by Darrell Goodliffe
Jack Straw’s comments about sexual abuse and the alleged propensity of Pakistani men to “prey on” white girls stirred up a hornets’ nest. But they also, along with the likes of Phil Woolas and Gillian Duffy, demonstrate that Labour is in danger of becoming a party of the white working class. And this cannot be desirable. The white working class is a reactionary formation. It has arisen partially as a result of the collapse of socialism and class identification. But also as a response of capitalist globalisation, and the effect that has had on migration and immigration.
Establishing the reactionary nature of the formation of the white working class is easy. It is based on fear and prejudices, and is expressed by its reaction to certain phenomena, such as immigration. It feels threatened, voiceless and powerless. And it has a tendency to lash out at those nearest too it.
Labour is accused of ignoring it and holding it in contempt, which in a way it does. But, as Straw showed, it also has a propensity to indulge its irrationality and intolerance. In other words, it will indulge the ethnic, but not the class, side of its identity.
Ed Balls had this to say about the proposed immigration cap:
“The government’s immigration policy is in a state of chaos. Their so called cap … will do little to control immigration [and] it also risks damaging British businesses. Cutting the number of border officers and staff by nearly a quarter raises serious questions about the security of our borders and whether the government’s policies can be enforced”.
A big problem with the cap, for Balls, is the risk that it will damage businesses. This ignores working class concerns about jobs and resources. But ethnic concerns, about the “security of our borders”, and, ergo, our identity, are exploited and indulged to the maximum. When class concerns are espoused by Labour spokespeople they are always filtered through the ethnic prism of whether “our” communities can take the “strain” of immigration. Not once are the limitations of capitalism as a social system, when it comes to providing resources, explored or even raised as a valid issue.
Formal support for racial and ethnic tolerance is still very much the creed of the leadership, as is intolerance of prejudice. However, when issues like those raised by Straw hit the headlines, it brings to the surface the desire, by the leadership, to electorally exploit intolerance and prejudice for its own gain.
Angst, anger and alienation are likely to flare-up in working class communities given the period we are entering. We can expect this subterranean tendency to bubble to the surface much more frequently. Progressive socialists must oppose this wholeheartedly. “Beggar thy neighbour socialism” is no kind of socialism at all.
Labour cannot be both a progressive party and the party of the white working class. It may well have to choose between them. And sooner rather than later.
Darrell Goodliffe writes the Moments of Clarity blog.
Tags: Darrell Goodliffe, white working class
Darrell, loads of good solid stuff there and if i may add, Labour mustn’t see through Blair’s wish to intergrate the party as the neon liberal with the big C!
Miliband, has become a real scare, Ed has dropped the left like a hot brick and is making all those horrid noises that Blair used too make.
Lord Owen is now vocally backing Ed.
I’m really losing all sense of respect for the labour movement and i now believe that Ed will put the final knife into labour as he breaks the tie with the trade unions.
Ed, has giving me nothing to be positive about, to be honest his choice of cabinet was ridiculous, he continually falls short at PMQ’s and seems to be rapped in cotton wool, as far as being out there and on the ball.
Darrell, unless politicians start doing what they say they want to do before they find themselfs elevated i’ am afraid more and more will just ignore voting and politics all together.
I agree with this article- the moral bankruptcy of appearing to appeal to the lowest common denominator would be the kiss of death for Labour. Similarly you cannot win an election on the basis of the WWC alone. Labour must be a party of all classes, all age groups, all ethnicities and genders.
I also believe that Labour cannot possibly be considered a progressive party if it does anything other than rigorously condemn a misogynistic abusive culture.
The problem that JS raised is not one of religion or ethnicity but of cultural values- a set of cultural values that are insipdly misogynistic.
Those cultural ‘values’ are simply wrong and deserve to be publicly criticised. They have no place in a civilised (let alone progressive) society or political party.
Get the general point you’re making: we have a tendency towards a la carte listening – we hear the ethnic concerns of the white working-class but not the economic ones.
But rather than listening to those legitimate economic worries, you just want to shut those nasty racist proles up altogether!
You then conclude with a ludicrous dichotomy: “Labour cannot be both a progressive party and the party of the white working class”.
