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Climate Camp and Class

tim — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:06:34 +0000

Picture the scene. The setting sun is glinting off the visors of the police lined up in front of me. It’s the second or third day of the weeklong Camp for Climate Action – already I’ve lost count – and for the second or third time since I last slept it looks as if the cops are about to invade. I’ve just bolted from the opposite end of the site, where I’ve helped dig a defensive trench at another gate. To my left, atop a red van, a woman who sounds scouser than scouse exhaustedly screeches words of encouragement into a megaphone and somehow dances to Radiohead. To my right, a posher than posh couple casually talk up Cornish nationalism and agree that political correctness means white people suffer more oppression than anyone else on the planet. All the campers care about the environment, but that seems to be the only thing we have in common. That and – by now – a dislike of police.

The first Climate Camp was set up in 2006, by activists who had been heavily involved in organising protests against the G8 summit in Gleneagles the year before. Their immediate target was the Drax coal-fired power station in North Yorkshire, but they sought to demonstrate two things. Firstly, that direct action was an effective way of making changes within society – like shutting down power stations – and secondly, that people could live non-hierarchically, in an environmentally sustainable way. Many of the initial organisers self-identified as anarchists, and they wanted climate camps to be anarchy in action.

At least that was the theory. Now in Climate Camp’s third year, the results are highly questionable. In terms of building a movement for environmental sustainability, the camp experience and how it is perceived by the wider population both need to be considered.

Certainly, to be a climate camper is to participate in anarchy in its original and best sense – running things without bosses. The camp is clustered into regional neighbourhoods, which hold meetings every morning. These assemblies discuss organisation within the neighbourhoods and camp policy as a whole, such as whether to accept the police’s latest ultimatum. Decisions are eventually reached via consensus, and ‘spokes’ are delegated to express the collective’s views to the ‘spokes council’, before reporting back. This can be seem like a long-winded process if you’re used to taking orders, but it works to ensure that everyone feels ownership over decisions, and are therefore usually happy to implement them.

Anarchy can work fast too, and not just when riot police arrive on site at 5.30 in the morning. Perhaps my favourite illustration of this took place on the final Sunday evening, when a trail of wooden boards that snaked through the camp needed to stacked. Someone took the initiative to do this, then someone else joined in next to them. Within a couple of minutes, the idea of stacking had gone along the trail, and about quarter of an hour later it was all done. Quite a strenuous task had quickly been completed, without a single order being given.

However, halfway through the week ‘An open letter to the neighbourhoods’ was circulated, authored by ‘…a large group of anti-authoritarian participants in the climate camp’, and expressing ‘deep concern about the direction that the debates have taken over the past days’. It went on to claim that ‘In more than one workshop we have heard calls from the podium for command-and-control and market-orientated measures to address climate change’, and ‘The responses to these proposals have been far too polite’. Calling for ‘A very clear rejection of capitalism, imperialism and feudalism’, as well as ‘all forms and systems of domination and discrimination’, it emphasises ‘A confrontational attitude, since we do not think that lobbying can have a major impact in such biased and undemocratic organisations’.

The letter hit on one of the central problems facing the camp: how to make it ‘a welcoming and non-sectarian space’ for people new to anarchist ideas, whilst ensuring that career environmentalists like George Monbiot and Mark Lynas (who outraged many by backing the government’s nuclear power plans, the former on BBC’s Newsnight) don’t get an easy ride. This issue is compounded by the inevitable tendency of more militant campaigners being drawn to the barricades and defending camp against police.

Saturday was the climax of the week, and had been declared the day when we would “…go beyond talk and culminate in a spectacular mass action to shut down Kingsnorth. Permanently!”. The camp separated into blue, green, silver and orange blocs, with the plan being that we would take different routes over land, sea and air to get to Kingsnorth, arriving en masse, and E.ON bosses would order a shutdown. The end result was that one person climbed over the second security fence onto company property, and was immediately arrested. One boat made it onto a jetty, and a police charge sheet reveals that one of the four water inlet systems was shut down, but E.ON claimed it was “business as usual”. Fifty arrests were made, about half the total for the week.

So much for what actually happened. How much of the intended message survived the mainstream media’s filters and made it into public consciousness?

At the start of the week, coverage focused on the police attacks. Monday, 4th August saw BBC exposure of the police’s brutal dawn raid, giving details of casualties, showing police in riot gear attacking campers, and quoting camp media team members at length. On Tuesday, they ran with local Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews’ claim that the police had been “provocative and heavy-handed”. On the other hand, none of the other almost daily attacks got any press. This may be partly due to the pressure of the police’s announcement that they’d discovered a stash of knives and other weapons in woodland near the site. Campers immediately denied any connection with the stash, and none has since been found. But it seems likely that for many, this discovery provided retrospective cover for the police’s use of force, potentially dissuading waverers from paying a visit.

For the mainstream media, the camp wasn’t so much an experiment in sustainable living as a collection of oddities. When they discussed on-site conditions at all, they seemed more intrigued that there were people in the 21st century who voluntarily used compost toilets and grey water systems, than by the green implications. That this was part of an ‘eco village’ seems largely to have passed them by, a fact illustrated by a Google News search. Bizarrely, the Custer County Chief in Nebraska, USA picked up on it, as did a New Statesman article (not very encouragingly titled ‘Woolly minded hippies?’). This contrasts with 109 results for “climate camp” “compost toilet”. For their part, The Guardian even produced a tourist-style survival guide, entitled ‘How to go to Climate Camp – and enjoy it’.

As in previous years, the camp got the mainstream media talking about the role that carbon emissions play in manmade climate change. However, outlets overwhelmingly portrayed this as a protest against emissions at Kingsnorth in isolation, rather than the structural need of capital to expand, degrading the environment in the process. One deviation from this was when the Kent News quoted camper Anya Patterson as saying “If we are serious about fighting climate change, we have to tackle the root causes, and those are greed and a commitment to relentless economic growth.” Similarly, the non-hierarchical decision-making process was largely ignored, with the BBC merely describing it as ‘exhaustive’ and ‘somewhat baffling’.

One facet of the week that all mainstream media went big on was the idea of direct action. Unfortunately, it was only covered in the most superficial way, focusing on the supposed dangers that campers would be letting themselves in for. Of course, police attack was not listed amongst these hazards, but electrocution and drowning were. The implicit message in all of this was that once people stepped outside the law, their safety was at risk, and that therefore the state and – by extension – police really are there to serve and protect everyone – batons, riding crops, pepper spray and all.

Though the Climate Camp website is declaring the week a resounding success, it can surely be judged a valiant failure in terms of its stated objectives. E.ON were inconvenienced for a few hours, but Kingsnorth was not shut down. Some campers learned about non-hierarchical organising and strategies for sustainable living, but this made little impact on the wider public. ‘Direct action’ became a media buzzword, but only as something irresponsible and to be feared. Carbon emissions became a hot topic, but in the context of the above, only as ‘footprints’ to feel guilty about.

Indeed, some campers were hoping for this. On the Thursday morning, I had a discussion with an activist about his ambitions for what is being dubbed the ‘climate movement’. “To make a lot of people very guilty”, he replied.

This emphasis on guilt as a precursor for individualistic lifestyle change is perhaps the very opposite of what many original organisers hoped for. However, I believe it is fundamental to what is sometimes called ‘green and black’ anarchism. The idea of a class-based transformation of society is rejected – in some cases because of righteous disillusionment with traditional forms of class struggle, in many cases because the individual is from a relatively wealthy background. When such people see impending environmental catastrophe as the number one threat to their lives, their philosophy often becomes more anti-technological than anti-capitalist. Taking this perspective to its logical conclusion, capitalism and the state wouldn’t be much of a problem if they could somehow leave people alone in ecological peace, but since they can’t, both must be overcome. But with international class-based solidarity apparently ruled out, the result is that “setting an example” (as one woman put it) becomes the main method of ideological recruitment.

This sets green and black anarchism up for its own failure. Due to the built-in ideological structures of mainstream media and the state, the example set is of using those compost toilets, getting attacked by police, and putting yourself in mortal danger on your week off. Understandably, this is not an example that many are willing to follow.

The boast that Climate Camp would “shut down Kingsnorth” was always about bravado and bluster, a tendency which people from all strands of activism are vulnerable to in times of unrelenting defeat. But how could Kingsnorth really be shut down?

Medway Council have approved E.ON’s plans, and the final decision rests with the government, who have already indicated they will grant permission. Demolition of the current site and the construction of the new one is scheduled for February next year. On camp, there was a lot of talk about trying to build on current “momentum” and systematically blockading work from then onwards. Clearly, because of the long term commitment to direct action necessary, this would attract a smaller and ever dwindling number of people, unless substantial local support is forthcoming. Even if it is, there are plans for seven more coal-fired stations in the pipeline, plus all the other myriad ways capital is destroying the environment. There simply aren’t enough of us to wage such a struggle.

Any campaign against environmental destruction has to be rooted in a movement against the profit motive and the capitalist system, or it is doomed to symbolic gestures and failure. Industry doesn’t create carbon emissions, working people do, because they are paid to do so and see no viable alternative. While capitalist ideas prevail amongst the working class, invasions of power stations are less direct action and more dramatic lobbying; ultimately impotent appeals to the government to see further than the short term bottom line, something it is organically incapable of doing.

