As part of a minor project aimed at eliminating the cliche “the very real concerns of the white working class” (the latest weaselly codeword for people who want to gain the political benefits[1] of playing anti-immigrant politics while avoiding any of the costs) from British political life through a campaign of sustained mockery and invective, I had an article up on the Guardian blog last week. A digression that I probably should have edited out of it, but in fact liked so much that I not only left it in but am posting it here now, concerned the sunset of what was once an important subsector of the British social work profession in places like Kilburn and Camden Town:
Quite a few people who got jobs as social workers in the 1970s and 1980s (and thus who must be approaching retirement now) built their careers around the (at the time, entirely sensible) belief that Irish people were a systematically disadvantaged ethnic group, who could reasonably be expected to have low educational achievement, low average incomes, frequent experience of illegal discrimination and higher incidences of all sorts of social problems. They also tended to hang around particular urban ghettoes in London and other major UK cities, providing a steady demand for the services of local authority workers of all sorts.
One of the little-noticed consequences of the Celtic Tiger economy of the 90s is that it has pretty much done for this subsector of the social services industry. If you’re an outreach worker or counsellor specialising in the Irish community, you must have seen your budget and responsibilities completely implode over the last ten years; what must have looked like the road to promotion in LB Camden social services circa 1981 has turned into a dead end.
Nobody likes it when that sort of thing happens to them, and there’s no particular reason why a similar crisis couldn’t afflict an organisation like the Equality and Human Rights Commission – which is presumably why Phillips is so keen to add the “white working class” to his equivalent of the list of endangered species. After all, ethnic minority populations come and go, some of them develop and get privileged on you, but the white working class is here to stay. Particularly if you define “white working class” in such a manner that it’s impossible for it not to be an underprivileged group in need of special help; the kids I see on the train every morning coming in to staff the back offices of investment banks are white, and they’re working class, but they’re not what politicians mean by “the white working class”.
One can take this sort of analysis too far; if you look at everything through Public Choice Economics-coloured spectacles you’re going to end up with a very strange and very incorrect view of the world. But it’s a good idea to put on those spectacles once in a while. One shouldn’t underestimate the influence of pure and simple careerism on an awful lot of those strange political trends and schemes which appear to have inexorable momentum despite the fact that nobody seems to want them.
[1] The presumed political benefits, that is; there is really very little evidence that playing the anti-immigrant game has done any good for anyone in British politics in the last fifty years. One would have thought that Michael Howard’s destruction testing of “are you thinking what I’m thinking?” in the 2005 election would have put this one to bed, but no, there’s Phil Woolas (a nasty piece of work in my opinion and altogether too keen to inherit the “man of the people” mantle of David Blunkett[2]), kicking off. Note in this context too that “curbs on non-EU immigration” is a fraud as well as a nasty piece of dog-whistle politics; all three major UK political parties are (in my opinion, correctly) in favour of supporting Turkey’s accession to the EU, and Turkey is a country with twice the population of Poland and 65% of its GDP per capita. So even if we were to accept the premise that the “white working class” existed as a meaningful category and had strong interests in curbing non-white-Christian immigration to the UK (which I don’t), it’s very clear that any and all of these promises to reduce it over the next ten years are flat out lies. It’s almost impossible to overstate how nasty, dishonest and counterproductive this kind of politics really is.
[2] By the way, “Hampstead liberals” makes a reappearance in that interview. Why is it always the Hampstead ward of the London Borough of Camden that’s the synecdoche for out-of-touch rootless cosmopolites who don’t understand the real people of the white working class? Can anyone remind me which ethnic/religious community is quite heavily represented in that ward? Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
{ 42 comments }
Mrs Tilton 11.28.08 at 10:36 am
Decline and fall of the London Irish Social Services industry? Well it should, and not before time. It was a terrible mistake for them to branch out beyond rugby.
dsquared 11.28.08 at 10:48 am
boom, tish!
Dave 11.28.08 at 10:53 am
I think “Hampstead” = antisemitism is probably half a step too far. If they started talking about Golders Green, we’d all know what they meant. But Hampstead has meant out-of-touch trendy lefties for decades [at least since old Eric Blair worked in that crummy bookshop, as I vaguely recall…?]
