Nothing Without An Anti-Racist Backbone

Ash Sarkar writes:

So much for the sans-culottes of the deindustrialised rust-belt: when the citizenry of Trump’s “forgotten” America showed up in Charlottesville last weekend, it was in sports jackets and chinos. 

This was not the culture war the commentariat had prepared us for. 

Rather than Arlie Hochschild’s blue-collar Joe consigned to the scrap-heap by globalisation or indeed Joan Williams’ “ordinary working stiff” beset by cultural and economic anxiety, the ruddy faces of Unite the Right looked positively boujee.

It’s become a truism repeated to the point of banality: that across the global north, a revival of working class political engagement has driven electoral successes for the nationalist right. 

Dispossessed by globalist elites and mocked by a cosmopolitan intelligentsia, this demographic has been long underserved by our political classes, and neglected by the identitarian gatekeepers of cultural relevance.

Better writers than myself have debunked much of this narrative.

In the UK as well as the US, the economically downtrodden are not racially homogenous.

What’s more the existence of racial inequality makes itself known in economic outcomes: BAME households in the UK are twice as likely as their white counterparts to be amongst those hardest hit by austerity and BAME workers are over-represented in insecure and low-paid forms of employment. 

Between 2010 and 2015 long-term youth unemployment fell by 2 per cent for white people; in the same time period it rose by 50 per cent for BAME youth. 

As Maya Goodfellow observed, the media fixation on the white working class is not only misleading, it is an example of the very identity politics it claims to deride. 

We find ourselves in a landscape where, in Owen Hatherley’s words, class is depoliticised: framed as “a sort of nationality, based on accent, culture and a particular set of views” rather than an economic relation.

This has not always been the case in the UK.

While cultural anxieties regarding race and immigration have plagued the British political imaginary since the days of empire, left-wing and antiracist movements of the 1970s and 1980s suggested a different basis for understanding inequality. 

The Grunwick Strike of 1976 saw 137 (predominantly Asian and female) striking workers joined by 20,000 protesters, with Arthur Scargill and striking (mostly white and male) miners backing their dispute. 

Working class Londoners of colour set up “monitoring shops” in every borough in response to far-right and police violence. 

Organisations such as Black People Against State Harassment (BASH) were set up as community self-defence initiatives, and while it wasn’t without its internal divisions and problems, there was a lively and populous antiracist movement in the UK.

The breaking of the miner’s strike in 1985, and the anti-trade union crusade that followed, has long been held as the demise of working class political organisation in the UK. 

Arguably just as important is the response of Thatcher’s government to the riots of 1981 and 1985. 

After decades of police harassment under racist “suss” powers (an informal name for a stop and search law), “managed decline” of urban centres and high-profile instances of deaths following police contact, tensions twice boiled over into outbreaks of mass disorder across the UK as working class people of colour took to the streets. 

Thatcher had previously been to the right of the Conservative Party on issues of race and immigration: following the Brixton riots, however, her government set about implementing the findings of the Scarman Report, which recommended nationwide funding of cultural projects to include ethnic minority communities in a sense of national belonging. 

The Urban Programme’s budget blossomed to £270m and 200 new “ethnic projects” were approved in 1982-3. 

Such “ethnic projects” did little to mitigate the rampant inequalities in housing, employment and healthcare which grew under Thatcher’s neoliberal agenda. 

State multiculturalism was a programme to constrain the political effectiveness of anti-racist and industrial movements – the watchword of the day became representation rather than wealth redistribution.

By focusing on race relations, Thatcher turned a project of anti-racist socioeconomic justice into one of ethnic representation – and the working class was split along racialised lines. 

The contradictions of the multicultural project continued under Tony Blair. 

While the 1997 government were hailed as diverse modernisers, income inequalities (and associated racialised outcomes) widened under New Labour. 

The 1999 Macpherson Report’s identification of “institutional racism” in the Metropolitan Police and the protection of minority rights by the Race Relations Act 2000 made it seem like Blair’s brand of cosmopolitan social democracy was a victory for the anti-racist organisers of the 1980s. 

However in 2003, Home Secretary David Blunkett dismissed institutional racism as a mere “slogan” which “missed the point”; immigration enforcement officers were made exempt from the Race Relations Act, which called open season on state harassment of non-EU migrants.

Having separated out BAME communities from the national conception of class, Blair’s agenda began to exclude working class migrants too. 

As the BNP made electoral inroads in the white-flight ring around London, New Labour became intent on being seen as just has hard on asylum seekers as their far-right competitors in order to preserve “community cohesion”. 

However as Arun Kundnani has noted in The End of Tolerance, the case for being tough on immigration was as much about capital as it was about culture. 

Under New Labour the number of successfully granted asylum applications halved in the space of two years. In the same time period, the number of temporary work visas doubled – creating a precarious, hyper-exploitable, racialised working class.

These workers are the “forgotten forgotten”: the most vulnerable amongst a working class that was never as white as we’d like to imagine it.

Who are the white working class?