Ironically, this plays into the hands of people like George Monbiot. ‘Climate change is not anarchy’s football’, he patronisingly declared in a post-camp online reply to an article by radical journalist Ewa Jasiewicz, before going on to declare that ‘I don’t know how to solve the problem of capitalism without resorting to totalitarianism’. And every dictatorship needs paid advisors.

No George, climate change is not ‘anarchy’s football’; it’s a matter of life and death. That’s why we need working class revolution, so we can sort it out.

Where there's brass there's muck

tim — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 21:55:25 +0000

The environmental crisis that currently faces our planet is a matter of life or death. The potential for human suffering through environmental devastation over the coming decades is truly staggering. It is unquestionable that the time to act is now. The state and corporations would have us believe that environmentalism is a matter of personal choice. That buying energy-saving light bulbs, carbon-neutral flights or so called “biofuels” have the potential to stall (or even stop) the coming crisis.

Even those within the environmental movement will preach the virtues of “ethical” lifestyle. They argue that it is only a matter of persuading enough consumers to “buy into” environmentalism (with a price-tag far beyond the budget of most working people). While some of these efforts have some impact as shortterm solutions, they fail to address the very system that drives and sustains the destruction of our environment – capitalism.

Calling for increased state intervention to meet environmental targets is equally counterproductive. The state exists for the maintenance and protection of capitalism. Since targets and promises were set there has been no government that has ever reached a target it set to tackle on climate change. Creating a sustainable future for our planet is not in the interests of profit.

Ecology IS a class issue. How many working class people do you know with a private jet? The ruling classes have used the corporate mass media to fight environmentalism at every turn. We live in a truly crazy world where despite scientific proof that humanity is responsible for climate change you are still able with enough money, influence and power to deny this is the case. And why? Because the bottom line is that environmental destruction equals profit.

And who suffers? We already know that those countries in the developing world are likely to suffer the worst affects of Climate Change. Droughts, floods and food shortages affect millions when there is no infrastructure to protect impoverished populations. We have seen in the catastrophic events that followed hurricane Katrina the people who suffer the worst in the face of environmental destruction– the urban working poor.

Last year throughout the UK there was a great deal of hardship following the floods as those in the poorest and worst affected areas lost everything when insurance companies refused to pay out. Across the world working people are poisoned by pesticides, power plants and industrial by-products.

Our message is simple. If we want to great a truly free society, a truly sustainable society then it has to be one which is free from capitalism. Working people across the world have to rise up and fight the system that oppresses and alienates them every day. It’s about time we gave bosses and politicians the boot and built a better future for everyone.

Camp For Climate Action

Despite coal representing the most polluting of fossil fuels, the government plans to build six more atmospherecrunching power stations. Collectively these will emit around 50 million tons of C02 a year!

The camp for climate action represents a radical attempt to build a mass movement against climate change through self-organisation and collective effort. The Camp for Climate Action will be taking place at Kingsnorth coal-fired power station, Kent, 3rd to 11th August. www.climatecamp.org.uk

Where Now?

Ellie Keen — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:03:45 +0000

The British National Party’s success in the London Assembly elections coupled with its small but continued progress across the country provides an ideal opportunity critically to assess where the campaign against the British National Party is going.

For the past few years we have successfully limited the advance of the BNP in local elections, even reversing its fortunes in some of its traditional heartlands such as Sandwell, Oldham and Bradford. Even Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, has publicly admitted that we have developed an election operation that can beat the BNP almost everywhere.

But the truth is that as each year goes by our job is getting harder. There is an ever-growing list of wards at risk to the BNP, it’s becoming more difficult to turn out our voters and even when we do prevent the BNP from winning we do so by increasing turnout rather than necessarily reducing the BNP’s support. In today’s political climate we can sometimes feel a sense of relief just by keeping the BNP down to 30% support in key wards.

It is perfectly feasible to continue this approach over the next couple of years. We will defeat the BNP in many more wards than they win and perhaps we can hold them at bay long enough for wider external factors to fundamentally undercut the BNP’s support.

Or we can perhaps try a radically different approach.

This essay will look at possible approaches. It is the opening of a discussion about where we go now. There are no simple or easy solutions of course, no one anti-fascist strategy can defeat the BNP on its own. However, as I shall try to explain, unless we do something radically different the situation will get a lot worse before it gets better.

To do that we need to really understand what is going on.

We are currently witnessing a tangible change in British politics. The old traditional voting patterns are fragmenting as voters increasingly shop around for a party that best articulates their concerns and even prejudices.

The emergence of the BNP is just one consequence of the change under way, and it is a change far more fundamental than many political commentators and politicians appear to register. It is also primarily an issue affecting the Labour Party.

Labour’s support among its traditional working-class voters has been shrinking for many years and this goes well beyond the current decline in fortunes for the Brown Government. In many core Labour heartlands the party’s support among social groups C2 and DE was at a lower level in 2005, when it won a general election, than in 1983 at the height of its electoral unpopularity during the Thatcher years. It is a point graphically made in the excellent book by Alexander Lee and Timothy Stanley, The End of Politics: Triangulation, Realignment and the Battle for the Centre Ground.

In 1997, 50% of C2 voters and 59% of DE voters supported Labour. By 2005 this had dropped to 40% and 48% respectively.

This drop has been even more pronounced in many core Labour areas. In Sheffield Central Labour polled over 60% of the vote in every election between 1983 and 2001, yet in 2005 its vote fell to 49.9%. In Burnley, Labour’s share of the vote dropped 38.5% during the same period.

“In Yorkshire and Humberside, the North and the North West the swing may have not significantly affected the return of Labour MPs to Westminster but majorities have been seriously diminished and the party’s share of the vote dramatically reduced,” say the authors of The End of Politics.

Some of these disappearing voters switched to other parties and in local elections this was often the Liberal Democrats, but far greater numbers simply stayed at home. A declining turnout and general lack of interest in mainstream political parties was the key winner.

For the Labour leadership this long-term shift has not mattered. In the current political system general elections are not won or lost in the Labour heartlands but in the swing marginals, where a few votes can turn success into defeat. It is these voters towards whom all the main parties increasingly gravitate.

Labour has relied on the fact that its traditional support, although declining, has had nowhere else to go. Many of these voters, whose communities were decimated under Thatcher, would never countenance voting Conservative. A few switched to the Liberal Democrats, others stayed at home but the bulk of those who did vote continued to support Labour.

But this is now changing. The BNP is emerging as the voice of this forgotten working class. A survey of the wards that produced the 25 best BNP votes in May shows plainly the profile of BNP supporting areas. All but one rank well below average in the Indices of Deprivation and the one exception, Queensbury in Bradford, is roughly average. Nearly all are among the top 10% most deprived areas.

In every single one of these wards, including Queensbury, the proportion of the population with no qualifications at all is well below the national average. Likewise, the proportion of people with a level 4/5 qualification (degree or teaching/social work qualification) is a fraction of the national average.

The result is that the BNP is now challenging Labour in many of its heartlands and the effect is startling. As we show elsewhere in this magazine, the BNP received more votes than Labour in the redrawn Dagenham and Rainham constituency. And it was not the only one. As table 1 illustrates, the BNP received more votes than both Labour and the Conservatives in the new Morley and Outwood constit-uency, which will be contested by Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families.

The BNP also beat Labour in one of the two new Havering constituencies and would probably have polled more votes than Labour in Stoke-on-Trent South and Central if it had put forward more candidates.

It is also important not to view the BNP in isolation. Its rising support is just the most visible element of this changing political scene. Other areas, such as South and West Yorkshire and South Wales, have seen a rise in local independent groups.

Who would have thought that Labour could have lost the heartlands of Merthyr Tydfil and Blaenau Gwent in South Wales to independents? In Stoke-on-Trent, a city where ten years ago Labour held all 60 seats, the party could only win four seats this year. In Barnsley, where the BNP polled 21%, the Barnsley Independent Group holds one third of the seats on the council.

Fundamental shift

The breaking with Labour reflects a far more fundamental shift than mid-term blues. For an increasing number of traditional Labour voters the party no longer reflects their interests. Lee and Stanley in The End of Politics blame New Labour’s triangulation policy under which it has moved into the centre ground of politics in order to win the key marginals.

This view is echoed by Labour MP Jon Cruddas. “The politics of middle England become even more dominant in the minds of our political leadership. The danger is that we ignore the reasons for the strength of the BNP, and in so doing reinforce the conditions that have created this situation.”

Many of the people now turning their back on the Labour Party have not shared the economic prosperity of recent years. Many in areas such as Stoke-on-Trent and Dagenham now find themselves in a worse economic position than a few years ago. Great swathes of these traditional Labour voters not only feel ignored but are increasingly seeing in the BNP a party that articulates their interests. This degree of alienation with the mainstream parties was clearly demonstrated in the BBC polling that accompanied its White Season.

A number of studies, such as those conducted by Vision 21 and more recently by Democratic Audit, show clearly that a reoccurring theme among BNP voters is the sense that no one listens to them any more. Labour is increasingly seen as a middle-class party that prioritises minority groups and the interests of more affluent voters over themselves.

This is an international phenomenon. In the United States the phenomenon of Middle American Nationalism has emerged over the past 30 years, which despises the corporate elites above and the “undeserving” poor below.

