New Labour, Old Racism
JVL Introduction
Racist instincts in parts of the labour Party go back a long way as S J Titus reminds us in the article posted on the Frightful Hobgoblins website.
Labour bent to Tory racism in the 1924 general election, boasting that it had naturalised fewer foreigners than the Tories. It wasn’t the first or only time.
New Labour was particularly harsh in its approaches to immigration and racialisation. While immigration rose substantially, Blair governments shifted the model of immigration, and focused resentment particularly on the broadly defined category of “asylum seeker” (or “bogus asylum seeker”).
This new racialised discourse contributed to a normalisation of racism which took many forms: a flurry of immigration raids, growing police interventions, racial harassment and violence, vilification of Roma and, of course, a virulent Islamophobia.
Labour’s pattern of making rhetorical noises in support of antiracism while being pretty bad on the issues that matter is not one that Keir Starmer shows any signs of breaking with.
On the contrary…
This article was originally published by Frightful Hobgoblins on Mon 14 Dec 2020. Read the original here.
New Labour, Old Racism
JS Titus on the Labour Party’s legacy of racism and its relationship to electoralism and imperialism
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Yes very good article. That is why the stupid left (Momentum, Campaign Group) should be called out instead of appeased. The response to the antisemitism campaign should have been an immediate response that we would not take lessons on racism from the likes of Tom Watson given their succouring of people like Phil Woolas and their demonisation of asylum seekers, support for immigrant detention centres.
But the cowardly left around Lansman and also Novara Media went with this utterly false narrative. Not once were people like John Mann called out about why they had not opposed the hostile environment policy.
That is why, even today, those who refuse to reexamine the ‘antisemitism’ campaign and declare that it was never about antisemitism demonstrate that they have learnt nothing from Corbyn’s defeat.
Unfortunately JVL is also in this boat as it refuses to conduct a serious analysis of where it went wrong.
Margaret Hodge followed this advice and spoke of “the legitimate sense of entitlement felt by the indigenous family” but not of course if you are an indigenous Palestinian family expelled from your homeland in 1948.
Smethwick, 1964. A place so racist that even the local Labour Club operated a colour bar. Tory Peter Griffiths won this seat with the slogan “If you want a nigger neighbour, vote Liberal or Labour”. Andrew Faulds (Jet Morgan in Journey Into Space, and Carver Doone in the BBCTV adaptation of Lorna Doone) won the seat back for Labour in 1966 on an uncompromisingly anti-racist platform, and held it against the trend in 1970 and continued to hold it despite an incursion into Smethwick by Enoch Powell to denounce Faulds as a disgrace to Parliament. Faulds never achieved more than minor ministerial office, however, probably because of his unwavering support for the Palestinian cause.
The comments about racist gangs provoking riots in Bradford is wrong. Ive lived in Bradford since 1980. In the 70s & 80s the Asian Youth Movement fought the National Front off the streets. Fascists hide away here. The last attempt at intimidation in 2013 by the EDL resulted in a couple of hundred of them being kettled on a building site while the police struggled to prevent a much bigger crowd of asian youths desperate to get to them.
For next years ‘march’ only twenty EDL turned up and then nothing.
The 1995 riots (like the 1981 riots in Liverpool) were white and black youth attacking the police (and looting while they could) for police victimisation of them. By 2001’s repeat performance West Yorkshire police had largely reformed to be a lot fairer (fairer than the Met by a long way). Asian parents turned in their sons because they disagreed with their motives.
These days there is an amazing multi-ethnic vibe in Bradford see this:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBcyJTdhmGo
A coming together of all sorts, and especially a welcome for thousands of Slovakian Roma (just called Slovaks here) who coming here under EU freedom to travel have given Bradford’s traveller population a help in making themselves and their culture more prominent (note the ‘charva’ in that poem, a Romany word for friend). This is one of those:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSasFioVIvo
Bradford is a great community and getting stronger year by year by its diversity. Not a melting pot, more of a big family of odd balls, all Bradfordian and fiercely proud of it.
Of course the old white Yorkshire folk are grumpy as ever. J B Priestley said they have a ‘grim determination to be underwhelmed’. No change there.
I am slightly perplexed by this article and the lack of comments about how racism and anti immigrant sentiments delivered Brexit and a right wing populist government consumed by English nationalism. Surely this is issue the left needs to understand.
During the Brexit referendum the working class was bombarded with an anti migrant narrative and a load of nonsense about taking back control. Leaving the EU hasn’t delivered any form of control to working people. It was never intended to do so. Unfortunately some people were duped to believe that it could usher in an alternative to neo liberalism. The reality is a race to the bottom with deregulation and free ports.
This an excellent piece and we should take heart and direction from it. Critiques re Bradford (Bob Cannell) and DJ are, frankly, carping. BC’s complaints do not count against Titus’ picture, but amplify it; as for DJ, s/he complains that Titus has not covered every major political event. If s/he wants points relevant to expressed concerns, they lie in the ambivalence of the LP (and Labour movement in general, eg feting Jacques Delors and TUPE as if they were victories in the class struggle rather than a fairly well-organised retreat from socialism). The Blair-Brown buffoonery about the Euro marked a further deterioration in LP ‘analysis’ of the EU: John Bullish posturing and plenty of racism along with the jingoistic nationalism. Aswith the issue of Scots secession, LP ”electoralist’ ambivalence was begging for a crushing defeat. It still is.
Another recent BBC documentary “Cant get you out of my head” is revealing the awful truth about Tony Blairs conduct as PM. Those who yearn for a “centrist Labour Government” must watch the programme. How did Blair ever get to the to the top of a democratic socialist party . He and his cronies were never any sort of socialists . Johnson and the extreme Right is their legacy.