DESPISED – WHY THE MODERN LEFT LOATHES
THE WORKING CLASS BY PAUL EMBERY
I have recently been reading the very interesting book ‘Despised’ by a
Labour Party member in which he tries to explain why Labour has come adrift
from its working class roots. The book
is well written and a good read.
The following extract particularly caught my attention and I think will
be of interest to any English nationalist:-
“The sense of national dispossession that has taken root over years in …
in England beyond the cities shows no sign of dissipating. A feeling of disenfranchisement began to take
hold around the turn of the Century, with the advent of devolution in Scotland
and Wales solidified into a more general resentment at being “forgotten” and
then the emergence of a new sense of Englishness, with large numbers of people
beginning to identify as English rather than British. There was a clear mood developing among the
English: We are sick and tired of being ignored.
In the EU referendum, this mood manifested itself in the clear rejection
of the status quo, with over 70% of those who identified most strongly as
English voting Leave. (A similar percentage of those who identified the least
strong voted Remain). The writer and
campaigner Anthony Barnett, has illustrated how much of the Leave vote was
driven by distinct sense of grievance among the English. Comparing the towns of Wigan in North of
England and Paisley in Scotland, it explained how they were similar in the
sense that both were “once thriving centres of imperial industry… now grappling
with impoverishment” and “social and economic equivalents”. Yet in the referendum, Wigan voted 64% for
Leave and Paisley, on an identical turnout, the same percentage for
Remain. Barnett concluded that it was
the national factor at work.
In 2018, a poll for the Centre of Towns Think Tank showed that the towns
in which people identified most strongly as English – often places which had
undergone fundamental social and economic change – were most inclined to feel
that Westminster did not reflect the concerns of their part of the country.
As this sense of English discontent grows, it does so outside of normal
political structures and institutions – principally because it has no other
choice. Neither the Conservative nor
Labour Parties, for example, maintain a specifically English section; and there
is no major party, assembly or parliament representing solely England. English voters also see the obvious
democratic imbalance of having MPs representing constituencies other nations of
the UK vote on laws affecting England while, thanks to the devolution, their
counterparts representing English constituencies have no corresponding right.
A YouGov survey for the BBC in 2018 highlighted the extent to which
English identity had become a feature of peoples’ lives, with 80% of
respondents saying they identified strongly as English. This feeling had taken hold particularly in
coastal and former industrial towns, with two thirds of respondents in those
places saying they felt a sense of English pride. By contrast, less than half of respondents in
the major cities felt the same thing.
Labour has a particular problem with England, not having beaten the
Conservatives in the share of popular vote there since 2001. It is widely accepted that worries among
English voters that undue SNP influence over a future Labour government played
a crucial role in helping the Tories achieve a majority in the 2015 General
Election. Out of the 60 seats lost by
the Labour Party at the 2019 General Election, 48 were in England. This was, in large part, the vote that the
Party had always taken for granted, with many of the losses occurring in
traditional working class heartlands – the so-called “Red Wall” and
non-metropolitan seats – where the sense of patriotism and “being English” was
heightened.
A post-election report by the English Labour Network showed that more
voters in England were likely to identify as “more English than British” than
the other way round, and that this group was instrumental in delivering victory
for the Conservative Party. Among these
voters, Labour won just 10 votes for every 27 won by the Conservatives.
The authors, who included former Cabinet Member, John Denham, concluded
that Labour’s failure to promote itself as a patriotic party or even to mention
England in any of its political messaging, as well as its lack of any plan to
devolve power within England, had alienated voters who emphasised their English
identity. And on the contentious issue
of immigration – unquestionably a significant factor on the doorstep – they
wrote, perceptively; “These voters have been disconcerted by mass
immigration. Their strong sense of
identity and community has been disrupted by changes they were not
expecting. While some of this reaction
is based on racism and for the most it is more (a) sense of uncertainty and
loss of a stable community. At least
some Labour figures and activists have stereotyped anyone who is not actually
in favour of large scale migration as bigoted.”
In its disregard for the growing sense of English dispossession, Labour
has repeated a catastrophic mistake it made in Scotland – a failure which led
to its virtual wipe-out there – of not paying due attention to the politics of
national identity.”
Paul Embury then goes onto talk about the idea that Labour could become
patriotic. He is of course writing from
the perspective of a member of the Labour Party and formerly a senior trade
union official in the Fire Brigade Union (from which he was unfairly dismissed
by its Europhile leadership for his support of Brexit).
Then in his chapter setting out “What is to be done?” In which he sets out what Labour should do to
recapture the English vote, he suggests:-
“In particular, the sense of national dispossession of
disenfranchisement felt by the English must be addressed. One way of doing this
would be to grant them direct political representation through the creation of
a parliament for England to take its place inside a Federal United
Kingdom”.
For my part I am happy to say that I think that it is highly unlikely
that a Labour Party whose leadership would take the knee in support of the
Marxist Black Lives Matter Group, would even for a moment contemplate adopting
the camouflage of being a English nationalist party.
In these circumstances I think Paul Embery is usefully identifying a gap
in the political market for English nationalism. It is our job within the English Democrats to
organise ourselves so that we can place our party in that gap!