Across Western Europe we have seen working-class voters turn towards far-right and populist parties. In Denmark working-class voters have shifted from the Labour Party to the Danish People’s Party (DPP). In France the Front National remains dominant in many traditional working-class communities. In Norway, the Progress Party has become the country’s main opposition.

“Workers’ support for the socialist parties has fallen away,” say researchers from the Danish Valgprojektet (Election Project). “There is a class-defined demobilisation … an almost total loss of support for the worker parties among the younger part of the working class, especially among skilled workers.”

Writing in this month’s Red Pepper, the Norwegian writer Magnus Marsdal argues that class politics still exists but these far-right parties are “in effect the new Labour party”. He points to Denmark where in the 2001 elections 61% of the DPP’s support came from working-class voters, nearly three times as many worker voters as the Social Democrats.

In an interesting parallel with England, almost all of these voters were from poorer and less educated sections of society.

All this represents a fundamental shift in British politics and the real fear is that we are heading the way of so many other European countries where large segments of the working class have broken with their traditional centre-left parties and moved to the right.

The root of BNP support

The BNP is a racist party fuelled by a leadership that draws its political roots from fascism. That much is clear. However, its appeal goes far wider than the issue of race. The BNP is tapping into political alienation and economic deprivation. It is providing a voice for those who increasingly feel ignored and cast aside by Labour. The BNP is articulating their concerns, grievances and even prejudices.

Race is obviously a key factor but it is not the only issue. Race was a defining factor in the initial rise of the BNP in 2001. Riots, growing racial tensions and international terrorism conspired to build support for the BNP. But this is less so now.

A cursory look at where the BNP is gaining support shows that race is not necessarily the dominant issue that it was in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford. There are very small non-white communities in Stoke-on-Trent, Barnsley and Nuneaton and Bedworth. These are traditional working-class areas where people feel abandoned and ignored. It is into this alienation that the BNP moves. Yes, race is certainly a central key, but more because it provides a prism through which people can see and understand the world and, more importantly, an easy scapegoat to blame for their own situation.

But the BNP provides far more than a racist scapegoat. It gives some voters a sense of belonging, an articulation of their own frustration – even a new white identity.

This point was graphically illustrated in the BBC White Season, particularly the film set in a working men’s club in Wibsey, Bradford. “I wish I could be happy again,” said Graham Anderson. In an increasingly complicated and disorientated world it is easy to see how the BNP can point the finger of blame while simultaneously offering a new sense of white community.

Whatever the merits of the Season as a whole it did reflect the sense of loss, political abandonment and a search for identity and belonging of a minority of people in this country.

In an increasingly complex world, in which Britain’s place has changed, Britain itself is fragmenting and the old economic certainties provided by traditional employment are long gone. It is no coincidence that the BNP has emerged in those communities that have experienced most economic decline and change, principally in the former coalfields and car producing areas.

Why does all this matter for anti-fascists? Unless we can understand why the BNP is growing we have little chance of defeating it.

Anti-fascism has to continue to focus around elections. After all, this is how BNP support is measured and nothing helps the BNP grow more than substantial electoral victories.

However, it is clear that our message also has to develop. Yes, we still have to identify and turn out the anti-BNP vote, as we have successfully done in so many areas, but we must also have something to say to potential BNP voters.

A simple “Don’t vote nazi” is an irrelevant slogan that needs to be discarded immediately. That is not to say that we should not highlight the real politics of the BNP and its leadership but we must address people where they currently are. And in terms of that, very few people see the BNP as a nazi party.

It is also clear that a simple Hope not Hate message is insufficient. “You tell us to vote for Hope not hate but there is no hope round here,” one voter told me in Dagenham. Similar reports came in from Stoke-on-Trent and Nuneaton.

We need to replace empty slogans with substance, and that means involving ourselves in the community as never before. If the BNP support is driven by racial prejudice, often whipped up by the national media, economic deprivation and a loss of identity, then these are the three issues we need to contest.

Nationally, we must challenge and expose the racist lies and myths peddled in the media while also ending the muscular bidding war between the political parties over race and immigration. Not only is this politically damaging (Labour will never appease its opponents on immigration), it is also quite dishonest. The economic boom of recent years has been built on the influx of migrant workers, our public services would collapse without its non-white workforce and the pensions crisis would be even more severe without newcomers replacing those British people moving abroad in record numbers.

But it is locally that anti-fascists must focus their energies. Searchlight has long argued for a localised strategy to defeat the BNP and the need for this is even greater now. Each area is different and requires a slightly different solution.

Thinking nationally, acting locally

In the recent election we found that our general Hope not hate leaflets worked in some places but less well in others. The general trend was that they were more effective where the BNP was standing for the first time. In other places, such as Stoke-on-Trent and Dagenham, where support for the BNP is deeply entrenched, we need a different approach and one that addresses local issues and concerns.

Where we produced more localised leaflets, in Burnley, West Yorkshire and Sandwell, our material appears to have gone down a lot better.

Of course there is a limit to how much localised material we can physically produce during a short election campaign. Over the past few years we have tried to prioritise the most high risk areas and those where we have the best local contacts. Two ways of overcoming this are to widen the pool of people who can produce leaflets, and to produce more localised material at other times of the year outside election periods.

To achieve this we need more local groups – and building groups with an ability to intervene locally must be our key priority over the next two years. A good functioning local group is likely to achieve far more success. It needs to be community-orientated, broad-based and non-dogmatic.

It needs to be able to address local issues and concerns while having roots within the community. It needs to be able to form partnerships with other local groups to address issues and improve the area, while also gaining credibility within the community to break down barriers and promote cohesion.

Two good examples of community campaigning are Keighley and Epping. In Keighley the local TUC and Bradford anti-fascists confronted BNP lies over grooming, where others had ignored what was going on, while simultaneously assisting local community groups through good old fashioned community development work.

The Redbridge and Epping Forest Together group has adopted a slightly different approach but it too has been successful. It has sought to build a broad coalition of political parties and the non-aligned, and has involved residents’ and faith groups. While it has not done the community development work of Keighley, it has helped alter the political climate enough to defeat the BNP in two of the three seats it was defending.

Forming local Hope not hate groups would also be an excellent way of involving trade unionists, many of whom refuse to do any direct campaigning for the Labour Party any more. In addition to bringing extra people into activity it strengthens the relationship between unions and the local community.

There are other groups that need to be included from the start. Among them are faith groups, residents’ associations, community groups and the voluntary sector – people who care enough about their local community to be active while also having the respect of others.

It some places, such as Barking and Dagenham, one of the fundamental problems is the absence of any mainstream alternative to Labour, so the BNP is the sole beneficiary of the anti-Labour vote. For anti-fascists, this is a problem as it is hard to build a political coalition in an area where there is no one other than Labour to work with.

In these areas community work is even more important. In addition to the basic anti-BNP material to dispel the party’s lies and highlight the inadequacies of its councillors, we must collaborate with existing community and faith groups to help rebuild civic society and create an alternative pole of attraction to the BNP. It is often the lack of local positive institutions and community organisers that contributes to the feeling of despair and inability to change things for the better.

Empowering local communities to improve their local area in a positive fashion through working with and mobilising local people is essential. This includes developing a leadership programme that can provide basic organising skills and give confidence to local people.

Searchlight is not opposed to concerts and large city-centre activities but these cannot be the main focus. Large concerts, costing hundreds of thousands of pounds to stage, do not deliver leaflets in the key areas nor do they address the concerns and grievances of the people likely to vote BNP. They certainly have a place in mobilising and organising activists but the important work has got to be done at a more local level. It might not be glamorous and it might not be easy but it is vital.

Political solution

Of course on a wider level the BNP needs to be defeated politically. While much of this is outside the remit and capability of Searchlight we will strive to argue that the rise of the BNP is the consequence of the shift to the centre of all the mainstream parties. There can be no disguising this fact.

There will be some who argue for a solely class-based approach to anti-fascism but a refusal to work with the mainstream parties will only hand dozens of seats to the BNP and quicken its electoral advance.

The majority of people are still opposed to the racist message of the BNP and while it is important that we mobilise these voters we must also begin to address, at a local level, the grievances and insecurities that are giving rise to the BNP in the first place.

The clock is ticking and time is running out. The economic downturn, the credit crunch, the housing collapse and rising living costs are only going to increase insecurities over the next year or two. The political parties, and in particular Labour, are letting down a large section of the British population. Without radical and immediate change, Britain could experience the political earthquake that is engulfing much of Europe.

Book Review: A People's History of the World

tim — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 11:51:49 +0000

Flavour of the moment academic philosopher guru Slavoj Zizek recently proclaimed: “One of the clearest lessons of the last few decades is that capitalism is indestructible.”

Bombarded with daily news of international events as we are, it might be understandable that those living in less esoteric circumstances and with memories limited to the result of the last TV football match could well believe that history is simply one damn thing after another, lacking all understandable coherence. But a self-professed Marxist should surely see the world in a longer perspective than decades.

On the other hand, you need to have heroic ambitions to tackle history “from the Stone Age to the New Millennium.”

Chris Harman fulfils those ambitions magnificently in this new edition of his 1999 world history which demonstrates a breadth of scholarship coupled to a lucid style and a clear understanding of the unfolding patterns of human experience.

This last comes from his Marxist analysis, which, along with history itself, we are often told is dead. Without some rational framework, however – and Marx provides the only one that holds water – our world has been and still is a living nightmare.

