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Sunday 27 May 2012

Labour’s Working Class Problem

Tuesday, 8th February 2011

Here is a dispatch from the north-east by Andrew Hankinson, one of the best feature writers around, who wrote a superb piece on the effects of the crash of 2008 on the young.

It sums up one of my worries about Labour’s awful response to David Cameron’s speech on the need to revive liberal values. It is not just that Labour was refusing to defend liberal Muslims in their struggle against reactionaries, or that Labour was making itself ridiculous by refusing to take a stand against Islamic Forum Europe, the Muslim Brotherhood and other vicious outfits, but it showed that the party was impaling itself on a fork. If it cannot stand up against Islamist groups that are racist, sexist, homophobic and anti-democratic, how can it argue in conscience against the BNP and EDL? Will Labour only oppose the rhetoric of ultra-reaction when men with white skins propagate it?

Andrew watched the shadow cabinet’s visit to Newcastle last week. Here’s what he had to say:

‘There was a report about the EDL on Newsnight on Tuesday. It was predictable: a reporter films EDL members getting drunk in the hope that one of them will say something unpleasant like Paki. Then Jeremy Paxman lamely quoted from Facebook and blithely dismissed complaints about Sharia councils (would we accept all-male judges making decisions about the lives of white women?). We know the EDL and BNP are unpleasant. It’s not enough to just say that. It’s not enough to be smug about catching them out a couple of times. Their complaints need to be properly addressed and argued against.

Up here on Tyneside the BNP is campaigning against a listed building, used as the setting for BBC series Byker Grove, from being converted into an Islamic school. They’ve printed leaflets and got hundreds of supporting signatures. They’ve nicknamed it Burka Grove. But when I write about it, I’ll skip past the vocal idiots in the BNP and instead find out why the school doesn’t want to educate non-Muslims, why non-Muslims are signing up to the BNP rather than forming alternative opposition, then I’ll see if more thought from both sides might lead to a compromise.

The media and politicians need to accept that the BNP and EDL are campaigning on popular issues and it’s dangerous that very few try to defeat them by engaging in a debate. Instead they transparently make inarticulate, uneducated people look stupid and that turns people against the journalists more than it turns them against the BNP or EDL.

By the way, I went to watch Ed Miliband launch his ‘Fresh ideas’ campaign at the Sage music hall in Gateshead. It was lame. There were around 200 people there for the Q&A. Ed Balls showed up Ed Miliband by being a much better speaker. It was all so flabby and limp. Miliband only became engaging when someone proposed a two-tier NHS – he’s so much better at defending traditional Labour principles than he is at illustrating any kind of future. The audience was very soft, bemoaning the increase in tuition fees and the cuts. I just sat there thinking that only a mile away several men filmed themselves burning the Koran in a pub car park. Across the river the BNP is campaigning against a school. And there is latent racism all over Tyneside. If Miliband just went to the local factories, colleges and sports halls and explained to people why they should fight racism rather than support it, he’d get a much better media profile and be doing something much more worthwhile.

Then he could also talk to the people at those venues about education and the economy and jobs. But instead he half-heartedly answered questions from mildly interested invitees (who he insisted on calling by their first name no matter how senior they were) in Lord Foster’s Sage. Where’s the leadership in that?

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Yam Yam

February 8th, 2011 3:04pm Report this comment

Racism (and the 'struggle' against manifestations of it, real or imaginary) is Labour's comfort zone. Why step outside it to find out what the ordinary plebs think?

Neptune

February 8th, 2011 3:41pm Report this comment

Why does this article compare the EDL to the BNP?

The EDL are not the BNP. The EDL have many non-white supporters and one of their leaders is a black Sikh, so they're clearly not the BNP.

Kev Ball

February 8th, 2011 3:46pm Report this comment

It was painful to watch Paxman interview the EDL leader; completely misjudged as was his earlier encounter with Nick Griffin.

Keith D

February 8th, 2011 4:35pm Report this comment

Erica knows fine well where the racism comes from.Just like those who who take the trouble find out whats being taught,and whats being whitewashed,in many Islamic schools.
What race is Islam then Erica? Theres no excuse for a few knuckledraggers shouting "paki" its true.Far less for an entire religion to call me kuffar.
Really,do try to write from a position close to reality.

ThigArLatha

February 8th, 2011 5:01pm Report this comment

Erica the JFS hasn't been on the Camden Road for years now....

organic cheeseboard

February 8th, 2011 5:10pm Report this comment

Their complaints need to be properly addressed and argued against.

Given that my only personal encounter with EDL members was of a group of them (drunk 20something blokes and their clearly a lot younger girlfriends) singing 'allah is a paedo', I'm not quite sure what argument you'd suggest I have with them.

