ENGLISH
ETHNICITY – LABOUR’S VIEW
As various Labour commentators have
pointed out, Labour has been moving away from its traditional core support
amongst the English “white working class” to instead focussing on its new support
amongst the 'Rainbow Alliance' of big city based multi-culturalists and internationalists.
Michael Dugher, who was the MP for
Barnsley East, confirmed this in an interview with the New Statesmen in 2015
when he said he was perturbed by Labour’s failure to connect with the white
working class population it used to represent, “Working class voters are not
core vote anymore – you saw that in Scotland, you saw that in England”.
The New Statesmen also reported that
Dugher refers repeatedly to English identity:- “In parts of my constituency,
they do fly the flag. And they are right
to be proud of it. It’s as much about
their pride and identity as it is a cry for help”, he says. “When they fly that flag, they say I am proud
of this country, I am proud to be English, I am proud of where I come from; but
also, we haven’t gone away, and we deserve a voice, too.”
Interestingly Mr Dugher also said that
Labour’s Scottish MPs “wanted to operate in Scotland without any reference at
all to the impact on England. Every time
they talked about further devolution, the English and the Labour Party were
excluded from that conversation.”
More recently the New Statesman, on the 19th
September 2018, in an article headed:-
“How the decline of the working class made Labour a Party of the bourgeois left. Progressive politics in the 1990s turned away from class politics and solidarity in favour of group identities and self-realisation”
The article written by Professor Jonathan Rutherford makes
the same point, in a perhaps more intellectualised way, as follows:-
“The future of British politics will be about the
nation state of England, the union of our four nations, and their democratic
and economic renewal. It will be about the renascence of the everyday life of
work and family. Yet the problem for the left is its domination by an older
political generation that lost faith in the idea of the nation, is sceptical
about the future of work and doesn’t seem to believe in the family.
Throughout its history, the Labour Party has
embodied the paradox of being both radical and conservative, and so it has
played a vital role both in maintaining the traditions of the country and
shaping its modernity. These dispositions are not party political. They are
qualities of mind and character that are woven into the fabric of our English
culture. In the words of John Stuart Mill, one demands the uprooting of
existing institutions and creeds; the other demands that they be made a
reality. One presses new ideas to their utmost consequences; the other
reasserts the best meaning and purposes of the old. England’s paradoxical nature
is embedded in our constitutional settlement.
Yet with the decline of the industrial working
class and the growing influence of a professional middle class, Labour has lost
its conservative disposition. Some will claim this is positive: the party is
now more left-wing. But this misunderstands the nature of the change. Labour
has become a more bourgeois liberal party, and it risks becoming a party in
society but not of it.
Over the decades, progressive
politics has believed in continuing social improvement and change without end.
Its neglect of the human need for belonging – of the value of home and cultural
familiarity, and of economic security and social stability – has created a
bourgeois left that is deracinated. Its cosmopolitan liberalism and moral
relativism have left it poorly equipped to address the questions now
confronting its own children about the nature of adulthood, and the meaning and
purpose of life, and how we can live it well.
Cosmopolitan liberalism
Cosmopolitans believe that their
obligations to others should not be confined to fellow national citizens, but
extended to include all of humanity. Yet in committing to everyone as part of a
universal humanity, we commit to no one and nothing in particular.
Under the influence of this
abstraction, progressive and left politics in the 1990s turned away from class
politics and solidarity in favour of group identities and self-realisation. It
rejected forms of membership that make a claim on people’s loyalty. The
particularist loyalties of the nation state and inherited national customs and
traditions divided individuals from their shared humanity. Among the more
radical, this repudiation extended to their own white English ethnicity. A mix
of white guilt and post-colonial politics delegitimised English culture as
imperialist and racist, and by default those who value it.
Labour needs to make changes that are deep and
far-reaching. It has to break out of its socially liberal heartlands in the
public sector and metropolitan areas. It needs to bridge the faultlines
dividing both the country and Labour’s own electoral coalition – social liberals
vs social conservatives, towns and country vs cities, young vs old, north vs
south, England vs Scotland.”
Here is a link to the original
article>>> https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2018/09/how-decline-working-class-made-labour-party-bourgeois-left
These observations on the direction of travel that
Labour is headed in are interesting and increasingly obvious when you consider the
sort of things which you hear Labour politicians saying and see when Labour
activists are filmed. For instance just
look at some of the delegates at their recent conference!
The question that arises of course is whether
the growing gap between Labour, as it now is, and the direction it is headed in,
will lead to a permanent divorce between it and the traditional English “white
working class”?
There is a Labour group which I have mentioned
before, founded by the, former Labour Cabinet Minister, John Denham, called the
English Labour Network. They were
represented at Labour’s Party Conference and one of their keynote speakers,
Hackney Labour Councillor, Polly Billington, was talking about her English identity
and “the need to separate Englishness from ethnicity”.
The idea of Labour being able to redefine
Englishness in such a way that it was wholly separated from its ethnic heritage
is laughable and demonstrates the grave difficulty that Labour would have in
trying to bridge the gap.
This is especially so when you factor in that
the Labour network and Polly Billington have had a lot of flack from Labour activists. In effect the Party claimed that it is racist
even to mention England and the English!
Not only do many Labour activists not like the
idea of England, but they are opposed to the idea of any nation or any
nation state.
It is difficult to see how those people could possibly
be reconciled to any attempt to represent the interests of English people and
of the English nation!
The English Democrats manifesto explains
Englishness as:-
3.17.1
It is common for those who assert their English identity to be challenged in a
way that would be considered insulting if directed elsewhere. To avoid
misunderstanding, and to meet the demands of those who are hostile to any
assertion of Englishness, we have set out below what we mean by the English.
3.17.2
The English can be defined in the same way that other nations are defined. To
be English is to be part of a community. We English share a communal history,
language and culture. We have a communal identity and memory. We share a 'we'
sentiment; a sense of belonging. These things cannot be presented as items on a
checklist. Our community, like others, has no easily defined boundaries but we
exist, and we have the will to continue to exist.”
Whilst English “ethnicity” is not the only
criteria for Englishness, it has the right to be recognised not just from a
moral point of view, but also from a legal point of view. Refusal to recognise
English ethnicity and to discriminate against people expressing it, or
displaying it, is illegal and contrary to the Equalities Act 2010 and other
equality legislation; As the BBC found
when it tried to sack an English Rugby reporter from its Scottish team because the
Scots didn’t like a sassenach reporting on their rugby!
I refer of course to the ground-breaking case
of Mark Souster against BBC Scotland.
This case upheld as embedded in the Law the legal principle that the
English are a distinct “racial group” within the UK!
Polly Billington and the English Labour Network
are of course applying the classic Fabian doctrine of “Adopt and Adapt”. I shall be interested to see how they adopt
and adapt their way out of the English having the legal right to be recognised
as an ethnic group!
This right is in addition to the legal findings
in favour of English Nationalism and English National Identity.
So no Polly, Englishness can’t be re-defined
into multiculturalism by you or your group or by Labour generally!
