BY AL EDWARDS

Black-British MP Diane Abbott has stirred up a hornets nest by declaring on social media platform Twitter that “White people love playing divide and rule”.

She has subsequently apologised and said that the remark was taken out of context. Now, a slew of MPs are calling for her immediate resignation and her party boss Ed Miliband has said her comments are “unacceptable”.

Abbott, who ran for the leadership of the Labour Party in 2010 has a history of making unpalatable gaffes which tend to have a patina of racial victimisation about them.

Earlier this year she claimed that while there are plenty of black players in British football there has never been a black manager in the Premier league. She omitted to point out that both Paul Ince then of Blackburn and Chris Haughton of Newcastle have both served as top league managers. She is reported as saying, “One of the problems black managers have in breaking through may be that, whilst players are selected strictly on merit, managers are often the personal pick of football chairman. And the chairmen of football clubs are usually in their late 60s and are prey to all the old prejudices about black football professionals.”

Abbott, who ran for the leadership of the Labour Party in 2010 has a history of making unpalatable gaffes which tend to have a patina of racial victimisation about them.

Earlier this year she claimed that while there are plenty of black players in British football there has never been a black manager in the Premier league. She omitted to point out that both Paul Ince then of Blackburn and Chris Haughton of Newcastle have both served as top league managers. She is reported as saying, “One of the problems black managers have in breaking through may be that, whilst players are selected strictly on merit, managers are often the personal pick of football chairman. And the chairmen of football clubs are usually in their late 60s and are prey to all the old prejudices about black football professionals.”

In 2010, she said, “West Indian mums will go to the wall for their children”. She was challenged on that by the former editor of the Sunday Times, Andrew Neil who said: “So black mums love their kids more than white mums, do they?

“Supposing Michael Portillo said white mums will go to the wall for their children. Why did you say that? Isn’t it a racist remark?”

In 2003, she blasted her Labour Party colleague Harriet Harman for sending her son to a grammar school. It then turned out that she opted to send her very own son to a private school, arguing that she feared her child would fall in with “black gangs” if he went to a State school. She later described her own decision as “indefensible and” incoherent”.

She has been reported as saying that staff at her constituency hospital, who were “blonde, blue-eyed Finnish girls”, were not suitable to be nurses because they had “never met a black person before”.

One has to ask oneself, is this becoming a frontbench spokesperson? If that chip got any bigger it would seriously dislocate both shoulders. Instead of championing multi-cultural Britain, Abbott has chosen to use racial victimisation as her personal pulpit. Yes, racism is odious and does exist in Britain, but there are better ways to address it. The chippy approach will win Abbott no friends and will only serve to relegate her to a permanent spot on the backbenches.

Commenting on her Twitter faux pas, Conservative MP Nadhim Zahawi said: “This is racism. If this was a white member of Parliament saying that all black people want to do bad things to us he would have resigned within the hour or be sacked. For a shadow minister to hold these sort of views is intolerable, it is wrong, she needs to go.”

“Alas, Abbott has only ever been able to conceive of a world of black and white. Her comment reveals an ambiguously racial mindset. She was applying very negative characteristics to a supposed group of races (white people in her words) implying that they were all anti-black and with a predominant interest in the oppression of other races.

“It is an outrageous statement that a woman who preaches so often about racial harmony should be attempting to inflame racial sterotypes and tensions. However, with a closer look at Abbott’s career, this sort of statement coming from her is not entirely unpredictable.

“Abbott has established herself at the nexus of the profitable, both politically and financially, race relations industry. Her power comes from maintaining the view that ethnic minorities are oppressed and that as many people as possible fall into the black racial category for whom she claims to speak.”