So working-class people, by definition, cannot be progressives? So my bricklayer father who helped run an asylum seeker support group is an innate bigot because of his job and class?
Of course that’s because “the white working class is a reactionary formation”. What a pile of cobblers.
You’ve been reading too many wacko sociology books pal. You want to try removing the plank in your own sneery, pseudo-intellectual eye before you ask white working class people to remove the speck in theirs.
They are no more or no less bigoted than BME working class people. Or, heaven forfend, our enlightened middle-class “progressive” bloggers.
It’s not about white or Black or Asian is it, where the hell labour is going In 1997 my local labour party was full of ex miners ex steel workers, now it’s full of people I do not know or have never seen, gone are the working class people, it got so bad they put a picture of Thatcher next to Blair, says everything.
In the Welsh Assembly they put up a picture of Thatcher next to Nye Bevan, the Best leader next to the best minister says a lot of politics.
Ah, someone is using pseudo-Marxist language to sneer at the class that Marx wrote on the side (as he saw it) of. Pathetic and dated.
Or are you merely drowning in a sea of theory that you don’t understand nearly half as well as you think?
Let’s see…
“The white working class is a reactionary formation.”
You cannot make a statement like that without be absolutely clear as to what you mean. In your view what exactly is this ‘white working class’ that you disdain so poisonously? And what, exactly, do you mean by ‘reactionary formation’? Jargon on its own has no use and is not pretty. I would like to think that by ‘white working class’ you merely denote some form of ideological construct, but you aren’t using the right sort of language for that, so I worry.
‘It has arisen partially as a result of the collapse of socialism and class identification. But also as a response of capitalist globalisation, and the effect that has had on migration and immigration.’
This is meaningless ahistorical twaddle.
‘Establishing the reactionary nature of the formation of the white working class is easy. It is based on fear and prejudices, and is expressed by its reaction to certain phenomena, such as immigration. It feels threatened, voiceless and powerless. And it has a tendency to lash out at those nearest too it.’
Again, what exactly do you mean by ‘the white working class’? You are being extremely unclear in a way that manages to come off as extremely offensive to people (such as myself) who happen to be, well, white and working class.
‘it also has a propensity to indulge its irrationality and intolerance’
While you are obviously a paragon of tolerance and respect. I doff my cap to you, sir.
‘In other words, it will indulge the ethnic, but not the class, side of its identity.’
Can those of us who are unfortunate enough to be born into this residuum not think for ourselves? Do we have some kind of hive mind? Are our identities so crude, essentialist and unitary?
‘Not once are the limitations of capitalism as a social system’
Whatever capitalism is, it is certainly not a ‘social system’ in the way that you imply.
‘alienation’
For some reason that I don’t quite understand, I keep hearing the sound of alarm bells.
‘We can expect this subterranean tendency to bubble to the surface much more frequently. Progressive socialists must oppose this wholeheartedly.’
What does this mean? What is this ‘subterranean tendency’? Who are ‘Progressive socialists’ and what makes them different from ordinary Socialists? And why should ‘Progressive socialists’ be opposed to the anger of working people over the next few years? Most of it is directed against the Conservative government and bankers. The assumption that anger will primarily be directed against minority groups is disgusting and, well, bigoted. Intolerant and ignorant. Irrational. To use the sort of words you seem to love.
‘Labour cannot be both a progressive party and the party of the white working class. It may well have to choose between them. And sooner rather than later.’
‘Labour’. The ‘Labour Party’. What do you think that means? Out of pure curiosity, you understand.
Anyway, it’s possible that I’ve grossly misinterpreted you and that all you were really attack was the media-driven construct that is ‘the white working class’. And if this is so (and if your post was not an attack on working class people and their political interests) then I apologise for the tone of this comment, though not for criticism of your writing. If this is not so, then I suggest that you have no real business calling yourself a Socialist or being in the Labour Party. The Labour Party exists to represent ordinary working people, irrespective of their gender of cultural background (this, naturally, includes white working class people). It has been at its best when it has done this and at its worst when it has failed to do so effectively. That’s all.
So basically business as usual; we ignore the white working class because theyre too stupid to understand our version of high minded metropolitan socialism. I mean, who else are they going to vote for? The BNP? Lol.
This is an elaborate joke post . It must have been musnt it?
