This is a complete departure from normal programming on this blog, for which I apologise unreservedly, but it seems coherent with recent posts (which are on topic) and, as an Australian of British descent living in the heart of “multicultural” london, I feel I actually do have something to say on the topic of why, exactly, the British Labour Party is in meltdown and the far right (as represented by UKIP and their odious little brother the BNP) are doing so well.
And the BNP is doing well:
- In percentage and absolute terms, the BNP share of the vote has increased, from 800000 votes in 2004 to 1 million in 2009
- Their vote increased despite lower turnout, which requires some real mental gymnastics to justify away
- The right in England now controls 45% of the popular vote, with half of that being the loony racist right
- This has occurred at the expense of labour, not the Tories[1]
This means that now the BNP has European Parliament representation, European parliament money, airtime on the BBC, and a public face for their leader, who is clearly a bastard but is not an idiot. The theory that once elected they will shoot themselves in the foot and convince voters they can’t be trusted no longer holds – they have over 50 council seats and their vote held up in areas where they had previously won these seats. It also means that Nick Griffin’s policy of keeping the fascist sentiments very quiet is justified, which means that the old street-fighting-skinhead faction will be less likely to betray the party, something I think too many in mainstream politics were assuming would happen.
So the period of post-war British history when one could laugh at the far right and gather round to cheerfully watch their self-immolation is past. Sniffing huffily at these “ruddy ignoramuses” is no longer an option. The mainstream parties have to confront the BNP properly, and they need to do it successfully before the general election. This is particularly the responsibility of the British Labour Party, because the BNP vote has increased in Labour heartland areas, which are suffering from industrial decline and recession at a time when labour has been in power and immigration has been increasing. Labour needs to confront the consequences of this head-on, but instead they have been dog-whistling past their own graveyard.
In short, Britain needs to come to a racial settlement, much as Australia did in the 70s when it introduced the government policy of multiculturalism. The Labour party needs to enter into a direct conversation with the electorate about immigration and race, which means that:
- The British left needs to admit that Britain is racist: There is a lot of racism in Britain, much more than in Australia or Japan[2]. This racism is more prevalent in the working class, and it needs to be understood and confronted. Pretending that it’s not there, or that Britain’s famous “tolerance”[3] is the same as non-racism is just ignorant and naive. The BNP and UKIP understand this sentiment, and they are exploiting it very nicely
- The left needs to get real about immigration: I see the leaders of all 3 parties claiming that the people who voted BNP aren’t racist, but I don’t see them talking clearly about immigration. If the British people aren’t racist, then it should be easy to explain clearly and directly why immigration is good; if they are racist, then either immigration policy needs to change to match the desires of the British public, or the explanation of its benefits needs to be made even more urgently. And the left needs to recognise that immigration is generally at least perceived to be a problem in this country, and that it is at the centre of peoples’ fears in a recession.
- The Labour party needs to confront anti-immigration sentiment: and either agree to the bulk of UKIP’s demands, or debate them clearly and show why the current policies are better. They also need to show leadership[4], and take a clear stand against racism and anti-immigration sentiment.
- The war on terror has to end: Nick Griffin can only talk about “terror in Salford” and terrorist immigrants because of the war. War is not the best bedfellow of tolerance, particularly when half the population thinks that the other half wants to blow them up. The war on terror is singularly unpopular in the UK, and after 8 years it hasn’t achieved anything. Ending this war and bringing the troops home will take the wind out of a lot of right-wing sails
- The Labour party needs to get real about education: British education is crap[5]. British people don’t understand their own language very well and they don’t speak other languages well. They have to compete with Europeans for jobs in Britain but they don’t have the language skills to compete for jobs in Europe, which pretty much knocks for six any claim that Europe is good for British workers, except that very small group of Oxbridge graduates who can go anywhere. In my experience, British job applicants aren’t very well qualified in post-graduate, numerate degrees either. If the labour party is serious about Europe they need to find a way to have an education policy for Europe, not for a parochial light-manufacturing England of the 70s.
- The British need to have a serious conversation about class: which is at the heart of all their problems, and is killing the country[6]. With limited social mobility and a managerial class who don’t care about the working class, the “opportunities” and economic growth that Europe and immigration offer the lowest classes can’t be grasped. So, knowing they can’t fix the class system (and seeing now that Labour won’t try), is it any surprise that instead they kick out against their foreign competitors?