Moving from the hunter-gatherer societies of pre-history – increasingly a misnomer as we learn more about our early forebears, who seemed to have shared none of the exploitative gender and racial values that inform our brave new world – Harman charts a course through the emerging civilisations which increasingly failed to reconcile internal conflicting social forces.

Throughout, he points his argument with needle-sharp examples. Slavery, which underpinned empires such as Rome, resulted in a lack of technological progress. With a limitless slave workforce, society has nothing to gain from investing in new methodologies of production, consequently providing easy prey for more dynamic predators.

Understandably, the greater part of Harman’s history is devoted to the world that emerged from medieval feudalism and the rise of capitalism.

Here, he takes on the labyrinthine complications of world power politics with deceptive ease. In his analyses of the revolutions that have punctuated the modern period, he demonstrates how the leaders of these movements – Cromwell, Robespierre, Lenin – were circumscribed by the social conditions of their times. As Marx knew, “human beings make history, but not under conditions of their own choosing.”

Harman believes that there is an essential logic to the apparently bewildering confusion of history. For instance, he answers a question that has always puzzled me.

Was it simply a psychopathic Hitler-imposed decision to continue the Holocaust programme even when, facing defeat, German communications and vital war resources would be overtaxed?

Harman suggests that, by then, anti-semitism provided the only binding ideological element for the corrupt nazi hierarchy.

Acknowledging that “capitalism is a more dynamic form of class society than any before in history,” Harman nevertheless demolishes the parroted post-modernist claim of the end of ideology and class conflict.

The industrial workers may have virtually disappeared from the Western imperialist world, but, characteristically using statistics tellingly, Harman points out that, “by the 1980s, South Korea alone contained more industrial workers than the whole world had when Marx and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto.”

Our own teachers, nurses, local authority and post office workers know that overalls are not an essential qualification for membership of an exploited class.

Zizek needs reminding of Marx’s dictum. Philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it. And the times, they are a-changing.

The Colour of London

tim — Thu, 08 May 2008 09:18:58 +0000

We have been here, or somewhere quite like it, before. Britain’s modernising Labour government presiding over a financial crisis; people’s incomes squeezed by a rise in the cost of living; the government afflicted by its close links to an American administration fighting an unpopular foreign war; and many people worried about the effects of immigration. The voters used the opportunity of the local government elections to humiliate the national government. Labour even lost its London stronghold. This would be the precursor to a Conservative victory in the next general election.

Of course, the specifics were different forty years ago. Harold Wilson had a more engaging personality and was closer to the common man than is Gordon Brown. Nevertheless, when Prime Minister Wilson declared in November 1967, following the devaluation of the Pound Sterling: “It does not mean that the pound here in Britain, in your pocket, in your purse or bank has been devalued”, his credibility crumbled. The people’s mistrust was vindicated when inflation rose from about 3% to over 6%.

There followed, in April 1968, the infamous speech by the Conservative Shadow Defence Minister Enoch Powell, in which he quoted Virgil, a poet of the ancient Roman Empire:

As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see `the River Tiber foaming with much blood’.

Powell appealed to the white-skinned plebians in the home island of the defunct British Empire. He identified the dark-skinned migrants from the other lands of the ex-empire as the cause of the troubles of the native workers:

...they found themselves made strangers in their own country.They found their wives unable to obtain hospital beds in childbirth, their children unable to obtain school places, their homes and neighbourhoods changed beyond recognition, their plans and prospects for the future defeated; at work they found that employers hesitated to apply to the immigrant worker the standards of discipline and competence required of the native-born worker…

In case anybody should fail to get the message, Enoch Powell quoted from an alleged conversation with a working class man living in his Wolverhampton constituency:...In this country in 15 or 20 years’ time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.

The other leaders of the Conservative Party could not be seen to sanction such inflammatory statements.They did not want rivers of blood to flow, and they did want the additional and relatively inexpensive labour which immigration brought to the British economy. In fact Powell himself, during his period as Conservative Health Minister, had encouraged black workers from the Caribbean to come to Britain in order to fill the low-paid positions in Britain’s National Health Service.

Powell was dismissed from his post. But through this speech, Powell had snatched the political whip from the faltering hand of the Labour Party and put it into the hand of the Conservative Party. As the chronology in the ’1968 in Europe’ Teaching and Research project recalls:

09.05.1968: Local elections in Britain include race as an unofficial, yet important issue. In polls 74% claim agreement with Powell while 15% claim they disagree with him and 11% are undecided.

The Labour vote collapsed, the Conservative Party was triumphant. The Conservatives went on to win the general election of 1971. While the Labour Party’s fortunes would recover, it would always remain vulnerable, especially during periods of economic hardship, to the loss of a significant number of poor and working class voters who are influenced by racist ideas.

And Enoch Powell had inflicted severe damage, not just to the Labour Party, but to community relations in Britain. One of the main figures in the task of re- constructing ethnic relationships was a London-based Labour politician, Ken Livingstone. In 1981, during the dark days of Thatcherism, Livingstone unexpectedly emerged as the leader of the Greater London Council (GLC). Unable to persuade voters in the capital city to remove Ken Livingstone from his post, the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher abolished the GLC in 1986. However, Livingstone’s successes in his position, which included reducing the price of using public transport, and community development through a multi- cultural approach, left a powerful and positive memory.

In 2000, a locally elected political leadership for Britain’s capital city was re-constituted, in the dual form of the Greater London Assembly and the position of Mayor of London. In defiance of Labour Party leaders Tony Blair and Gordon Brown who saw him as too left wing, Livingstone stood for the post of mayor, and won overwhelmingly.

Vindicated in defeat

We have moved on. Nowadays, most people in Britain would not claim agreement with the divisive racist rhetoric of Enoch Powell, and fortunately, there is currently no figure equivalent to Powell within the mainstream political establishment. But, no less than in May 1968, the outcome of the May 2008 election in London hinged largely on the intersection of ethnicity and class, with the scene for failure set by the inability of the UK government to deal with global economic and political problems.

Ken Livingstone, the incumbent Mayor, graced his defeat after eight years in office with a noble untruth:

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get an extra few points that would take us to victory and the fault for that is solely my own. You can’t be mayor for eight years and then if you don’t at third term say it was somebody else’s fault. I accept that responsibility and I regret that I couldn’t take you to victory.”

Other politicians were right to disagree. The BBC reported:...Justice Secretary Jack Straw said Labour as a whole should shoulder the blame for Mr Livingstone’s loss.

He told BBC News: “I disagree with Ken in one particular only, that we all share the responsibility for the defeat that he suffered yesterday.”

Mr Straw admitted that the row over the 10p tax rate had left some voters “understandably very upset”.

Brian Paddick, the unsuccessful Liberal challenger for the post of London mayor, put it more personally: “Labour suffered because of the failure of Gordon Brown.”

These statements are undeniably correct. In the rest of England and Wales, where the record of Gordon Brown was the matter on which the voters delivered their verdict, the Labour vote fell catastrophically, putting the party into third place, behind the Liberals. In London, where the records of both Prime Minister Brown and Mayor Livingstone were put to the test, it was a much closer contest, and one in which the Labour vote actually increased from its level in the previous contest in 2004.

An examination of the election results in London shows that in every constituency, the vote for Ken Livingstone as mayor was much higher than the vote for the Labour Party candidates for membership of the Greater London Assembly; also, although he lost, the actual number of votes cast for Mr Livingstone was significantly higher than in 2004.

The London election was preceded by a long and intense smear campaign against Livingstone, in which he was accused of having links to Islamic terrorism; making anti-semitic remarks; employing a cabal composed of Trotskyists and financially corrupt individuals; being drunk on duty; and of being an apologist for the murder, by Metropolitan Police officers, of an innocent Brazilian immigrant.

This campaign, led by the capital’s only non-freesheet daily newspaper, the London Evening Standard, rose to a crescendo after the Conservatives adopted a celebrity candidate, the affable Boris Johnson.

As the results demonstrate, the anti-Ken campaign made little dent in Livingstone’s main base of support. Rather, correctly fearing that he would be defeated in a close contest, the social groups to whom Ken Livingstone most appeals turned out in very high numbers; and when they got to the polling stations, most of them also voted for the Labour Party candidates for the Greater London Assembly (GLA). So, although in the rest of the country the Labour vote collapsed, in London it increased. Labour held all its existing GLA seats, and in one London constituency, Brent and Harrow, the Labour Party candidate for the GLA position unseated the incumbent Conservative. Even in defeat, Livingstone proved to be an asset to the Labour Party.

But those who would vote for Boris Johnson, the celebrity candidate of the Conservative Party, turned out in even higher numbers.

Class, race and city

The outcome of the contest between Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson illustrates the enduring relevance of some hugely important political factors. Firstly, those of class and ethnicity; it shows also how closely class and ethnicity are related. The people who surged into the polling stations to support Livingstone included the black and other ethnic minorities, most of whom are working class and / or poor; and also the majority among the poor and working class whites who do not hold racist opinions. These groups, who mainly although not exclusively inhabit the inner-city areas, were not put off by the virulent anti-Ken smear campaign- because not only does Ken speak for them, he has also delivered to them.

Surrounding the class and ethnic aspects was an emotional issue: that of identification with London – not merely as the capital of ones country- but London as ones home city, wherever one was born or ones parents were born; and furthermore as a multicultural city and an international city. Livingstone’s promotion of multiculturalism, during and since his period as leader of the Greater London Council in the 1980s, and his promotion of London on the world stage since becoming Mayor, has helped to transform, and to strengthen among many people, the feeling of identity with the city. This has been assisted by a material factor also- the rising global importance of London as a hub of world finance.

