar – the UK’s first Muslim and Scotland’s first ethnic minority MP – Mr Sarwar said politics must change or the next generation “will grow up in a more hate-filled and more divided world than we grew up in”.
Declaring that “silence is no longer an option”, Mr Sarwar said: “We can’t leave the fight against any form of prejudice to any individual community.”
Recounting a story of how his son “discovered racism” when children would not pass to him while playing football “because he was the only P*** in the team”, Mr Sarwar said fighting hate and prejudice must be everyone’s mission.
The Scottish Labour leader said: “When Adam is my age, and if he has a son or a daughter, and if they tell him that same story, this generation – our generation – will have failed.
“I’m not willing to let that happen, we cannot let that happen – not to any child in Scotland.
“This is a fight for all of us.
“We, the Labour Party, founded on the principle of equality, must be at the forefront of the battle for a more equal, a more diverse, a more tolerant, a more respectful and a more hopeful future for Scotland.
“Silence is no longer an option.”
Mr Sarwar also told delegates that his first political memory was an envelope delivered to his family home from a far-right group with a photo of his mother “with two guns pointed to her head with the words in cut-out letters that read ‘bang, bang, that’s all it takes’.”
He added: “That was because my father had the audacity to aspire to be Britain’s first Muslim MP and Scotland’s first ethnic minority MP.
“I remember growing up, people would follow our family car, make prank phone calls, and one time they even fired a rock through the front window, hitting my dad on the head.
“I will never forget my mum’s words, which still drive me to this day: ‘We can’t give up. We can’t walk away. That’s what they want. We can’t let them win.’
“So I didn’t give up and I won’t walk away.”
The Glasgow MSP also reiterated his call for misogyny to become a stand-alone offence and criticised the Scottish Government for the “fundamental flaw” in hate crime legislation.
He said: “As we mark International Women’s Day, let’s not wait a day longer, let’s make misogyny a hate crime in Scotland now.
“But there’s a more fundamental issue here. Every single day, there are women across our country who have to think twice when they walk down certain streets, who have to look over their shoulder on a night out, and have to double check the charge on their phone.
“To those that think the answer is to ask women to change their behaviour, I’m sorry, frankly you’re wrong.
“It is men who need to change their behaviour.”