Erica Blair

February 8th, 2011 5:23pm Report this comment

It's been a long time since I passed it on the bus. However this doesn't change the fact that the JFS was found to have broken the law by not admitting a pupil on the grounds that he wasn't Jewish.

ndm

February 8th, 2011 6:37pm Report this comment

I would have more faith in Nick Cohen's complaints about the BNP were he to condemn the comments attached to Melanie Phillips' blog. For some reason, she appears to attract a lot of the faithful.

Alan Petterson

February 9th, 2011 12:58am Report this comment

Truth is that Labour will never be able to credibly combat the likes of the EDL unless it confronts the elephant in the room which is the extreme and rampant racism, homophobia and sexism within the Islamic community. A tough nettle to grasp and one that will define the strength of Ed Milliband as a labour leader. Fail to do this and the future credibility of Labour as a guardian of liberal values will be destroyed.

Kimpatsu

February 9th, 2011 1:35am Report this comment

"Will Labour only oppose the rhetoric of ultra-reaction when men with white skins propagate it?"
Yes, for fear of being called racist.

Tron

February 9th, 2011 2:16am Report this comment

On Newsnight the EDL guy sounded like a man who knows what is happening in the pubs and streets of England today. It's where he lives and works.
Paxo sounded like a rich BBC man who gets his ideas of what is happening from the Guardian, the Today program and his wealthy friends dinner parties.
Paxo (and the rest of the BBC) probably know more about Victorian England than working class England today.

Sarah AB

February 9th, 2011 6:51am Report this comment

I'm aware of individual complaints about the speech from Labour ministers, mostly focused on the issue of timing. Have any more substantive objections been raised?

I thought the speech was mostly good - if he'd crticised the EDL more explicitly and avoided the word 'multiculturalism' (as I think people interpret it in significantly different ways) it might have been better.

Andy Gill

February 9th, 2011 9:09am Report this comment

The left's response to Cameron's speech has been entirely predictable. Throw around accusations of fascism, racism and Islamophobia and hope some mud sticks.

They don't seem to realize that smear tactics and name-calling don't work any more. The Islamist ideology is now thoroughly loathed throughout the length and breadth of the country, and those who refuse to confront it are rightly seen as cowards and quislings.

Steve

February 9th, 2011 9:49am Report this comment

Tron,

"... the EDL guy sounded like a man who knows what's happening in the pubs & streets of England today..."

It's about time someone was prepared to admit that. It seems that every time somebody with a 'working class' accent appears in the media they are sneered at and assumed to be stupid just because they speak directly and with a funny accent.

No doubt there are people in the EDL with nasty views but the problems with mass immigration and radical Islam that they have picked up on are genuine concerns of all but the privileged few. The likes of Paxman, from the perspective of their big houses in expensive neighbourhoods, have no idea of the consequences of these things endured by ordinary people.

My wife was permanently damaged by medical neglect during the birth of our daughter by over-stretched hospital staff who were, that particular weekend having to deal with too many births and several emergency cesarians and simply forgot about us. As far as we could tell every other couple giving birth that weekend was either African or Eastern European, we did not see or hear a single other British born patient of any colour, and the hospital was simply unable to cope. Naturally when we mentioned this fact at a middle-class dinner party we were instantly branded 'racist'.

This is why the EDL has come into being. People are sick of being branded racist by Paxman & co.

Rhoda Klapp

February 9th, 2011 12:01pm Report this comment

Paxo lives in rural Oxfordshire about ten miles from Schloss Klapp. He never invites me over. The biggest racial minority in Oxon is the Chinese, at around 2%.

Rob Marchant

February 9th, 2011 3:07pm Report this comment

Just to say that not ALL the reaction from Labour has been "awful", although I appreciate the sentiment. My piece on LabourList here

Baron

February 9th, 2011 5:16pm Report this comment

Tron @ 2.16:

spot on, the big ask though is how does one go about breaking the stronghold of the pseudo-liberal elite. At the last count, the unwashed didn't favour any of the parties that may have swung it.

Hexhamgeezer?

February 10th, 2011 12:03pm Report this comment

'And there is latent racism all over Tyneside'

As opposed to where and which 'communities' Nick?

Grant

February 14th, 2011 5:40am Report this comment

"Working class racism is easy to find if you go looking for it..." I'm skeptical; all too often such statements include the unspoken assumption that "working class" also means "white". Or it assumes that there is only one kind of/rationale for racism. So I'd be interested to see a professional survey that not only counted "racists" and "non-racists", but also broke down those figures according to whether the individuals concerned are white/non-white and also according to their particular reasons for their racism.

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