Of course, the social groups which comprised Ken Livingstone’s core base are the same groups which have traditionally been the core base of Labour Party support not just in London but throughout Great Britain. As Gordon Brown is discovering, if a party or a leader becomes perceived by their core base of support as no longer articulating their interests or delivering to them, he, she or it will begin to fail.

Livingstone did deliver. His success in delivering, within the limited range of powers available to the Mayor of London, has involved some byzantine compromises; indeed, as mayor for eight years, he demonstrated in practice his mastery of the mixed success: difficult compromises, ensuring that the deals he made had positive effects outweighing the negatives. But, due to the nature of these covert agreements, he could never ask to be judged on this great ability; neither could he escape responsibility for the negative aspects.

One of Mayor Livingstone’s successes was the tackling of racist behaviour and attitudes within the Metropolitan Police Force. To achieve this, Livingstone needed to win over and shore up the faction among the senior police officers who would get on board with his anti-racist agenda. To simplify, one aspect of the de- facto deal was that the police would receive a rise in funding, allowing a generous increase in the number of policemen and women; this- so long as they were not racist police officers- was no bad thing, and it allowed the mayor to claim credit for the overall reduction in crime which has occurred in the capital. But there was another necessary aspect of the tacit compromise- the mayor had to give his unstinting political support to the police, and particularly to the leader of the fragile faction within the force which was with Livingstone’s agenda- Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair.

Fortunately for the Conservatives, disaster struck in the aftermath of the 7/7 terrorist bombing in London. Suspected as a potential bomber merely because he was a man who was in the wrong place, at the wrong time and with the wrong colour skin, the Brazilian electrical worker Jean Charles de Menezes was lynched at Stockwell tube station in South London by an armed unit of the Metropolitan Police on the 22nd of July 2005. There then followed a campaign, opportunistically supported by the Conservative Party, to dismiss Sir Ian Blair from his post. The logic of his position required the mayor to excuse the shocking murder and to defend the Commissioner. For this, Ken Livingstone became the subject of hypocritical outrage.

Manufacturing dissent

Another of Livingstone’s mixed successes was his management of the public transport system. Defeated in the struggle to prevent the part-privatisation of the London Underground rail network (known as the tube), he was left with the responsibility of managing the dire consequence- to get to work using the tube, it costs the equivalent of about ten US dollars a day, thus either excluding or exacting a punitive tribute from lower-paid workers. Those who can afford, or have no choice but to use the tube, face their entry to the tunnels with little hope of a comfortable journey and no certainty of punctual arrival.

However, on the buses- used for short journeys by most people, and even for long journeys by the poor, the lower-paid workers, the nightworkers and also the night revellers- it was a different story. Bus services in England as a whole have been declining since their disastrous privatisation and de-regulation by Margaret Thatcher in the mid-1980s, thus forcing people into their cars or into isolation; in the English shires and metropolitan areas excluding London, this dismal process has continued under New Labour. But, in an unacknowledged concession for Ken Livingstone’s acceptance of defeat on the issue of tube privatisation, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair permitted the London Mayor to aquire sufficient powers and funds to roll hundreds of new and improved buses out onto the roads. As transport pundit Christian Wolmar wrote: Livingstone… concentrated on a deliberate and systematic policy of improving bus services.

New routes have been introduced, the bus fleet has been modernised, notably through the introduction of 300 bendy-buses that are easier to board and leave than the old double deckers, and frequencies have been increased. This has reaped major benefits in terms of passenger numbers.

The buses were cheap for anyone to use, free for children and pensioners; and thanks to a deal with Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, half-price for the very poorest Londoners. Under Mayor Livingstone’s reign, bus passenger numbers in the capital increased by 45%.

Livingstone could not be allowed to get away with this achievement. Ken had produced buses, but the media and the Conservatives could manufacture dissent. The unruly behaviour of some of the children who rode to school by bus was blamed on the mayor. Boris Johnson took up cycling- a means of transport for which Ken Livingstone has been the acknowledged champion; Boris rode out as an enthusiastic exponent of the ‘health and safety culture’, hitherto denigrated by the Conservatives. His foppish blond hair flying in the polluted wind of London’s West End, Mr Johnson declared that the ‘bendy- buses’- a key component of the new public transport fleet- were dangerous, their articulated rear-ends a fearful menace to the bicycling fraternity. He proposed to replace them with an updated version of the obsolete but fondly remembered double-decker ‘routemaster’ bus.

Of course, there was an anti-Boris campaign which sought to match the anti-Ken campaign; pointing out that Boris Johnson is a posh ‘hooray Henry’, an Eton educated buffoon, prone to making remarks that insult poor and black people: a man with not a care in the world and unfit to hold a responsible job. And when pressed, Mr Johnson had no idea what it would cost to phase out the bendy-buses and replace them with his proposed new routemasters.

Paradoxically, the negative campaigning led not to a decrease but to an increase in both the number of votes and the share of the vote for both the main candidates. The attacks on Boris Johnson did not deter the kind of people whose votes a Conservative candidate was likely to attract; and these were in any case people who were unlikely to consider voting for Livingstone: mainly the better off white people, who live in the suburbs and therefore identify less with London as a city, who are more likely to travel in a four-wheel-drive car than a bendy-bus, and who would not be affected by a revival of racist policing. Another group also voted for Johnson: a minority among the poor and working class whites who, believing that they are in competition with immigrants for jobs and social resources, are influenced by racist ideas.

Because it was clear that only Johnson or Livingstone could win, and also because the nature of the ballot allowed voters to spread their crosses between different candidates and parties, a good deal of tactical voting took place. From the results it can be reliably surmised that a large number of Liberal Party supporters voted for Johnson in order to get rid of Ken Livingstone and to inflict a defeat on the Labour government of Gordon Brown. This added at least 5% to Johnson’s vote. Of equal significance, the fascist British National Party (BNP) told its racially- motivated supporters to vote for Johnson, and nearly all of them followed this instruction. The BNP’s support was just over 5%. Livingstone lost by 6%. In the end, it was this tactical convergence by the fascists and many of the Liberals which gave Johnson the edge over Livingstone.

The collapsing compromise

Still, as Jack Straw and Brian Paddick observed, the main political factor in the defeat of Ken Livingstone was the perceived failure of the Labour government and specifically Gordon Brown at national level. Reasons mooted for Brown’s failure include his dour personality and his poor tactical judgement; without doubt, he lacks the ruthlessness and the hypnotic charm of his predecessor Tony Blair.

But Prime Minister Brown has a deeper problem. Like Livingstone, Brown is a man who pursues his agenda through compromise, and the main compromise which worked for Gordon Brown during his years as Chancellor of the Exchequer has come unstuck. During the first two terms following the stunning ‘New Labour’ victory in 1997, Chancellor Brown was able to deliver, to nearly everybody, something of what they wanted. Big business, the City of London and the very rich got their privatisation, their de-regulation and their tax cuts, and this attracted huge amounts of international money into the UK. Brown used much of this money to invest in public services, thereby not only improving those services but boosting employment and pay levels; some of the money was also channelled through the state benefits system to raise the incomes of low-paid workers and other poor people. Thus resistance to privatisation and de-regulation was blunted and concern about rising inequality was allayed.

For nearly a decade, the British economy rode high on the back of globalisation and the increasing role of financial services. This was put down to competence, Gordon Brown took political credit for this, and most groups in society drew a dividend, even though the gains were not equally shared. But now the forces of globalisation are delivering higher prices for petrol and food, and the financial services are in crisis.

Perhaps Brown saw this coming. He has certainly sought to create a refuge for himself by advancing the concept of Britishness. But while Ken Livingstone made himself into ‘Mr London’ by bringing the ethnic communities together through multiculturalism, Gordon Brown has been trying to become ‘Mr Britain’ at a time when the components of Britain- England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland- are drawing further and further apart; and while also, Britain’s image as perceived by the people who live in it is badly damaged by the UK’s foreign policy, including the subservient relationship to the USA and the Iraq war.

Can the Labour Party recover? Following the debacle of 1968, Labour had recovered enough by 1974 to be winning general elections. One of the main reasons for this was that the Conservative government of Edward Heath decided to take on the powerful trade unions, and in response the unions used their power to smash the Conservative government.

But, with the complicity of Gordon Brown, most of the industries in which the unions were powerful no longer exist; the remaining trade union members are hamstrung by legislation which, with the complicity of Gordon Brown, makes it very difficult to go on strike effectively; and, with the complicity of Gordon Brown, an ideological atmosphere has developed in which it is impossible for the Labour Party to be associated with strike action.

Nevertheless, even in the darkest days, opportunities emerge, and leaders emerge to make use of those opportunities; as when, in 1981, Ken Livingstone unexpectedly emerged as the leader of the Greater London Council.

Challenging the Whitewash

Ellie Keen — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:00:00 +0000

The white working class is an embittered minority: racist, bigoted, broken and fragmented. That was the view of several programmes in the recent BBC television series The White Season. The problem, according to the programme makers, is that the white working class has lost its identity due to the impact of de-industrialisation and immigration. Richard Klein, the commissioning editor of the White Season, went further, saying “I feel that the white working class has been ignored by the political classes because they feel the pressure of political correctness.”