Dave 11.28.08 at 10:54 am
And why do I get held for moderation on this thread, and not the VD [boom-boom] Hanson one?
chris y 11.28.08 at 11:14 am
What a lot of crude racists read the Guardian web site.
Freshly Squeezed Cynic 11.28.08 at 11:14 am
“Can anyone remind me which ethnic/religious community is quite heavily represented in that ward?”
I’m amazed Steven Pollard and EISCA are not yet on the case. Amazed.
Freshly Squeezed Cynic 11.28.08 at 11:15 am
*Stephen Pollard, even.
dsquared 11.28.08 at 11:23 am
I hadn’t thought of that but it’s absolutely extraordinary. With his EISCA hat on, Pollard is highly sensitive to the use of anti-Semitic codewords of any sort, but he managed to write a sympathetic biography of a politician who constantly refers to “Hampstead liberals” without even raising the subject.
Freshly Squeezed Cynic 11.28.08 at 11:32 am
If one was being uncharitable, one might suggest based upon things like this that the EISCA is simply a tool used in an ongoing attempt to tar the entire left as anti-semitic.
Only if one was being uncharitable, though. I’m sure EISCA does lots of valuable work… erm, can anyone find any?
dsquared 11.28.08 at 11:39 am
They got a grant for £20,000 to produce a report on anti-Semitic discourse in the UK for a Commons Select Committee back in June. The report was meant to be published in September but wasn’t; I don’t know whether it’s been delivered or not. I had a series on my own blog investigating whether or not the EISCA was a Potemkin brassplate thinktank and concluded that it probably wasn’t, but it is true to say that beyond that report, they don’t appear to have done very much. They’ve had a seminar and they have an irregularly maintained blog. It doesn’t appear to be the case that anyone has EISCA as their main gig (even Pollard) but they’re not completely fictitious.
Of course, thinking about it, back in the first half of the twentieth century, the Jewish community in the US and UK consisted largely of poor Central European refugees and would have looked like an excellent foundation upon which to build a career in social services.
Freshly Squeezed Cynic 11.28.08 at 12:10 pm
Aye, I had a look at the stuff on your blog and fair enough, it doesn’t look outright dodgy, just a bit like what happens when you have an idea for a think tank down in a pub and then try to set it up through a raging hangover based upon your back-of-fag-packet doodlings. Mind you, what happens if the report hasn’t been delivered? Surely the DCLG will be a bit pissed off if they’ve given £20,000 to some think-tank and didn’t even get a few pages back? I know it’s probably chump change, but there is the principle of the thing.
John Emerson 11.28.08 at 12:38 pm
They should just switch over to the Welsh.
Dave 11.28.08 at 12:59 pm
@12: That’s it, I’m moving to Cardiff…
Daniel 11.28.08 at 1:29 pm
That article’s fantastic John, thanks!
Cirkux 11.28.08 at 2:05 pm
I’m so happy to hear a native briton speak put against what to my gastarbeiter ears sounds an awful lot like far right tendencies in mainstream party politics. Apparently it’s not only that anti-terror legislation doesn’t apply to BNP members – their rhetoric is being appropriated by labour and tories alike. Chilling.
P O'Neill 11.28.08 at 2:25 pm
I thought you were headed in Baby P direction, who was ethnic Irish. He certainly needed some kind of expertise in the social services department.
Pete 11.28.08 at 2:36 pm
There is also definitely a small faction of people who see help being given out to groups defined by ethnicity, and look at themelseves and wonder “How can I qualify as an endangered minority so I can get some concessions out of this system?” The result is the invention of “white working class†for this purpose.
Ken MacLeod 11.28.08 at 3:15 pm
Pete@17: in Belfast this is known as ‘me-too-ism’ – see, for example, the invention of the Ulster Scots language.
soru 11.28.08 at 4:46 pm
The thing I don’t get is that, in the pernicious phrase ‘white working class’, daniel seems to be objecting to the ‘working class’ part, not the ‘white’.
There is clearly a coherent group of people who live in houses they don’t own, and compete for material status based on non-housing goods purchased with legal earned income.
They are distinct from on the one hand those who play status games mostly based on their position in the housing (and sometimes education) markets, and on the other those who have various forms of illegal and/or unearned income.
As a distinct socio-economic class, they will naturally have common economic interests that can lead to corresponding political groupings. They benefit more from council facilities, council house repairs and local schools, and less from mortgage relief and national-elite universities.