Labour also, obviously, needs to start looking at the infrastructure and social cohesion of its heartland. Instead they’re paralysed, like a rabbit in the headlights of the oncoming general election juggernaut. It’s guaranteed that the Tories are going to win that election; Labour need to struggle now to ensure that the far right don’t become a permanent fixture of British domestic politics – and the way to do that is not to steal their politics, but to smash it. If UKIP become a serious fixture in parliament, and the Tories have the BNP snapping at their heels and no serious competition from the left, the national culture will take a significant, permanent step to the right, and at the very least the European project will be dead.
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fn1: It’s true that the Tory vote didn’t increase, but it didn’t decrease. The labour vote collapsed.
fn2: It’s true that in Japan you can still advertise flats and jobs explicitly for the Japanese, but overall I’ve seen much less racism there than here. There are laws to prevent that sort of thing in the UK, and if they weren’t in place you can bet that British landlords and employers would be using the same methods vigorously
fn3: I don’t think the British are tolerant anyway; they’re just reserved. This is why people tolerate things (like brawling in public, really nasty behaviour by other peoples’ children, and really nasty language by adults) that are really quite intolerable. I think being reserved is nice; but confusing it with Tolerance doesn’t help.
fn4: We elect our leaders to show leadership. When this issue was live in Australia, the political parties of both stripes confronted it and had a strong debate about it. The result was the policy of multiculturalism, which has been supported by leaders of both mainstream parties ever since. As Paul Keating said, when you change the government you change the country, and if Labour and the Tories don’t change to a more open opposition of anti-European and racist sentiment, the country will change.
fn5: Disagree? Then why is the Sun the top-selling British newspaper?
fn6: Literally. Class determines life expectancy in the UK; the difference in life expectancy between social class 5 and social class 1 males is 70% of the difference between white and Aboriginal Australians – this is our national shame, but a similar difference affecting a great many more people is barely remarked upon in Britain.
Compromise and Conceit 
June 16, 2009 at 6:15 pm
The EU election results for the far right wing and the situation you’re discussing shows why “right” and “left” are incredibly poor descriptors of actual allegiances or policies. The BNP is currently more attractive to a working class guy who feels he’s lost his job due to migrants than to a merchant banker. Given that, it would really help if people (by no means just you) could stop using them as if they were a useful tool. [1]
You mention multiculturalism in Australia as an example that the UK should follow, but I’m not sure I’d give this as an ideal example of how a system to welcome and integrate immigrants should work. The Australian immigrants up to the 1970s seem to have settled into Australia after a period of tension, so much so that as an Australian I get very upset by any fellow Australian trying to argue that anyone should have to leave Oz due to their skin colour, but at the same time there is continuing tension which doesn’t appear to be dissipating the way it did for previous waves of (European) migrants. One factor that is blamed for this in Oz is a lack of assimilation (which is an exclusionary concept, but generally not racist in a strict sense as its based on “values” instead of race – though the “values” selected have a high correlation with race.) The upshot is I’d suggest taking a page from Australia’s book, but possibly putting more work into defining the British national character as an evolving ideal. And frankly I expect any effort on that definition to fail along class and political lines in the UK. The best possible outcome would be having some set of ideals that we can all subscribe to (and interpret) and new immigrants should be able to bring bits of their culture that can improve that while still generally embracing the pre-existing local values. Note also I’m not saying that doesn’t happen, but I’d like to see better communication of it as the goal.
I think you’ve got a good point on the British “tolerance”, I’d categorise it as a reserve and fear. Part of what I’d like to see in Britain is a stronger culture of standing together against behaviour that is regarded as unacceptable (though deliberately refraining from mob justice). Establishing that agreement of “unacceptable behaviour” is an example of what I mean by defining a British set of values – Is crossing a picket line? Is not giving up a seat on a train? What is a valid cultural choice in a multicultural society? Should I be OK with speaking to a man who won’t let his wife speak to me or should I take a stand [2]?