@Derek,
Thanks. That is indeed key.
He is indeed. I share your concerns though not sure how he would go that far; Ed’s problem then would be is that he isnt well liked within the PLP who wanted his brother. He’d be pretty out on a limb and isolated. Besides the centre’s power is crumbling; Blair had a much better chance to do that and still didnt.
He is a disappointment to me too.
I think you maybe right about that sadly. I think representative politics is on its last legs in the long-run and this crisis can either be resolved positively by moving to something better or negatively by hell knows what…
Hi Darrell, I usually agree with much of what you have to say – I particularly enjoy your writings on LabourList – but I find this post bizarre, to say the least. You are offering a profoundly monolithic understanding of the white working class here. You paint a miserable picture of working class life as a deadening existence, a breeding ground for intolerance solely because of one’s economic conditions. This flawed understanding leads, naturally, to the false dichotomy that follows:
“Labour cannot be both a progressive party and the party of the white working class. It may well have to choose between them. And sooner rather than later.”
Is it not possible to be both? Of course, by creating this patently false notion of a monstrous, bigoted white working class, it would logically follow that the two are mutually exclusive, but I am of the opinion that it is perfectly possible and reasonable that Labour be both.
@Rob,
Thanks. Indeed you cannot.
The problem is that Straw made it one. I have no doubt flaws in that culture exist but what about our own which is objectifying and crude and also sexualises people at a ridiculously young age….the list goes on….anything Straw said about Pakistani culture can be equally applied to our own in a different way.
The fact he singled one out made it a racial issue and that is the problem…
@Kevin,
I dont want to ‘shut them up’ but I will not pander to their prejudice. That is not courage and not leadership. It’s weak, spineless tailism. A party fit to lead speaks its mind to them truthfully and honestly and when they are wrong it says so.
It does not pander to them; it does not cynically manipulate them to bleed them of their vote and then leave them to struggle.
No thats not what I am saying. I am saying this; anybody who defines themselves by their ethnicity leaves their class and they are not loyal to their class. They are not loyal to their class because they attack its internal cohesion and weaken it against the real enemy.
History is littered with braver people than the current Labour leadership who have actually had the guts to take on prejudice rather than pander to it. I laugh at your description of me as middle class lol. Yes their are racists in minority communities and they should be opposed but can be only done consistently, not hypocritically by those who pander to ‘white’ prejudice and sooth and inflate an inflated victim complex, a complex that ignores the real power relations in society.
The notion that ethnic whites, the vast majority in this country, constitute a ‘persecuted minority’ is as laughable as it is tragically deluded.
@Alun,
I obviously can because I just have so err ye. The silly ‘victim complex’ that asserts its somehow persecuted when it forms an overwhelming majority? Hows that for a start?
I mean the group of people who consciously self-identify as white working class but I also mean the group that tends to flake off to the BNP.
Yes it is.
The tendency to exploit the ethnic prejudice of the white working class. They are committed to things like internationalism. Because that anger will also be diverted along ethnic channels by politicians and not just the BNP. You deny its a problem at all then?
I agree but they should be represented through their class, not their ethnicity. This is the point of the article. I do however have a problem with people who identify as ‘white working class’ because some certainly do and see their influence as reactionary and Labour if it is to behave as you seem to wish it too has to ignore them and combat their prejudice.
@Erm
I wouldnt ignore them but challenge their misconceived world view. Far from ignoring them I want to see their identity challenged.
@AJ2
Errr no…
@Darrell
We know Blair proposed the welfare cuts back in 2005, can you image the reaction if Blair had went ahead with that, he must have considered the trade union affiliation at that point.
I supported Ed, for the leadership, i kinda believed he did recognise the past mistakes and i’m no fan of the PLP either but he seems to me as posted missing since his election win.
I watched the interview with Ed and Paxman shortly after his win and found myself very concerned by Ed’s shall i say almost shyish response too some question.
Ed, keeps on reaching out to the lib/dem and seems to favour AV, now reform of the lords is something that’s been on the agenda for ages but i suspect Ed, wants to make the kind of reforms to the HoC and in particular the funding of parties, which of course will involve the trade unions.