The advert for The White Season showed a white face gradually being obliterated by different languages being written over it. The message is clear: multiculturalism and anti-racism are bad for white workers and leave them feeling alienated and threatened. This was reinforced by one of the participants in a programme about a working men’s club in Bradford who said, “There is no fairness. A lot of people feel the same way. I am not a racist but I do think the ethnic communities seem to be favoured more than the indigenous people.”

Several of the programmes gave the impression that only the fascist British National Party (BNP) speaks up for white working class people. If the picture the programme makers paint of the working class is true, there is little hope for those of us who want to live in a multiracial society. So it is important to challenge and dispel what is being passed as fact about the white working class in Britain.

First, how are working class people represented in the media? They are on our television screens every day. There are numerous reality programmes showing hoodied kids with Asbos being drunk and disorderly or stealing cars.

There is rarely a programme which shows working class people just living their lives. Even the soaps are distorted.

How often do you see a real worker in EastEnders – a postal worker or a supermarket warehouse worker – not someone running their own business, or selling dodgy goods in the pub?

Contrast this with the rafts of shows portraying and catering to middle class lifestyles: holiday programmes; Location, Location, Location; guides on how to buy properties around the world. Almost every sitcom is about an angst ridden middle class family. And having a handful of programmes that cater for Asian and black viewers does not alter the fact that black and Asian people are even more unrepresented on our screens.

The working class is seen as interested only in bingo, football and drinking. There is nothing wrong with any of these leisure pursuits, but it is a totally one-dimensional view of the working class. Historian Jonathan Rose’s fascinating book, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, shows that working class people have always desired culture, including theatre, music and reading.

Over the past 50 years the so-called indigenous population and successive waves of immigrants have borrowed heavily from each other’s cultures, creating new and inspiring art forms. Despite this, the media reduces all working class people to a series of crude caricatures – whites are “chavs” and louts, black kids are gun carrying gangsters and Asians are potential terrorists.

We don’t see the tens of thousands of people who have attended Stop the War meetings and anti-fascist concerts and rallies around the country in recent years. Tony Benn pointed out on Radio 4 last month that the media never quote from the speeches or discussion at such political rallies. At no point do television cameras come and film the primarily working class audiences expressing their view about the world. If they did, they would see that working class people are articulate and knowledgeable.

Of course, if you go to some working men’s clubs you are going to see workers at their most isolated and backward. But to generalise from this gives a completely false picture of the working class in Britain.

There is no doubt that three decades of Labour and Tory governments, and neoliberal and anti-union policies have damaged working class communities. This is most obvious in some mining areas which were decimated by the Tory pit closure programmes. Some of these communities have not recovered.

Cities like Bradford and the London Borough of Barking & Dagenham (both of which were featured in The White Season) have also been hit by a decline in certain sectors of manufacturing. The Bradford textile industry was wiped out, and Dagenham saw the near total closure of the Ford car plant (the biggest local employer) and dozens of component factories. This has left both areas blighted by unemployment, poverty and social deprivation.

But even these areas are not wastelands. In Bradford unemployment stood at 6.4 percent in 2006 and in Barking & Dagenham at 8.5 percent. Obviously life for those who are unemployed is harsh, but the vast majority of people are in work. Unemployment nationally remains relatively low (an average of 5.2 percent). Life is not wonderful under Gordon Brown, but most working class people do not live on the fringes of society. They have relatively stable employment, even if it is low paid.

Yes, there are impoverished white workers. The TUC has calculated that 19 percent of white people live in poverty. However, the situation is much worse for ethnic minorities. For example, 58 percent of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis are defined as poor, as are 47 percent of black non-Caribbean and 34 percent of black Caribbean workers.

Attacks by successive governments, but in particular Labour, have left many people demoralised and confused. When the government pursuing these policies is meant to be on our side, the bitterness and feeling of alienation are all the deeper. This is further compounded by the fact that the Labour Party, which had strong roots and an ideological hold in many working class areas, has lost many of its local activists. When Blair came to power there were nearly 500,000 party members. Today there are about 170,000.

This demoralisation and the resulting political vacuum have pushed a minority into the arms of the BNP. In the past seven years the BNP vote has increased from 3,022 to 292,911 in local council elections. While this vote is concentrated in a small number of areas its support has risen as Labour has failed to deliver. This is a worrying development that needs to be countered.

It is popular to explain such changes with the claim that the working class is in decline and at worst decimated. But in reality the working class is bigger than ever. Major structural changes have taken place. In 1978 some 6.9 million people worked in manufacturing industries. By 2005 this number had fallen to 3.2 million and it continues to fall. But manufacturing still represents a serious sector of the British working class. It is very well organised, and remains a powerful and important sector of the British economy. But the decline has left its scars.

However, these changes have coincided with the growth of white collar and service sector jobs, which are becoming increasingly unionised. Teachers, council workers and civil servants now make up an important militant part of the labour movement.

Seven million people belong to trade unions, which remain the biggest voluntary organisation in the country. When was the last time the BBC screened a film about a trade union? They rarely talk about them, unless to denounce them as a throwback to a bygone age.

White workers make up 93 percent of all trade union members. Despite the under-representation of black and Asian workers at the top of unions, anti-racism is taken very seriously. There have been a number of struggles against racist managers and fights to incorporate migrant workers on the same pay and conditions as their fellow workers. (Strangely, this is ignored by the media.) Unions like Usdaw and Unite now employ Polish and Eastern European full time organisers to encourage migrant workers to join their unions.

Every major union in the country supports Unite Against Fascism and the Stop the War Coalition. Of course, no one can deny that some working class people hold racist ideas, but life is much more complicated than this.

The dramatic rise in Islamophobia and the growing offensive against Muslims since the 9/11 attacks has been driven by the government and fuelled by scare stories in the media. Multiculturalism, the idea that people from many cultures can live together and be enriched by our different identities, is under attack on many fronts. Gordon Brown claims he wants to instil an idea of Britishness into the population, calling for a “British Day” and daily pledges of allegiance in schools, US style, to queen and flag.

The effect of such talk has been to encourage the perception that some inherent part of white Britain’s culture is being lost because of immigration. A recent BBC Newsnight survey found that 4 percent of people in 1997 thought immigration was a problem. In 2007 it had risen to 38 percent. What has changed in the past ten years? In 1997 people hoped that things were going to change for the better. Ten years of a Labour government which has relentlessly attacked working class people has led to a level of despair where immigrants can become scapegoats.

However, integration between black, white and Asian people in working class communities is much higher than we are led to believe. In a recent BBC poll of working class people, despite the loaded nature of the questions and a very narrow definition of “working class”, 42 percent thought that immigration was a positive thing.

In 1955 two thirds of the British population considered themselves prejudiced, and half of these said they were deeply prejudiced. By 2001 only 4 percent said they were very prejudiced and 35 percent said they were a little prejudiced. In 1958 a Gallup poll found that 71 percent of Britons were opposed to mixed marriage. Today the figure is so low that Gallup no longer records the statistic.

Levels of racial integration in British society are highest among working class people. Britain is not like the US – there are no ghettos. According to the Office for National Statistics 70 percent of people describe their ethnicity as white and their religion as Christian. There are only 14 wards in Britain where an ethnic group other than white makes up more than half of the population. In none of these wards does that single group reach as much as 75 percent of the population. Compare that with the 5,000 wards in Britain where whites make up more than 98 percent.

Integration is shown in the most obvious way by people’s personal relationships. The Observer newspaper stated that Britain has the highest rate of interracial marriage in Europe. The census records over 100,000 children of mixed Asian and white origin, and 158,000 children of mixed Caribbean and white origin.

Working class communities are mixed. People from all different nationalities live and work together, with their children going to the same schools. There are exceptions to this, particularly in education, but integration is the general trend.

The most recent arrivals are workers from Eastern Europe. Along with Muslims they have faced a horrific onslaught of abuse from both media and politicians. Such treatment has been a recurring theme in British history. Jewish workers in the 1930s and black and Asian workers over the past 30 years have suffered similar abuse and have been forced to defend their communities. A section of the white working class has always stood alongside them.

Integration

Even with the newest migrant workers integration, not separation, is the norm – especially in the workplace. Because Eastern European workers have to register their job when they enter Britain we know exactly where they work, and what the figures reveal is a picture of integration. These workers are not on the margins of the employment sector. Of the 388,000 Eastern European workers who came to Britain between 2005 and 2006, 24,000 are packers, 10,000 work in sales and 25,000 are warehouse workers. In other words, they work for big corporations like Tesco, Morrisons and Asda. They work and socialise alongside white and black workers and belong to the same unions and social clubs.

The whole history of the British working class has been shaped by immigration – from French Huguenots, Jews from Eastern Europe, Irish Roman Catholics, and, in the second half of the 20th century, African-Caribbeans and Asians, through to today’s Eastern European migrants.

Far from being a bastion of reaction, the working class has a proud history of being at the centre of resistance to racism. After all, where did Gandhi stay when he came to Britain? In the working class area of Poplar in East London. It was white and Jewish workers who stopped the fascist Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts in 1936 at Cable Street, and it was black and white youth who stopped the National Front marching in Lewisham in 1977.

