I'm Scott Lucas, I'm a Professor here at the University of Birmingham.
I am the editor of a website called EA Worldview about Britain and the world.
I'm the father of two very English children and I'm an immigrant,
so I've got an interesting personal stake in what happens in this referendum
about Britain's EU membership.
Why will I vote remain?
Well, there's the economic issue. I want a better future for my children and I
think that's guaranteed in a Britain in which production, investment and trade is
better as part of European bloc.
I don't want to see GDP fall by three to five and a half percent by 202o
If we stay out of the EU. I'll vote remain because I believe in security and
the whole history of Europe coming together after 1945 after World War One,
World War two facing continuing international threats was to prevent a
third world war, and that's been accomplished. And with a turbulent
world like today,
better together than better separate. But I'm also going to vote remain for another
reason that I'd like to talk to you about today, and that's because of decency.
You see, I've been in Britain for 30 years, and I've been very proud to be in
this country.
I grew up in a segregated area in the United States, all white, all Protestant
very little interaction with different religions, different ethnicities with
immigrants or with refugees.
It was a nice place to be I guess, in Alabama, but it was limited. In Britain
I have had children who have grown up and who have not had to think in terms
of race or deal with racism.
I've had children who have grown up not thinking if someone is Hindu or Muslim
or Christian that that might be a problem.
They've just simply thought of people. In other words, I've grown up in Britain in
a community. A community which in my own part of the US for various reasons I
didn't have.
I'd like to see that continued, not just as a English or British or United
Kingdom community, but as a community which is linked to Europe.
Why do I say that I'm for decency? Well I've been worried that in this campaign
those things I value; dialogue, respect, compassion, have been questioned by a
leave campaign which portrays enemies. Of course the European Union is an enemy.
Now after all, as Boris Johnson said, they had a prototype in Hitler's Third Reich
and they're finally going to carry out the project.
Democrats are the enemy, refugees are the enemy,
only last week we were told that Britain was at breaking point because we were
going to be overwhelmed by those vast hordes that we're going to come across
the channel.
I have a bit of a personal stake in this for a wider reason, you see just as I was
asked to talk to you last week when we were discussing what I would say, I had
someone I knew who was killed. One of Britain's best MP's, one of the best
people I've ever known, who believed in the rights of immigrants, who believed in
the rights of refugees, who believed in the rights of all of us - and who sought
justice. Jo Cox, at a constituency surgery in Yorkshire, was shot and stabbed. Her
life was taken away from her because a man had, in this climate of looking for
enemies, belief that he had found one.
He reportedly shouted, "Britain First!".
He later talked about death to traitors.
Why was Jo Cox a traitor? Because she simply had represented people who
she thought were trying to find a better life.
And why should they not have someone to speak for them just as all of us are
lucky in Britain as citizens to have someone to speak for us?
I want to live in a society that believes in dialogue and in respect.
But in a campaign in which everyone becomes the other to be treated with
suspicion
sometimes with hatred I began to think that those basic values have broken down.
Do I think that the European Union is perfect?
Do I think that it's some type of utopia? Absolutely not. In any type of
institution where there are multiple communities, multiple countries, there are going to be disputes.
There's going to be quarrals and arguments. But the whole point is that in any
family, in any community,
you don't just walk away from an argument or dispute, you talk it through.
You try to find out what is good, not just for one member of that family but
for all of them.
I know that there are decent people in the leave campaign and i'm not saying
that everyone is responsible for hatred and fear, but there has been too much
climate of whipped up by advertising, posters, headlines and yes some
politicians, which says that person is a threat.
This person is a threat. Not for me.
I don't choose to vote leave, I choose to remain in a country where I feel valued
as an immigrant like every other person and where I can think about the legacy
of someone I was proud to know, Jo Cox and how she would have stood up for all
of us, come this Thursday.