I can’t remember a government that has seen it’s support fall so rapidly so quick,
Yet Ed continues to say, that labour has a long-way to go in reforms before it will challenge again, @Darrell, what the hell will be left to challenge in five years time?
I tend to believe that it’s the conservative that are more fragile than the lib/dem, the tory right are outraged with Cameron and would have no problem going to the polls tommorrow just to end their position with the lib/dems.
@Darrell, industrial action is coming, the kind of action last seen in 1984, huge swathes of people trying to defend their right to employment, Ed has already dampend his enthuse of support in that area. The press make a comment and Ed ducks, well to be honest, it not about ducking out, it’s about supporting the right to work and to a fair income and if Ed can’t give that support then what does he support?
I think Alan is nearer the mark here. This article is indeed strangely written as if the writer believes only the most sweeping generalisations have any intellectual traction. So just as the writer has decided that a) of the working class, only the white members are racist, and b) he means all of them without exception, so he also writes about the labour party as a lumpen category too; thus Jack Straw suddenly represents the entire Labour membership “indulging its’ (sic) ethnicity not class”.
The problem is that the attitudes expressed are more likely to drive the white working class into the arms of UKIP or BNP than he realises.
The Runnymede Trust examined the issue in its Perspectives series,”Who Cares about the White Working Class?” edited by Kjartan Pall Sveinsson. Whilst this publication emphatically refutes ‘white’ victimhood, (single BME working class have higher unemployment, housing etc overall), its’ analysis of how the white working class been absolutely trashed by the middle class left should be compulsory reading for anyone who cares to blog or comment on the subject.
But…
Labour is emphatically NOT a progressive party.
It hasn’t been for years.
ID cards, for a start.
Refusal to join Shengen (NOT the Euro, Shengen – remember that there is at least one non-EU country in Shengen)
More, and more and MORE pettifogging regulations.
The obsession with class, mentioned above – class doesn’t exist in this country any more, except in the minds of the unstable.
etc, ad nauseam.
The crucial mistake is to beleive that one sort of identity politics can be more progressive than another. All politics based on identification with a group rather than with values is bound to be authoritarian & backward-looking, all about where you came from not where you want to go.
Hearing “leftwingers” talk about Class is like listening to SNP supporters explain why their Nationalism is more Progressive than the BNPs.
I’m someone else that’s also a bit baffled by this posting. Some of this would make more sense – and be a little more palatable – if your “white working class” was placed within single quotation marks to draw attention to a special usage. Unless, of course, the author is being both literal and comprehensive in his disdain and really does mean that the left-wing/Labour tree-house should now have sign outside the door saying ‘no white working class allowed’.
Maybe a ‘progressive’ Labour party has got so ‘progressive’ that it no longer needs the support, the input or even the patronage of a white working class. Maybe it really has moved on so far from its roots, I don’t know. If that’s the case, then I’m happy to be a ‘reactionary’ and nostalgic/desperate for a time when Labour was a party for a white working class.
I agree with the notion that ‘“beggar thy neighbour socialism” is no kind of socialism at all’. However, the way you want to address this is, to me, worrying, and maybe even a little hypocritical. Not only are you decrying the suspicious and excluding nature and actions of this ‘white working class’, you are no better: appearing to have a bouncer’s door policy as to who socialism is for – “sorry, white working class, you’re not coming in with those trainers”.
Danny Dorling identifies five new ‘social evils’ that have sent this country hurtling back to a quasi-Victorian era over the last couple of decades. Of that five, you manage to shoehorn three of them within one single posting: elitism, exclusion and prejudice. Even worse, you (correctly) identify how and why this demographic appears, but then seem more willing, in this posting at least, to berate the symptom or even the victim rather than the cause.
You acknowledge that ‘white working class’ reactionary thinking is based on how they feel “threatened, voiceless and powerless” and yet your solution to this is to cut them off even further, leave them even more dis-empowered, all the while knowing that there is “a tendency to lash out at those nearest”. To me, that’s the game of the right-wing; a guaranteed, sure-fire plan to stir-up even more animosity and (class) division. Wasn’t the Labour Party/ Labour Representation Committee actually borne out the fact that the white working class in this country needed representation and a voice? To assuage the circumstances that encourages this ill-feeling and infighting?