On the War on Terror, withdrawal from Afghanistan and the end of the War on Terror may help in the short term, but ultimately if there was another tube bombing you can bet that something as lame as saying “But there is no War on Terror” or “Its an unprovoked outrage” will not help quell the public outcry that the BNP would harness. The only real solution on this one is to increase the effort in the War and make it a more cultural struggle. The West needs to co-opt the best parts of Islamic society and marginalize the extremists. This is a multi-decade effort but retreat isn’t a valid solution and an active engagement like that would actually increase the outcomes for everyone (except the extremists) if a synthesis of the best of the cultures can be created. The other options are to withdraw, increase policing and hope no more attacks occur, which seems unrealistic, or to withdraw and then limit interaction with the Islamic world to reduce the risk, which is racist.
I’d largely agree with you on the need to improve education, though I’d add there needs to be an increased acceptance that university isn’t the best outcome for everyone and that there is nothing wrong with that – as is suggested by the income a plumber or electrician can earn. I’d also suggest that some of the education problem is an attempt to meet social goals (such as understanding power relationships) with the wrong tools in education (such as maths or English). A better approach would be for maths to focus purely on maths and only attempt to be “relevant” by calculating things like the percentage of a banker’s bonus that he should move off-shore. Seeing those numbers may encourage the students to work harder on the dry academic subjects ;-). It’d probably help if every school set-up a sign saying “Yeah some people become famous footballers, rappers or TV stars, but you’re not going to, so finish your English project.”
I’m pretty sure I don’t agree with your underlying analysis of class in Britain, but I can agree that it is a toxic part of the culture, especially when it comes to poor social mobility. The best solution I’d want is to increase social mobility through education, including measures such as streaming in classes and the return of publicly funded elite grammar schools, and granting a higher degree of respect to critical blue collar jobs. Skilled trades should be regarded as the social equivalent of any management role, regardless of the pay involved, and some, such as teachers and nurses, would benefit from a culture that gives them disproportionate respect in relation to their salary.
Your final analysis of how Labour should react to minimise the damage from the far right parties is ultimately flawed. The best option Labour could take isn’t to attack BNP and UKIP. It’s to comprehensively die, opening up a space for the Tories to move to the left and seize votes from the centre. In a scenario where they can pull more votes from the centre than they can from moving to the right the next government of the UK would be well placed to make the necessary attitude changes in society.
In addition to your suggestions I’d like to see the major parties doing a much better job selling Europe to the British. They should be explaining why it’s a good idea, how it helps everyone and explicitly emphasising that this is a project to build a new nation from the existing states of Europe. Without a clear and expressed vision of what Europe should be, which must include some description on European values and mechanism for disagreements then the EU will never be anything more than a trading block and anything like the Lisbon treaty will always be rejected – not on racist grounds but purely because people are correct to reject intrusive government that they do not feel ownership of. If this was done then it could cut into the UKIP vote and also help drive a culture of wanting to learn more languages, which would help in employment/business.
[1] In a tangentially related note, did you see recent efforts by right wingers to associate the US synagogue shooter with the left wing? On one hand I’d regard that as ahistorical crap, on the other I personally regard far left and right wing thought as equally nutty and frankly a little difficult to differentiate. After years of being labelled as “fascists” in the face of wide spread indifference/ignorance to the equivalent evils on the far left wing I can see why Right wing shock jocks would get sick of being tarred by association and want to try to push the latest nutcase into the equivalent nutcase left wing group (where he’d probably fit right in anyway).
[2] This example is drawn from a recent Guardian opinion piece. For the record I agree with the opinion writer who continued to say hello to the wife when she walked past on the basis she was his neighbour, regardless of what the husband felt was appropriate.
June 18, 2009 at 9:34 pm
I agree that left and right are fading descriptors, but they’re the best we have. It’s more difficult now that conservatism has fragmented into 3 or 4 significant streams, since “right” used to be a clear label. But the left is equally fragmented and poorly described by these labels – the difference between anarchists and social democrats is enormous, for example, and anarchism and libertarianism probably have as much in common as do anarchy and socialism. But in this context I think that it’s reasonable to assume that the “left” generally is pro-immigration and more actively anti-racist (through state intervention and policy, for example) than the right. This is why the rise of the BNP through the left alarms us – it’s a real sign that social democratic politicians have failed. Just as the rise of the far right through the religious right in the US should be seen as alarming by them (sadly they don’t).