Today there are real and deep contradictions inside the white working class. There is resentment, a feeling of being disenfranchised by a Labour government which seems more interested in big business than its traditional electorate. A minority blame black people and Asians, and feel their identity is being taken away. But there are bigger and stronger forces inside the working class which resist this and attempt to build real communities.

When you dig below the crude stereotypes and assumptions about the white working class the real concerns emerge. By far the most important of these are the gap between rich and poor, the lack of affordable housing, and neoliberal economic policies.

These are not problems confined to the white working class – they affect all workers, whatever their race or culture. Racial identity is not the problem; the class divide is.

Message to all liberals...

Ellie Keen — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 23:03:55 +0000

You’re in a hole – drop the shovel!

With the local elections less than a month away, there seems to be more than a reasonable prospect that the BNP will make a breakthrough in the GLA elections in London. This should not come as too much of a surprise as immigration, often seen as a euphemism for race, has over the last decade or so, steadily climbed the rankings to near topping the table of concerns for many people.

And not only amongst working class people either, as a Dispatches programme broadcast on Monday April 7 seemed rather startled to discover. Entirely respectable middle class folk and more shockingly the working class blacks and Asians interviewed came across as equally disaffected. If the BNP do raise their game in the capital it will undoubtedly spark a fresh bout of hand-wringing amongst the liberal left. (Dispatches,7 April 2008)

A less than encouraging prospect, as strategically they are already very much at sea.

Singer Billy Bragg, a long standing Labour supporter, recently issued a panicky call for anti-racists and anti-fascists to vote Tory ‘to keep the BNP out’. “I don’t like the Tories and everyone knows I don’t like the Tories, but the ideas that they have are about making a better society. The BNP aren’t like that.” Evidently Bragg is unaware that in the mayoral election in 2004, the second preference of many BNP voters went to the Conservative Party, with a reciprocal response coming the other way from Tory voters.

Overall voting trends showed that in the eyes of those voting for them the Conservatives, UKIP and BNP formed, a distinct, natural and fraternal right-wing bloc. Consequently the notion that championing one right-wing brand at the expense of another will automatically carry a positive pro-immigrant anti-racist message, and thus effect how this block of voters behaves in the polling booth is clearly absurd.

Indeed the greater likelihood is that more impotent and thus shriller the bleating, (‘Tory ideas are about making a better society’ – explain that one to the miners Billy) the greater the chance those it is aimed at will conclude that fundamentally they have been on the right lines all along. In other words serving to re-inforce their instincts rather than challenge them. .

But seemingly having bolted itself to the idea that race inequality was the last great injustice and that the white working class represented the last bastion of reaction, the liberal left demonstrates with every intervention that it is unable or unwilling to let go of this canard. This has been most recently proven by the ill-conceived ‘White Season’. Whatever the original thinking behind the BBC series, it illustrated all too clearly that the BNP are not the only ones unwilling or unable to transcend race.

Indeed to to try and trivialise or wish away working class resentments, ‘to label them mis-guided or even racist without recognising they are grounded in legitimate concerns’, as lecturer Sarah Churchwell (The Independent,25 March 2008)
put it recently, ‘actually widens the racial divide.’ And a wider divide must inevitably result in even more room for the BNP. The reality is that without social justice there can be no racial justice. So our message to all liberals is still: ‘you’re in a hole – drop the shovel!’

Below we print a speech given by IWCA Councilor, Stuart Craft to Oxford Trades Council on multiculturalism in December 2007, which neatly encapsulates the dangers and origins of multiculturalism.

Stuart Craft (Blackbird Leys IWCA Councillor): Speech to Oxford Trades Council on multiculturalism

That we live in a multi-ethnic/multicultural society is not up for debate. The fact that this cultural mix has produced much to be proud of is something the IWCA has never taken issue with. In fact, as probably the most ethnically diverse political group in Oxford, we have benefited more from this than most.

What we take issue with is the inept political strategy of multiculturalism.

I never cease to be amazed at the way in which the IWCA’s position on multiculturalism is received by the middle class left.

Our position – which simply argues that to divide people along ethnic and religious lines through segregated housing, youth clubs and schools etc runs contrary to the interests of the working class – is one which most people, black and white, would see as pure common sense. Yet much of the ‘educated’ middle class left seem incapable of grasping this obvious and simple concept.

Multiculturalist policies are now recognised as counter-productive across the board. Everyone from the Bishop of York, John Sentamu to the Equality and Human Rights commission’s, Trevor Phillips, have made statements attacking it, and it is now commonly derided. Even a document from the Institute of Race Relations, titled, ‘In Defence of Multiculturalism’ published this year, admits that government sponsored multiculturalism is wrong-headed and counter to the interests of anti-racism!

Yet those with a political investment in it are determined not to give up their golden goose, no matter what damage is done as a result.

In Defence of Multiculturalism’s author, Jenny Bourne, argues that progress against racism in Britain has been achieved, not through government initiatives, but through community-based campaigns for equality and justice, and that the achievements of anti-racist campaigners have been undermined by multiculturalism as government policy. A paragraph from her document is worth quoting:

“In the early 1980s, the Thatcher government decided (after it had already been introduced into educational policies by Labour) to actively promote cultural policies as a means of combating disaffection within minority ethnic communities. The thinking went that the 1981 ‘riots’ came out of some sort of cultural deficit on the part of minority ethnic groups. And this could be addressed by the funding of local projects, which spoke to the needs of the different ethnic, cultural and religious groups.

In the process, multiculturalism lost its antiracist roots and remit and became institutionalised. It ceased to be an outcome of the struggle for equality emanating from below, and became, instead, policy imposed from above. And as the anti-racist component ebbed, multiculturalism degenerated into a competitive culturalism or ethnicism, which set different groups against one another as they competed for handouts and office.” (IRR Briefing,21 Februay 2007)

Though I would agree with the analysis that, if viewed as anti-racist in intent, state sponsored multiculturalism has failed miserably, Bourne’s critique differs from that of the IWCA in that it portrays divisive multiculturalism as the product of misplaced altruism rather than as deliberate strategy designed to undermine the struggle for social justice.

Though, for a registered political party, the IWCA’s position is unique in our time, the idea that the state uses multiculturalism to divide progressive working class movements is by no means a new one.

In the USA in 1969, the Africa Research Group had an article published in Ramparts magazine presenting convincing evidence that the CIA was promoting black cultural nationalism to reinforce neo-colonialism in Africa. This was, shortly afterwards, reprinted in the Black Panther newspaper to support the analysis that similar tactics were being employed closer to home.

The Panthers recognised what they called ‘Black Cultural Nationalism’ as a tool created by the establishment to undermine the organised working class. To quote the party’s co-founder, Bobby Seale: “Cultural nationalism sees the white man as the oppressor and makes no distinction between racist whites and non-racist whites, as the Panthers do. The cultural nationalists say that a black man cannot be an enemy of the black people, while the Panthers believe that black capitalists are exploiters and oppressors”.

In our time on Oxford City Council the IWCA has been alone in opposing cross party support for separatist schemes such as the Afro Caribbean Youth Project; the Asian young men only youth group; Muslim mothers swimming sessions and segregated ethnic minority housing. That the majority of Oxford’s citizens are excluded from these schemes and would view them as unfair is of no consequence to councillors desperate for their slice of the ‘ethnic vote’.

Meanwhile, the BNP watch patiently from the sidelines like vultures eyeing up their next meal.

The argument for extra resources for certain target ethnic groups is not driven by any desire to right wrongs – perceived or otherwise – it is driven by blind, intransigent, ideology.

A look at three examples of local schemes influenced by multiculturalism serves to expose this:

In 2003 a speaker at the presentation for the first Blackbird Leys Street Warden scheme trumpeted the fact that the number one priority for the new wardens would be racism. When pressed to produce figures to justify prioritising this issue he admitted there were none, explaining that “You have to understand that anti-racism is a central tenet of the Government’s street warden scheme.” When asked if this was the case even when racism is not a problem in the area, he replied, almost apologetically, “yes”.

Similarly, when I pointed out on another occasion that a requirement to encourage more black people into the Blackbird Leys Leisure Centre, to qualify for a Sport England grant, was superfluous as the number of black people using the centre is already proportionately higher than the official percentage of those living on the Leys, I was told, amidst red faces, that although I was right, we had to exaggerate race inequality or we would get no grant.

And to top it all, at a recent Health Scrutiny meeting a representative from a government funded mental health team stated, to nods of agreement from New Labour councillors, that we should strive to increase the number of ethnic minorities taking up mental health counselling (the current percentage being proportionately equal to the number within the catchment area). When I asked for an explanation, I was told that ethnic minorities are more impoverished; therefore suffer disproportionately from mental health problems.

It was only when I pointed out the nonsense of this statement and argued that to advance the notion that ethnic minorities are somehow more prone to mental health problems than everybody else is, in fact, racist, that the councillors changed tack and a decision was made to review the policy.

In the quest for the holy grail of the block vote, desperately needed to fill the vacuum created by the loss of its former working class heartlands, New Labour and its left wing satellites choose also to side with monolithic, reactionary religious groups. Gone are the days when socialists fought for secularism, where religion was viewed as ‘the opiate of the masses’ and clerics were kept at arms length – a view exemplified in the words of James Connolly from 1899:

“Socialism, as a party, bases itself upon its knowledge of facts, of economic truths, and leaves the building up of religious ideals or faiths to the outside public, or to its individual members if they so will. It is neither Freethinker nor Christian, Turk nor Jew, Buddhist nor Idolator, Mahommedan nor Parsee – it is only human.”