If anything they are as much a product of state multiculturalism as the diversity tsars decried in the pages of right-wing tabloids.

A cultural analysis – with its attendant vocabulary of identity, community and belonging – fails to tackle the very real material inequalities that continue to widen in our society, and disproportionately impact people of colour.

It would be a mistake for Corbyn’s Labour Party to hark back to a socialism which assumes racial homogeneity, or to continue the discourse of an authentocracy in which class is just a set of cultural distinctions.

The disintegration of neoliberal consensus across the global north presents us with an opportunity for a renewed politics of social and economic justice.

Projects of wealth redistribution are nothing without an anti-racist backbone.

It’s the alt-right who want a culture war – the rest of us are just after a decent living.  

New Laboured All Over Again In Scotland

John Beattie writes: 

The rest of the UK could be forgiven for thinking that the SNP is a left-wing party.

It says on its Twitter page that it is a centre left and social democratic party.

Whenever the SNP is featured on prominent political shows like Question Time or leaders’ debates at election time, social media is awash with people from all over the UK saying they want to move to Scotland or that they want the SNP to stand candidates in England and Wales. 

This is highly amusing to those of us who live in Scotland and experience the reality of 10 years of SNP governance. 

Behind the SNP’s smoke and mirrors is a record of failure, upper-class freebies and increasing poverty and inequality in Scotland. 

Many of its supporters are guilty of cherry-picking specific issues and using them as justification for their claim that the SNP is doing great within the realm of the devolved areas.

However, the reality is somewhat different. 

For example, the SNP and its supporters claim that the Scottish NHS is “better than in England.” 

This appears to be the nationalists’ benchmark, as long as it is a little bit better than the savage Tory government’s record in England. 

However, this is done to mask their failures. 

The example they persistently use is NHS accident and emergency waiting times in Scotland. 

It is true that recently, Scotland has had the best record for patients being seen within four hours. 

This is lauded by the SNP and its supporters as proof that the SNP is doing a good job in Scotland’s NHS. 

However, while they laud this, they are sweeping grave problems under the rug. 

Cancer patient waiting time targets have been deteriorating in Scotland. 

The Scottish government target is that 95 per cent of cancer patients will wait no more than 31 days for a decision to treat cancer and wait no more than 62 days from referral to get their treatment. 

Across Scotland, NHS statistics show that the 31-day target has dropped from 97.8 per cent in 2011 to 94.1 per cent by the end of 2016. Recently it has moved back up to 94.9 per cent. 

The 62-day turnaround target has dropped from 96.3 per cent to 88.6 per cent in the same period. It now stands at 88.1 per cent.

One can only imagine the worry this will cause those who are concerned about the progress of their cancer. 

There is also a developing crisis of treatment waiting times in the Scottish NHS. 

In 2012 the SNP implemented a legally binding guarantee that patients would be treated within 12 weeks. 

In 2015, the number of people waiting longer than the 12-week target was 1,759 patients and that had increased to 11,168 as of March 2017. 

Health isn’t the only devolved area where the SNP has received much criticism; it has also been condemned over its track record in education. 

Literacy and numeracy skills among Scottish children have been declining under SNP control. 

The party has received most criticism in relation to the attainment gap. 

Poorer Scottish children are falling further behind their wealthier counterparts, and, lagging behind their English counterparts, which ironically contradicts the “better than in England” nationalist mantra. 

Overall, Scottish schools have been cut to the extent of more than £1 billion under the SNP. 

The SNP plan to tackle 10 years of failure in Scottish education is to hand head teachers in Scotland £120 million to try to clean up the mess the SNP has made via constant local authority budget cuts. 

Interestingly, this approach places responsibility for closing the attainment gap in these schools with the head teacher. 

One would suggest this is called “passing the buck.” 

The SNP is expecting its £120m investment to solve problems caused by £1bn of cuts. 

It just doesn’t add up. 

There is also the issue of free university tuition in Scotland. 

The SNP consistently and falsely claims to have been the party that scrapped tuition fees. This is not true. 

It was Scottish Labour which scrapped tuition fees in favour of what was known as the “graduate tax.” 

The tax levied on graduates when they gained employment after leaving university-funded student bursaries. 

Free university education might be a noble policy, but it has not been funded properly. 

You may have seen nationalists claim that Corbyn’s Labour has been nicking their policy on tuition fees. 

This couldn’t be further from the truth. 

The SNP funds free university education by cutting college places and bursaries for people from poorer backgrounds. 

Under the SNP more than 130,000 college places have been cut and bursaries for poorer Scots have been consistently reduced. 

These cuts to college places have been criticised by opposition parties in Scotland who cite college as being the main route to higher education and university for people from poorer backgrounds. 

Worryingly, as a result of these policies, poorer kids in Scotland are less likely to go to university than their English counterparts, another example of conditions in Scotland not being “better than in England,” as the SNP and its supporters like to claim. 

It appears that the SNP’s policy on education as a whole has failed the poorest Scots. They have suffered most as a result of the SNP’s £1bn of cuts to schools. 