I believe very strongly that Paul Keating’s view on the responsibility of government applies here. Every party of every political colour has a wide variety of followers who are likely to have in common only those tenets of the party which are considered universal. The leadership of the party can restrain unpleasant aspects of their supporters and followers, however, by exhortation of good policy and maintaining a clear refusal to trade the core tenets of the party in exchange for ugly political sideshows. On the left, it’s well known that the protectionist and nationalist elements of working class culture exist, and it’s the responsibility of the leadership to always show that it will not accept these elements turning racist, on the one hand; and to show that racism and the protection of workers’ rights are incompatible in the party on the other (so choosing racism means losing the power of collective action for the working class which the social democratic parties represent)[1]. I think the ALP did this quite well in Australia, in general, by refusing to entertain serious racist politics, and always exhorting the Australian working class to better itself. Their actions on Aboriginal rights (always a fractious issue with working class people) are a good example of this. However, Labour here has both flirted with racism itself, and shown clearly to its followers that they have nothing to lose by turning racist (because the party they would be ostracised by has nothing to offer them anymore).
There are lots of conservatives in Australia who think that multiculturalism is an effective form of crowd control – Gerard Henderson and Robert Manne for starters. It’s an essentially liberal policy (in the correct sense of liberal) since it doesn’t question what people do in their private lives, so long as they obey the law. It also rests on something which I think England lacks – a clear and strong understanding of what Australian culture is and how attractive it is to everyone else[2]. It’s easy to confidently invite others to live permanently in Australia and maintain their own culture when you don’t think your own could possibly be threatened. But Britishness is far more fragile, which is hilarious when you think about how long Britain has existed.
But in this instance I don’t present Australia’s multicultural policy as the policy Britain should adopt – rather, the open challenge to the racists that the development of the policy represented is what Gordon Brown needs to do. Obviously Australian multiculturalism won’t work because Britain can’t control European migration, and it won’t be permanent (which is a cornerstone of the Australian policy). Britain needs to develop a political and cultural attitude towards European workers which accepts that they are temporary and fluctuating in numbers and origin. But it needs to find a way. I think a model of Britishness which starts from the assumption that Britain is part of Europe, accepts the responsibilities and problems this entails, and sees a continual flow of immigrants as a source of cultural interchange rather than just cheap labour would be a good start.
But, as we agreed, this won’t work if Britons can’t take advantage of Europe, and the best start is better education. I agree generally on your views about the solution to the effects of class on British social life and their attitude towards migrant workers. But there is a working class culture here of anti-intellectualism and fatalism which labour should have confronted by now, and didn’t. The New Labour powerbrokers were either too busy chasing the middle class homeowners’ vote, and/or running in terror from the lumpen proletariat they were supposed to represent, that they never bothered trying to transform the culture of those workers. I think a lot of New Labour Blairites were, like Thatcherites before them, happy to leave whole working class communities as sinkholes of despair and cheap labour, because it suited their vision of a service economy and fixing the problem was too hard[3].
I don’t think your “final solution” to the “problem of labor” is really going to work in a post which purports to give labour advice. But the reinvention they need to go through is so extreme that it will be equivalent to their near-death-and-reanimation-by-foreign-host in any case. And while the modern Tory party appears to be willing to move left, there is every chance they are lying and won’t. Then we’ll be left with two right-wing parties, one crazy and one the party of moat-cleaning and duck islands. A lot of Britons may think that’s good in the short term, but ultimately it is not going to solve their problems.
Oh and I agree about Europe. All this agreement is making my head spin…
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fn1: I think it’s reasonable to say that Malcolm Fraser did this to a fair extent on the right in Australia, giving bipartisan support to multiculturalism and not winding back Whitlam’s decisions on land rights. John Howard disendorsed Hanson and, although its effect on electoral politics was arguably a little nasty, he and Tony Abbott set out to destroy One Nation from the very start. I think Abbot at least did this out of principle – he may be an evil bastard, but he does have some catholic principles and I think he saw One Nation as a stain on the conscience of the right.
fn2: and clearly immigration is part of what Australia is. This may not be true for England, but there’s a hint of how to handle the problem here – the British could define themselves as part of Europe, and incorporate an open and accepting attitude towards other Europeans and the benefits they bring into their self identity. Also, ponies and flying pigs.
fn3: I don’t claim to have a solution to the problems besetting England’s working class. But I didn’t tell anyone that I did, then get voted into power. Had I done that, I might consider it reasonable for those whose interests I claimed to represent to expect some change from me, at least after 10 years.