Surely a better plan would be to address some of their legitimate concerns? It’s not as if they fall out of what have been, historically at least, Labour’s concerns: affordable and/or social housing; employment; inequality in wealth and its distribution &c.
Take these away and, barring a tiny dyed-in-the-wool and genuinely racist minority, the fears and concerns that stoke the ire of your ‘white working class’ will significantly decrease.
Good point – we really need to abandon our natural supporters and throw away upwards of a hundred seats.
Seriously, this is moronic. The white working class is not an offshoot of the EDL. It’s that portion of the working class that is white. It’s that simple.
Some of them are on the right, some on the left. Some have reactionary views on issues like immigration. Some don’t. Just about all of them, whether they’d accept it or not, will tend to do better under Labour governments.
But thanks for bigotry every bit as deep and unpleasant as you’ll find amongst the white working class.
@Derek,
Well I am sure he did. In fact, I think that is why he wanted to draw the Lib Dems closer to the Party. The agenda of New Labour was always the reformation and reunification of a new liberal party and to undo the historically split between liberalism and Labour.
So did I. I think if Ed felt he could get away with it then you maybe right. However, I would hope he would realise he is in no position too. He is in a much weaker position than Blair was.
Me neither actually and I think that is a striking fact about this government. How quickly it has become unpopular. I agree about the Conservative right. I totally agree with your last paragraph.
@anon2
I have not decided only members of the ‘white working class’ are racist. However, I would say they are ignorant of societies actual structure and the power relations within society. And therefore any claim they make to be ‘oppressed’ or ‘excluded’ is totally false.
On the second point you can clearly see that I say ‘labour leadership’ so obviously do not mean the Labour Party in its entirety. Nonetheless this problem does permeate the Party to some degree as can be seen by the sheer number willing to defend Straw.
Seems like that report did alot of ‘trashing’ of its own. Its a bit sad really that you associate a positive and active opposition to discrimination to the ‘middle class left’. Says alot about how socialist values and alot of its progressive content has been gutted and apportioned to the ‘middle class’ something both they have done and we have cooperated with; something similar has happened to the cause of democracy which is frequently disparaged on the left as being a ‘middle class’ concern.
@G Tingley,
Some of things you mention were not progressive at all; I agree.
Class most certainly does exist.
@Paul,
Your logic is a tad divorced from reality and that is essentially the problem with your position. It leads you into howling mistakes like saying there is no difference between the nationalism of the SNP and BNP – this is patently ridiculous and a little unnecessarily harsh on the SNP.
A democratic deficit exists in Scotland’s inability to self-determine its own future. The BNP however represents chauvinism and ignorance and no kind of democratic deficit exists. This is the difference and what makes, yes, the SNP’s nationalism more progressive than the BNP’s….
@Oliver
The ‘roots of the Labour Party’ were not in the white working class but in the working class. Labour has never been nor should ever be a party of the white working class. It should be a party that represents the working class and also to some degree the middle classes as well, since they are as well as the working class oppressed under capitalism. Full stop.
The ‘white working class’ is not a ‘victim’ or at least not because of its ethnicity. Its a victim of capitalism but that it shares in common with ethnic minorities and the middle classes. However, to assert the majority is a victim of the minority is, in this case, to turn socialist logic and principles on their heads and spin them right around until yes, they are reactionary.
They are disempowered because of their class, not their ethnicity. And it is capitalism that disempowers them and to deviate from that simple truth is to wander in the corridors of prejudice. It is the game of the right wing and the Labour leadership. No it was created because the working class needed a voice.
I am happy to address their legitimate concerns but first we have to say quite clearly and correctly that these are borne not of their ethnic origin and that is my entire point.
@Edward
The problem and the point is that it identifies itself through its ethnicity and that is the point. Yes they do have reactionary views on immigration and where they arise is it not our responsibility to challenge them rather than pander too them for electoral gain like Phil Woolas did?
@Oliver,
Actually, id also like to point out that in my original the ‘white working class’ was in single quotation marks mostly as you suggested it should be. These were edited out so on that question I take your point.
No Darrell, the problem is that you think it’s one many-headed hydra. It’s not a corporate entity and assuming all members within it are alike is bigotry plain and simple.
