As the dust settles on the far-right anti-migration riots earlier this month, the time has come to reflect on their longer-term significance. Some have linked them to Brexit. They have suggested that Brexit was a contributory factor because, in the words of Baroness Doreen Lawrence, it “gave people permission to be racist”.
There is undoubtedly an element of truth in this. As Irish Times journalist, Fintan O’Toole has argued, Brexit provided a vehicle whereby open expressions of the racism of the 1960s and 1970s could be replaced by less socially unacceptableanti-European sentiments. Meanwhile, erosion of the post-1945 welfare state led the latter to be regarded nostalgically. It became part of a lost golden age. Brexiteers were thus able to claim that they were against immigrants because they wanted to defend the welfare state. This was a central theme of the 2016 Leave campaign (as anyone who remembers the infamous claim of £350 million a week for the NHS, will recall).
However, those of us who wish to reverse Brexit will do well to reflect on our own contribution to the sentiments underlying the riots, since a road back to EU membership is unlikely to be found as long as the sentiments retain a hold.
I am struck, for example, by the tendency of some re-joiners to want to alight on figures for migration since the UK left the EU. The figures are, according to these re-joiners, another example of the failures of Brexit. Re-joining the EU will enable ‘us’ better to secure ‘our’ borders. Framing migration as a security issue in this way reinforces the sentiments that underlay the riots because it fails to challenge the core idea of migration as a potential threat.
Racist riots are what you get when, as mainstream Europhile politicians have done for many years, you describe those who express racist and xenophobic sentiments as people with ‘legitimate concerns’. They are what you get when Gordon Brown rushes to retract remarks – remember that? – linking Mrs Duffey and bigotry, instead of standing by them. They are what you get when you refuse to suggest to people on the sharp end of poverty and growing inequality that their anger is most effectively channelled, not in the direction of a search for scapegoats, but in the search for collective solutions to common problems: those offered by trade unionism, for example. They are, in short, what you get when, with Sir Nick Harvey at a recent European Movement webinar, you suggest that a political party needs to operate on the principle of meeting “the public where they are at, not where they would like them to be”.
Elevating opportunism to the status of a political principle in this way is wrong both in principle and in practice. It overlooks the point that as citizens of a democracy we expect political parties not just to represent our opinions but also to govern. Governing, in turn, is about making political choices: sacrificing some interests for the good of others. This means that political parties have an ethical obligation not merely to be responsive to public opinion, but more importantly to leadit. Harvey’s suggestion is wrong in principle because, ultimately, it expresses a populist principle. It involves telling people what they want to hear so that one can claim to be the people’s most authentic representative. Being perceived as the people’s most authentic representative then legitimises acting in ways corrosive of pluralism and of the rights of minorities.
Harvey’s view is wrong in practice because it overlooks the fact that the political context is one in which the status quo is maintained by ‘hegemony’ in Antonio Gramsci’s sense: that is, domination of the cultural and ideological landscape such that given values and beliefs permeate society and institutions, coming to be taken for granted, and excluding others. Climate protesters know this well. When they engage in peaceful protest, the media pay no attention to them. When they engage in more disruptive forms of protest, the media pay attention but focus exclusively on the methods of protest giving no mention to the messages the protesters want to convey. Harvey’s view is therefore wrong because it overlooks the point that political change is about a struggle for hegemony. It overlooks the point that change requires a willingness to engage in cultural and ideological battles, which particularly many on the left have largely given up on in recent years. It is wrong, therefore, ultimately because it renders progressive change impossible.
The experience of the 2016 referendum made very clear why opportunism is a disaster, and why a refusal to engage in the kinds of ideological battles necessary to shift sentiments on migration and freedom of movement will make re-joining the EU difficult if not impossible. At the time of the referendum,most of the highest-profile Remain campaigners refused to go any further than to argue that Leavers’ claims about the probable consequences of Brexit for migration were empirically incorrect: that leaving the EU would have no effect on the phenomenon. Consider the position in which this argument placed the voter with anti-immigrant sentiments. It left such a voter, contemplating how to vote, with this choice: 1) to vote Remain and to find that immigration wouldprobably continue at the same levels: both sides, in effect,agreed on that. 2) to vote Leave, and find that immigration would continue as before (if the Remainers were correct) or would come down (if the Leavers were correct). So, presented with these alternatives, any voter hostile to immigration would, if s/he were rational, obviously have chosen Leave.
So “meeting the public where they are at”, especially on immigration, is a catastrophic strategy for re-joiners to choose, and is in any event wrong for a final reason of principle – as highlighted by the producers of a recent BBC broadcast entitled, ’50 things that made the modern economy: Passports’. They write:
It can seem like a natural fact of life that the name of the country on our passport determines where you can travel and work – legally, at least. But it’s a relatively recent historical development – and, from a certain angle, an odd one. Many countries take pride in banning employers from discriminating against characteristics we can’t change: whether we’re male or female, young or old, gay or straight, black or white. It is not entirely true that we can’t change our passport: if you’ve got $250,000, for example, you can buy one from St Kitts and Nevis. But mostly our passport depends on the identity of our parents and location of our birth. And nobody chooses those.
JAMES L. NEWELL.
26th August 2024