The old, working class orientated, left challenged the reaction of the clerics. Today’s left act as their cheerleaders. In Oxford, New Labour’s support for the Church of England backed Peers Academy – which is likely to pave the way for more faith schools – and its support for the Islamic, Iqra Girls school are cases in point.

We also have, apart from the IWCA, all party support for the call to prayer to be broadcast from the Manzil Way mosque – the very mosque whose spokesman recently declared his support for the Sudanese government in its prosecution of a British teacher for allowing her class of 7 year olds to name a teddy bear Mohammad – a decision which led to public demonstrations for the teacher’s execution.

In Britain, advocates of multiculturalism pursue parity for all cultures, whether secularist, Satanist or religious fundamentalist. This is madness. Unless we work from a standpoint of universal rights and wrongs – and multiculturalism refuses to do this – we allow ourselves to be gagged and bound while reactionary ideas and movements, which threaten to undermine the progressive achievements of past generations, grow unfettered.

In 1969, Black Panther, Linda Harrison pointed out, when attacking the black cultural nationalists, that “a culture that does not challenge wholly and resolutely the dominant and exploitative forces – political, economic and social forces – is a culture which is either pre-slavery, pre-colonialist or completely made up and in either case completely useless”.

The ruling elite embraces multiculturalism and its component parts – religion and cultural nationalism, because, they offer, to again quote Linda Harrison, “no challenge or offence against the prevailing order”.

Nearly forty years on, Harrison’s words of wisdom – stunning in their simplicity – tell us everything we need to know about the driving force behind state sponsored multiculturalism. The Panthers position is important in that it serves to illuminate the chasm between the old, class-conscious left, and its modern, race obsessed, counterpart.

To one degree or another, the political strategy of multiculturalism has been successfully applied to help crush and contain potentially progressive national liberation movements across the globe. From Ireland to Africa and across the Middle East, the old left had no problem identifying divide and rule tactics. But today, blinded by the lunacy of relativism, ‘socialists’ habitually back the wrong horse. That the latest cause célèbre amongst many on the left is Islamism – possibly the West’s most formidable Frankenstein’s monster to date, underscores this point perfectly.

Lets make no bones about it. Multiculturalism is not a supplement to social justice, but a replacement for it. You can be for one, or the other, but never both.

Has Society Turned its Back on Itself?

Ellie Keen — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:51:33 +0000

Initially, it was a little hard to figure out what lay behind the BBC decision to commission The White Season. But when taking on board the subsequent general air of BBC defensiveness, it is probably fair to assume it hasn’t worked out exactly as planned.

A common – and commonsense – complaint was that in prefixing ‘white’ to working class, the BBC had needlessly, deceitfully and divisively racialised the social, economic and political issue of working class disaffection.

When confronted along these lines by IWCA representative Gary O’Shea on BBC London’s Dotun Adebayo programme, BBC commissioning editor for the season Robert Klein struggled to articulate a coherent reply to what the presenter described as ‘a damning’ critique.

According to Klein, a survey commissioned by the BBC found that the white working class ‘group’ were not only alienated on immigration but on a myriad of other subjects, including housing, education, crime and so on.

As columnist Seumas Milne commented: “it wasn’t immigration that ripped the guts out of working-class Britain, white and non-white. It was the closure of whole industries, the rundown of manufacturing and council housing, the assault on trade unions, the huge transfer of resources to the wealthy, the deregulation of the labour market, and the unconstrained impact of neoliberal globalisation under both Tories and New Labour. Almost none of that has had a look-in so far in The White Season.” (‘Either Labour represents its core voters – or others will’)

So why then not devote a season to addressing and reflecting all of these concerns, seeing as how they affect the working class as a whole? Whether the working class ‘formed a majority or not was neither here nor there,’ Klein insisted, and then went on to assert that ‘white working class’ was how in everyday parlance the majority described themselves and accordingly no fault could be found with the BBC in describing them thus.

In reality the racial denomination is entirely a creation of a multicultural strategy, but even today the notion that people talk of themselves in the terms described is absurd. What remained of his credibility evaporated with his repeated insistence that the high point for the Far Right in terms of popular support was with the NF back in 1979, even though the NF never had a single councillor and the BNP have amassed far greater totals in European elections since then.

Challenged on this and a number of other assertions by both Gary O’Shea and the presenter he opted to bluster his way through. Afterwards, he phoned the producer of the program bitterly complaining of his treatment.

The back story to The White Season is that BBC supremo Roly Keating supposedly woke up one morning quite overcome with “embarrassment” at the corporation’s previous neglect of this “group” (as if we all resided at the edge of some increasingly intricate patchwork quilt and the omission of serious political consideration of the condition of the working class for the best part of two decades had been little more than an oversight).

‘Has Britain turned its back on the white working class?’ Radio Five Live asked its audience in kicking off the debate. But such a title hardly makes sense if columnist Seamus Milne is right in claiming that the working class – manual and clerical – makes up “getting on for two thirds” of contemporary society. The 2007 British Social Attitudes Survey found that 57% of the population identify themselves as working class. (British Social Attitudes Survey,)

And if these claims are anywhere near accurate, the far more challenging question to ask (particularly in light of Margaret Thatcher’s infamous declaration that ‘there is no such thing as society’) might have been ‘Has Britain turned its back on itself?’.

But that of course is not anywhere near how the ruling elite likes to look at things. A recent study of the topic that took four years to complete, The East End: Kinship, Race and Conflict concluded that one of the specific ways in which the multicultural strategy is employed, ‘is to make the working class feel they are just a minority themselves’ the better to dampen down the expectations of the host community.

A fine example of this type of thinking can be found in an article By Richard Klein in the Daily Mail on the White season. It was headlined: “White and working class… the one ethnic group the BBC has ignored”. The key word here of course is ‘ethnic’: race, not class, the very essence of multiculturalism. (‘ White and working class… the one ethnic group the BBC has ignored’)

On top of this, The East End report continues, ‘a swathe of political measures and institutions which consolidate the rights of minorities while multiplying the sanctions against indigenous whites who object to this’ have been promoted in order to increase ‘the moral authority of the British administrative elite’, while at the same time creating a black middle class (at the expense, note, of the black working class) to buttress the existing white middle class.

Journalist Nick Cohen sums it up like this: “Andrea Callender, BBC’s head of diversity…is not only concerned with colour prejudice, but she also promises to tackle an apparently definitive list of bigotries about ‘age, gender, race, ethnic origin, religion, disability, marital status, sexual orientation and number of dependents’.

Yet she does not mention the most glaring inequality in modern Britain, although she must encounter it every day…[this] pseudo-egalitarian style dominates every public institution. Human-resources managers make good money out of a career in leftism as long as they never talk about the old left’s central concern: class”. (‘The prejudice that still shames the nation’,)

Now it is true that the The White Season did talk about class. But this was neither a well-meaning or inadvertent deviation from the norm. From the outset it was done in a thoroughly back-handed way. In both the programme on the working men’s club ‘Last Orders’ set in Beasley and the ‘All white in Barking’ production, the views aired were almost exclusively from pensioners or those heading that way.

One former Barking resident accurately described the potrayal as almost ‘Dickensian’. The inference being that the working class was a relic: spent, decrepit and dying out and, more than anything, defeated. It also meant that the contributions on race and immigration would not have been out of place in the 1960’s. That real racial integration only really happens within the working class was, as usual, conveniently side-stepped.

The hypocrisy here is particularly striking for, as journalist Andrew Anthony observed rather bitterly, the liberal community, including ‘the hideously white BBC’, for all its eloquence on anti-racism, “is far more inclined to retreat to private schools and affluent enclaves, the better to maintain a homogenous culture while pronouncing on the benefits of diversity.” (‘How Britain turned its back on the white working class’,)

Middle class sanctimony is never of course the entire preserve of the BBC. On all sorts of levels middle class two-faceedness on the issue is inescapable. Consider this contribution from the Oxford Mail:

What has got members of Oxford Independent Working Class Association all excited recently? After numerous occasions when opposition councillors at Oxford City Council sighed heavily whenever an IWCA member got up to speak in the council chamber, the BBC has launched its White season of TV programmes. The corporation has devoted huge resources to asking whether Britain’s white working class has become invisible. It’s a question that Stuart Craft, the IWCA leader, has been asking for years. (The Oxford Mail)

As the Oxford Mail knows all too well, the actual question the IWCA has been asking for years, both within and without the council chamber, is why so many of your heart on your sleeves type ‘anti-racists’ vigorously applaud the type of policies that encourage the working class to fight it out on ethnic lines among themselves, when it is painfully obvious that the primary beneficiaries of the in-fighting will be the ‘separate but equal’ BNP?

Now that would be a BBC ‘season’ worth watching. Over to you, Roly!

As well as fulfilling the invitation to appear on the Doton Adeyabo programme on BBC London on Sunday March 16, IWCA rep Gary O’Shea made these points and others in interviews on Radio Five Live, BBC 24 on March 7, and ‘You and Yours’ on Radio Four on March 11. Here are a couple of samples:

(IWCA on Radio 5 Live-edited)
(IWCA on Radio 5 Live-unedited)
(IWCA on Radio 4 – You and yours -edited)
(IWCA on Radio 4 – You and yours -unedited)