If you were in my ward, I wouldn’t let you canvass with that kind of backward attitude. Clean your own affairs up before you cast wild aspersions about people you know nothing about.
Yeah @Darrell, it’s pretty sickening when a conservative PM quote’s the memoirs of a former labour PM too justifiy the final privatisation of the NHS.
There were several critics of Blair and many warned Blair that if labour lost an election the conservatives would just sweep up where Blair left off.
The bit that gets me, is all the same rhetoric we heard under Blair, with former spin doctors and the likes saying labour can’t win an election unless it continues with new labour policies. What they need to be reminded of’is! in 1997 you could have pinned a red rosette on a monkey and they would have won that election.
We are now in the throws of the welfare state and NHS being dismantled, the conservatives are using the banking recession as a tool to justify their means.
I just want Ed to say, it doesn’t have to be like this, here is an alternative to these reckless plans and ultimately if the conservatives go ahead, then Ed will stand against them, full square with our affiliated trade union friends and to hell with the press because the press wont pay the bilsl or put the meat on the bones of all the families that will suffer.
Darrell, I think I understand your argument – you are arguing against the concept of a “white working class” with interests distinct from people of different ethnicities but a similar economic situation? If this is the case, you don’t make this explicit enough in the blogpost, and that’s probably why some commenters have been confused/bemused at the argument.
@Edward,
I mean quite clearly those who self-identify as ‘white working class’. In fact, I mean exactly what @James says something I will repeat for you:
Darrell, I think I understand your argument – you are arguing against the concept of a “white working class” with interests distinct from people of different ethnicities but a similar economic situation? If this is the case, you don’t make this explicit enough in the blogpost, and that’s probably why some commenters have been confused/bemused at the argument.
Now I appreciate that may not be as clear as it should be and to be brutally honest the removal of the quote marks made it a little worse than it should have been. However, I mean those people who identify themselves ethnically as opposed to economically and yes they are, by definition bigoted because they separate themselves from the rest of their class on the grounds of their race.
@Derek,
It is indeed.
I agree, I remember 97 and thats absolutely right. People were so desperate for change from the Conservatives they were not paying the fullest attention to what that change was going to be too. Give this lot a few years and the same will happen again but then again I dont see them being as forgiving of Ed as they were of Blair.
I agree we are. This is the final battle for the welfare state.
Me too but I am not holding my breath sadly.
@James,
Your exactly bang on the money. Thank you for that. I can see your point. Removal of the quote marks hasnt helped but I take on board your criticism because it isnt that clear, no.
@Darrell: Unfortunately, due to that editing, your opening post really doesn’t make the point you now appear to be making. It would have made a lot more sense if you’d have made a follow-up post with either a caveat for the editing or an actual definition explaining how you’re using the phrase ‘white working class’.
Darrell – That makes your point less objectionable, although frankly if the lack of inverted commas destroyed your point that much then you constructed your argument really badly. White working class, even in inverted commas, isn’t an obvious synonym for bigot – to most people it just means that segment of the working class which is white.
There’s also the problem that you’re largely arguing against a mirage. Most of the working class (white or otherwise) don’t describe as anything and the ones who will self-identify as “white working class”, specifically to differentiate themselves from non-whites, are not for the most part our voters.
And there really is no groundswell of opinion that we should go out of our way to win the votes of bigots. To try to make immigration less of a toxic issue for us, yes, but there are plenty of ways to do that other than dog-whistle politics and most of them are best phrased on economic terms anyway.
Nobody’s going to pull a Woolas, because they saw what happened to him. Therefore it’s confusing to act as if they are. I think this increased the negative reaction, because it was frankly unclear why you were worrying about this.
Let’s face it, no one stands up for the working class anymore. This is an attempt by a middle class writer to redefine us because they know we have no outlet for our hopes and aspirations due to, surprise, surprise, new labour and the tories who have destroyed our communities and devastated our local economies (I am from Bolsover in North Derbyshire, now a poverty stricken town after the pit closures).
The left wing parties are no better as all they seem to do is intellectualize and rant on about “fascist scum” without actually doing anything to support those they claim to champion. And now the party which was once supposed to be for us, is stereotyping and silencing us. It will be YOUR fault if the poor folk of England become the new recruits of the growing far right movement.