Such people may, or may not, have such a common interest in minimising immigration from countries that have substantial ‘peasant’ and ‘landless agricultural labourer’ classes. Turkey, since the 1960s, is not really such a country (life expectancy 73, 80% female literacy) – if it was, it would never get into the EU.
I thought analysing and discussing such things was what politics was supposed to be about, not the ultimately secondary issues of ethnicity, race and sex…
Alex 11.28.08 at 4:56 pm
The thing I don’t get is
The entire post, it would seem. From the fuller article at CIF: side from the bureaucratic empire-building, there’s really very little to recommend the “racialisation” of the social problems of the poorest 5% of white British people. The poor, as your man said, are always with us, and the only genuine solution to their problems is a fundamental shift towards egalitarianism and redistribution. Trying to split up the working class into little interest groups and deal with them by piecemeal pandering and “addressing very real concerns” is a game that’s been going on for roughly as long as the working class itself, and has always been a bad idea.
Pete 11.28.08 at 4:59 pm
On an unrelated topic, what about Damian Green MP?
Daniel 11.28.08 at 5:12 pm
The thing I don’t get is that, in the pernicious phrase ‘white working class’, daniel seems to be objecting to the ‘working class’ part, not the ‘white’.
?
Simon 11.28.08 at 5:16 pm
The idea that Hampstead is a haven of trendy leftism is hopelessly outdated. It has long since been priced out of the reach of liberal urbanites and is now largely inhabited by the outright wealthy. Two of its three councillors are Tories (and the other one was a Tory until a recent by election).
soru 11.28.08 at 5:37 pm
@Daneil: what else did you mean by ‘ the kids I see on the train every morning coming in to staff the back offices of investment banks are white, and they’re working class, but they’re not what politicians mean by “the white working class—
Is there an example on record of Phil Woolas using the term with the racial prefix, or is it something you added yourself?
Unless I am totally misunderstanding you, you really do seem to be coming close objecting in principle to politics based on economic status, as opposed to racial groups. How else is it a valid objection that the ethnicity of the groups in a particular economic position might change over time?
magistra 11.28.08 at 5:42 pm
Phil Woolas, incidentally, is the moron who thinks that schools which have notices saying “Welcome” in twenty different languages are ghettoising people and perpetuating racialism. Because obviously a school that celebrates knowing more than one language is giving the wrong sort of signals about what British involves…
novakant 11.28.08 at 7:18 pm
what dave said:
Hampstead = Jews just won’t fly, Golders Green would
Also “Hampstead Liberalism” is a well established meme (justified or not), think Glenda Jackson.
Simon 11.28.08 at 7:52 pm
Glenda Jackson lives in Dulwich. Her constituency includes lots of working class areas, which supply her vote.
novakant 11.28.08 at 8:44 pm
It doesn’t matter where she lives, she’s a rich liberal and Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate.
Maynard Handley 11.28.08 at 9:52 pm
“Trying to split up the working class into little interest groups and deal with them by piecemeal pandering and “addressing very real concerns†is a game that’s been going on for roughly as long as the working class itself, and has always been a bad idea.”
Well of course the easiest way to win an argument is to simply assert that you are correct…
Here in California, there are a not insubstantial number of people who define themselves substantially more by their sexual orientation than by how they earn their living; and there are a not insubstantial number of people who want to deny them various aspects of a comfortable life for exactly the same reason.
In this same country a large part of the dynamics of the presidential race were about gender and race (and to some extent religion).
Or, to put it another way, how many REAL class wars have their been? Russia, China, Cambodia — that’s pretty much it. On the other hand, there’ve been a heck of a lot of wars based on cultural issues.
You, as an individual, may think that class attributes are the single most important aspect of your life. You may even believe it would be rational (in some sense) for everyone in your class to forget all their other identities and hold onto nothing but the class. But don’t get so deluded by your beliefs as to assume that everyone else feels the same way. Across the vast bulk of the earth, both now and at most times in the past, it has been other aspects of identity that have been most salient. Isn’t claiming that these people don’t know what is truly important to them basically the same mindset that you would sneer at were it uttered by an American?