After leaving the Scottish education system, where achievements in key areas like literacy and numeracy have been declining, they find their second chance for an education, a college place, limited. 

If they manage to jump that hurdle, they can go to university and get a “free” education, but support from the Scottish government for poorer kids has declined, creating another — ironically, a financial — barrier for the poorest Scottish kids. 

This is effectively a regressive policy.

Kids from wealthier backgrounds, who are most likely to stay on at school and achieve the higher grades needed to go directly to university, can expect no tuition fees. 

However, poorer kids who didn’t do so well at school and need to access the college route can expect many challenges because the SNP has been directing resources away from them to benefit the wealthier kids. 

This is the reality of the situation in Scotland and a far cry from the “progressive” image the SNP likes to project to people across the UK. 

Free university education is a noble idea and one that we should support, but we should not support it when it is clear that it’s paid for by slashing college places and bursaries for poorer people. 

When you properly analyse the SNP’s record it becomes clear that their small-c conservative approach to governance in Scotland has left us with an education system in steep decline and an NHS that is slowly descending into a crisis. 

There are very challenging times ahead for the nationalists. The SNP talks progressive and acts conservative. 

Where have we heard that before? We’re being “New Laboured” all over again in Scotland. 

In 10 years of SNP control standards have been declining. 

The party’s most ardent supporters apply what I call the “Andy Murray syndrome” — i.e., their belief that when Murray wins he’s Scottish and when he loses he’s British. 

Whenever statistics are favourable they demand that the SNP is given the credit, and whenever they unfavourable, Westminster is to be blamed and lambasted for it. 

There are now calls from within the SNP to embrace a socialist, progressive outlook. 

This is quite perplexing to those of us who are familiar with Scottish politics because we have been told for quite some time that the SNP is a “progressive” party. It is anything but. 

This is why Labour’s journey back to the political left must stay on course.

This strategy will help us expose the SNP’s conservatism and win back our Scottish working-class heartlands.

Get Them Tolled

A clock?

MPs and others should be made to bow before Grenfell Tower, and before every foodbank in the country.

"He Who Controls The Past Controls The Future"

And that was why, between 60 and 100 years after the Civil War, statues and other elaborate monuments were put up to commemorate long-dead men who had committed treason against the United States.

Washington and Jefferson owned slaves. But neither of them ever committed treason against the United States.

Lincoln was a racist towards the African-Americans, and he was a genocidist against the Native Americans. But he never committed treason against the United States.

FDR interned the Japanese-Americans, and Truman nuked the Japanese. But neither of them ever committed treason against the United States.

Are you starting to see the point?

There would not be a statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College, Oxford if he had waged war on the British Empire.

There would not be a Stalin Road in Colchester, or a Stalin Avenue in Chatham, if Stalin had been on the other side in 1945. (There would not be much else, either.)

This is not about slavery. It is not even about the memorialisation of the recently fallen, which the Confederates were not by the time that these things were erected.

This is about treason.

And as such, it is a crossroads moment for paleoconservatism as surely as it is for the Trump Presidency.

Just A Second

The news that one in 10 adults now owns a second home makes even more urgent the need to change the law to require planning consent for change of use before a main home can be converted into a second home.

This is a test of Theresa May's sincerity in wanting "a country that works for everyone". It is a test of her party's claim to represent the countryside.

And it is a test of the usefulness of the relatively few MPs for rural areas who are not members of that party.

So Much For Anti-Fascism

Our actions, including those of Spain, created the entity that has attacked Barcelona.

The Syrian Arab Army is at war with that entity, and not without success.

Yet we are at war with the Syrian Arab Army.

So much for anti-Fascism, in Syria as in Ukraine.

On which note, if "the Nazis were left-wing because", oh, who the hell cares, then why is it the neocons who still support them in Ukraine?

And why is it the Alt-Right who wave their flag on the streets of Virginia?

All Power To The People

A couple of emails have asked why I was "hostile" to Pakistan.

But I am a strong proponent of the deportation of Altaf Hussain to stand trial in that country.

The supporters of the present Government of India have murderous intent towards me as a friend of the Dalits and as a proponent of self-determination as, on balance, the best solution to the dispute in Kashmir.

And I see a strong case for Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as the Subcontinent's greatest statesman since independence.

The circumstances of his overthrow and murder, however, serve only to illustrate my point that Britain supported the creation of Pakistan in order to ensure British and then American military bases in a highly strategic area by means of a state defined only by Islam, so that any apparent departure from a hardline Islamist identity had to be put down by the Army with strong British and American support.

For all its imperfections, for 50 years the strongest voice for an alternative vision of Pakistan has been that of the Pakistan People's Party.

Moreover, the proposed and emerging economic corridor from Gwadar and Karachi to Kashgar places Pakistan at the heart of the One Belt One Road initiative, which is one of the most exciting developments of the twenty-first century.

India, on the other hand, refuses to have anything to do with it.

I am not "hostile" to India, either, by the way. But the supporters of its present Government are extremely hostile to me, a fact in which I take great pride.