Agencies, London :
Britain “will not tolerate intolerance”, the office of Prime Minister David Cameron has said, after a series of racist incidents were reported following its decision to leave the European Union.
Number 10 Downing Street came out on Monday with the warning, less than a week after the country voted to leave the EU in a referendum.
“We should be absolutely clear that this government will not tolerate intolerance … intimidating migrants, telling them they need to go home,” Cameron’s spokeswoman told journalists. The Polish Embassy in London earlier said it was “shocked and deeply concerned” by incidents of abuse directed at Poles and other eastern Europeans living in England.
They include the posting of laminated cards reading “Leave the EU – no more Polish vermin” to members of the Polish community in Huntingdon, near the eastern city of Cambridge, on Saturday.
There were also reports of racist graffiti scrawled on a Polish community centre in Hammersmith, west London. The Metropolitan Police Service said it was investigating the claim.
“We would like to thank people for all the messages of support and solidarity with the Polish community expressed by the British public,” the embassy said.
London mayor Sadiq Khan on Monday placed the city’s police force on alert following the incidents. Khan said he took “seriously my responsibility to defend London’s fantastic mix of diversity and tolerance.
“I’ve asked our police to be extra vigilant for any rise in cases of hate crime, and I’m calling on all Londoners to pull together and rally behind this great city.”
Mark Hamilton, the head of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, said: “We are seeing an increase in reports of hate crime incidents to True Vision, the police online hate crime reporting site.
“This is similar to the trends following other major national or international events. In previous instances, crime levels returned to normal relatively quickly but we are monitoring the situation closely.”
Other incidents were reported on social media. Many used the #postrefracism tag and account to call out examples of intolerance, both to EU citizens living in England and non-white Britons.
One Twitter user, Ben Zen, wrote that two Britons waved an English flag towards him and, having heard him speak in Romanian, said: “We voted you out. Go home you f*****g immigrants.”
Another, Carlos from London, posted images of a Polish father and son who had been severely beaten, reporting that the family members had said Englishmen were behind the attack.