Daniel 11.28.08 at 9:58 pm
Dan Simon: if you’re looking for your comment, it’s been deleted. What really offends me is that you’d actually tried to use the fact that you’re banned from my threads (and indeed, specifically that you’re banned from my threads because of persistent and frivolous accusations of anti-Semitism) as a debating point in other threads. So you must have been doing it on purpose. You’re banned, get it?
Adam 11.28.08 at 11:40 pm
I don’t understand. Are you arguing that the white underclass in the UK should not be considered a distinct group because they are white? If they consider themselves a distinct group, with common interests and goals, then who are you to veto that?
Also – are you hypothesizing that the drive to create a “white working class” is result of a collapse in the market for irish community outreach? Because you’ve got some unusual friends making that type of argument. Just google “grievance industry”.
And BTW – the claim that all three political parties support Turkey entering the EU is disingenuous. The most recent poll I could find, a Bloomberg poll from 2007, said only 27% of UK citizens thought Turkey joining the EU would be a good thing. That all three parties support Turkey joining the EU indicates a failure of democracy.
But then, I remember the posts following the Irish referendum. Such failures are often lauded around here.
Chris 11.29.08 at 4:19 am
I understood him to be saying (or implying) that the attempt to divide the white working class from the nonwhite working class was intended to, and did, have the effect of reducing the political power of the working class compared to what it would have if it were united. And that therefore the white working class was being encouraged to shoot itself in the foot by demonizing, rather than allying with, the nonwhite working class.
@Maynard Handley – You seem to be leaving out France. Is that intentional, and if so, why?
john b 11.29.08 at 11:16 am
“That all three parties support Turkey joining the EU indicates a failure of democracy.”
This is a feature of representative democracy, not a bug. See also: abolition of the death penalty.
PersonFromPorlock 11.29.08 at 11:48 am
Magistra:
Because obviously a school that celebrates knowing more than one language….
If your native language is Urdu, and I greet you in Urdu, how am I helping you to know more than one language? The point can be overblown, but the dangers of accommodation leading to ghettoization aren’t nonexistent.
dsquared 11.29.08 at 12:23 pm
Chris in 32 is entirely correct.
novakant 11.29.08 at 2:10 pm
This is a feature of representative democracy, not a bug.
It can be a feature, but it is also very problematic. If you don’t feel that way, you’re not a democrat.
Freshly Squeezed Cynic 11.29.08 at 11:37 pm
novakant – certainly it’s problematic, but it doesn’t pose any problem to Dsquared’s argument that the three main political parties are exploiting these racial/cultural grievances whilst actively lying about what they’d do.
Johnny Pez 11.30.08 at 8:15 am
That’s it, I’m moving to Cardiff…
Say hi to the Weevils for me.
magistra 11.30.08 at 9:47 pm
If your native language is Urdu, and I greet you in Urdu, how am I helping you to know more than one language? The point can be overblown, but the dangers of accommodation leading to ghettoization aren’t nonexistent.
What Phil Woolas was using as an example was one notice in a school which would almost certainly be teaching entirely in English. If I greet you in Urdu before going onto conduct a conversation in English with you that’s not ghettoisation, that’s one form politeness can take. Phil Woolas is trying to blur the distinction between this kind of respect for other cultures and enabling segregated societies to play on the prejudices of British racists.
john b 12.01.08 at 1:40 am
“It can be a feature, but it is also very problematic. If you don’t feel that way, you’re not a democrat.”
On a pragmatic “least worst results” level, I wholeheartedly support representative democracy over all other known forms of government. However, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a convincing case for democracy on any grounds other than pragmatism…
toby 12.01.08 at 10:03 am
“…that Irish people were a systematically disadvantaged ethnic group, who could reasonably be expected to have low educational achievement, low average incomes, frequent experience of illegal discrimination and higher incidences of all sorts of social problems.”
Discrimination against the Irish in England was always a popular story in Irish newspapers. It is true that the Celtic Tiger pretty much killed off that meme. I was waiting for a new organization to get started “Blacks and Irish against Racism”, but (strangely) it never seemed to get started.
Chris Borthwick 12.02.08 at 3:24 am
Interestingly, we’re now seeing just about the only avowedly antidemocratic mass movement of the twentyfirst century showing up: the Thai protesters want a 30% elevted 70% appointed legislature, to head off the inevitable vote of the peasants for Berlusconi look-alikes.
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