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Raise a glass to London restaurateur Jacob Kenedy, who recently starred in the ceremonial smashing of five bottles of fine wine in a gesture of support for Italy's new black integration minister Cecile Kyenge. Not as esoteric a protest as it sounds. The wines were produced by Fulvio Bressan, an independent winemaker who called Kyenge a "sporca scimmia nera" – a dirty black monkey. Kenedy's gesture won't put Bressan in the poorhouse. But it highlighted the issue, especially as the pavement ceremony went viral on YouTube. Why did he do it? "Everyone is entitled to their own opinions," he says. "But when they are as toxic as Bressan's, and publicly broadcast so as to incite hatred, they become everyone's problem." Take a stand in these days of social media and soon everybody knows.
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But the process isn't without complication. Here we turn to the unfortunate spectacle of Tommy Robinson (Stephen Yaxley-Lennon), chief hoodlum of the English Defence League, serial offender against community cohesion, claiming the high ground because one of Selfridges' assistants recognised him and refused to serve an associate of his. In this case, the gesture backfired. The assistant was suspended; Robinson was treated by the store to a free slap-up lunch by way of compensation. The EDL as victim. All loathsome.
What should have happened here? There isn't an obvious answer; and that's not me being a Guardian liberal. Consider the stance of the rightwing writer Tim Stanley who said in a Telegraph blog: "If Tommy had come into my shop (let's make it Harrods) and asked to buy a shirt, what would I have done? I'd've a) overcharged him, b) cut a button off and c) told security that he didn't pay for it and was obviously a shop lifter." He might have reacted more sharply had he been Muslim and daily in the EDL's line of fire. I understand that.
I might have been tempted to flick the sprinkler on, but I hope I would have declined to cede PR or moral ground to Robinson. In this tug-of-war with intolerance, the high ground matters and he doesn't have it. That's why he seized his coup with both grubby hands.
As for Selfridges; oh dear, there goes the neighbourhood. It needs to worry about its clientele.
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