SOMETIMES I can’t help feeling that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I started school in Walsall, in the heart of the Black Country, just a few months after the infamous racist so-called Rivers of Blood speech by Tory politician Enoch Powell.

Powell gave that speech less than 10 miles from where I was born and raised — which made the whole thing somehow sharper for us.

I lost count after that speech as a mere five-year-old — and then for a good few years after that — about how many times I was told I should go back to the jungle, or to where I came from (which to many was the same thing), even though I was born at the local hospital. But that was a mere detail that I never really got to mention.

If I did manage or was bothered to offer such detail, it was usually ignored in the red mist of racism that had already descended on whoever felt the need to offer their opinion about my background before the inevitable “scrap” began.

I remember a little while after starting secondary school, an older-than-me white boy decided that it was his duty to racially harass me every morning in the school yard.

Anyone who knows me will immediately appreciate that with my temper — which has hopefully improved — this was never a situation that was ever going to last long unchallenged, even if the boy was bigger and older than me.

Somehow, the inevitable confrontation left the boy lying in what was called a brook, but which was — in reality — a dirty, infested liquid running through the school.

There were a few other incidents at school, but all of this got easier as the number of kids of African and Asian backgrounds in the school increased. I seem to recall that in those always sunny days of the 1970s (at least that’s how I remember it), there was no difficulty in those of us from the “darker nations” identifying with each other as black. An important and very necessary point of unity that, frankly, enabled us to survive.

Even when the mini series Roots came on in 1977 for the first time and some idiots decided that some of us should now be known as Kunte Kinte or Chicken George, etc, we came together to assert ourselves in a way that sometimes did not end well for the racists.

Of course, racism for us as a black family in a then mainly white part of the town did not begin with Powell’s racist diatribe.

Depending on who she was speaking with, my late, great mom would tell the story of being pregnant with either my older brother or me and being attacked in the street late one evening by so-called Teddy Boys. Whichever of us my mom was carrying was, according to my mom, nearly lost as a result of the attack.

This story was told to us as part of our instruction about how to survive in school. This included being told if you are attacked by more than one racist to get your back to a wall so they could not get behind you.

Much later, during my far-from-successful school career, I remember racists from the far-right National Front marching through our town and the unity that came from black and white folks coming together in counterdemonstrations.

I wanted to particularly mention these demonstrations in the context of the latest fetish of placing coloured pieces of cloth on the nearest available lampost — whether upside down or not — or vandalising roundabouts by painting them in the colours of that well-known Turkish patron saint of England, St George.

One of the reasons I have great difficulty in pledging allegiance to the English, British or any other painted cloth is partly to do with those who used them as a very clear message to black people that we were both unwelcome and hated.

It acted as a barrier to any notion that I could feel either English or British.

I should be clear. Other black people clearly feel differently about this, and I do not pretend to speak on behalf of anyone but myself. Although I should say, there have been countless times in my life when I have been expected to speak on behalf of every black person on the planet.

Regardless, I have always failed what later became known as “the Tebbitt test” of whether I support England’s teams. I generally don’t, although for reasons that I am still analysing, I have found myself supporting the Lionesses in women’s football.

I felt the need to write this because of the rise of Reform UK, which some people still try to convince me is not racist.

It may well be that not everyone who is part of Reform is a racist. But everyone who is part of Reform is fully aware of the racism that spews out from more than a few leading members of their party.

Neither is racism a deal breaker for all the people who claim they wish to support Reform. If it’s not a deal breaker, then what exactly does that say for those prepared to tolerate the racism that is so clearly at the heart of Reform?

It’s more than just their stance on immigration. It is the clear racist demonisation of anyone not white, as well as their willingness to associate themselves with the likes of far-right characters such as the grifter Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon.

If the people still prepared to vote for Reform are not racist, then they are still guilty of being indifferent to the damage caused by racism. In my experience, the difference between this and actual racism is marginal if it exists at all.

But, in a way, I’m not surprised.

There has always been far too much indifference to the impact of racism.

Even many on the left dismiss us as engaging in so-called identity politics when we talk about our experiences of being black. This, sadly, contributes towards that deep knot in the stomach that so many of us have grown all too familiar with in the presence of racism.

Far too often, we black folks have to justify our very existence or explain why what we are facing is, in addition to our position as part of the working class — our super exploitation.

I have decided that I am far too old to spend any time having to justify my existence to anyone. I have also learned over the years that no matter how much I try to do that in any case, it will make virtually no difference.

The only thing that I know for certain makes a difference in fighting racism is working-class unity — because it’s the only thing that ever has.

But this doesn’t just appear because we wish it or because we have the correct theory. It comes because we go out and organise in those places where people don’t already agree with us.

Racism is a nasty, divisive concoction, but honesty about ourselves as a contribution to building unity is the only way that we can turn around this dangerous moment of rising racism that, sadly, feels all too familiar.