Inequalities in Political Activism
The Working Class is Still Here so Why is Nobody Listening?
Don’t worry, this is a rhetorical question;
The answer is that in 21st century Britain, the working class is fractured, without the cohesion that fosters the Jarrow March, General Strike and the fight against deindustrialisation in the 1980s, battles the working class lost but at least they were a force to be reckoned with.
(Slideshare, 2015)
In the 1980s black and white really did unite and fight, before the Labour movement seemed to be defeated as factories were demolished, pitts closed, drug dealers moved in to once proud communities such as the aptly named Grimethorpe, and the once unified labour movement was replaced by “identity politics” and the courtship of the middle class somewhere in the “centre ground.”
(Guardian, 2015)
While Tony Blair and the new Labour project created polices, media spin and shiny bright images to attract the middle class voter, like a Peacock on heat, as Johnstone points out in his article “The Working Class Hasn’t Gone Away” (LSE, 2017) well they hadn’t gone away, but perhaps their alliance with a Labour party which continued to take their loyalty for granted in the belief that they had nowhere else to turn, was diminishing fast.
In days of hardship the British have no stomach for fascism and since de industrialisation the far right has gained little traction amongst even the poorest of the precariat, especially given our history of defeating it in World War 2, although this may change now that fewer young people have a living elderly relative who had fought in it.
Subsequently, the “Salariat” and the “Precariat” had suffered the consequences of the credit crunch, the perceived threat of mass immigration (greater pool of cheap labour and competition for accommodation) and UKIP was there to address their concerns.
At last, there seemed to be a rallying point for the working class, from the Precariat to the aspirational Tory working class forming a curious alliance with the 44% of UKIP supporters who are ex Tory, all sharing the same concerns, and being to the right of Labour without being on the “far right.”
Political activism among the traditional working class has mostly amounted to membership of a trade union, and picketing when necessary to defend their jobs, and voting Labour at elections (History & Policy.org, 2012) Much of the (activism) once the Labour movement had won the battle to achieve the “Welfare State” and better working conditions was simply to vote labour to sustain these achievements, the rest was “soft politics” i.e. community solidarity.
The Labour movement is so long established now, that few would have the confidence to recreate it, especially without the Bulwark of the heavy industries with thousands of employees to support and finance it; Kier Hardy didn’t know when he was well off! And in any case, perhaps the Salariat and the Precariat no longer have faith in Parliamentary democracy to improve their lot as their forefathers did (Standing, 2011)
While some of these communities have been eroded because the industries have gone, the people remain, poverty has worsened, their concerns remain the same, but their leadership has then “run off” with a younger newer more middle class model from the mysterious “centre ground.” Or the more exotic and energetic immigrants and descendants of immigrants here since the 1960s, who seem to be drawn to what they identify as the more “progressive” of parliamentary political parties and whose electoral support, while smaller in number, can be relied upon as a greater percentage estimated by B.E.S to be 73% at the 2017 election, far in excess of the percentage support given to labour by traditional labour voters.
(Ipsos Mori, 2017)
In his book “the new minority: white working class politics in an age of immigration and inequality” (Gest, 2016) Justin Gest demonstrates a great understanding of the predicament of the white working class.
Ashley Cowburn draws our attention in his article (New Statesman, 2018) “How political parties lost the working class: Parliament is slowly becoming more diverse. But on the eve of a new intake of MP’s can it represent the working class?”
However rather than embracing the traditional working class in his shadow cabinet, Corbyn has limited himself recently to creating merely the most racially and gender diverse shadow cabinet in the parties’ history, with three black women in the shadow cabinet front bench and with Angela Raynor being the only convincingly working class white woman, something of an imbalance at a time when traditional Labour voters seem to be drifting to the right.
In his book, “The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class” (Standing, 2011) the author Guy Standing warns us of the danger of a young disenfranchised working class feeling politically rootless and unpredictable, the product of forty years of neo liberal capitalism. The precariat could veer either to the far left or the far right or some to each. This type of political engagement among the “lowest and most chaotic class” would be reminiscent of the conflict between the far left and the far right in Germany after World War 1.
I don’t think we need to go there again.
Bibliography:
Guardian (2015) Grimethorpe: the mining village that it rock bottom – then bounced back. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/mar/03/grimethorpe-hit-rock-bottom-then-bounced-back, (Accessed: 2/3/2018)
Gest, J. (2016) The New Minority: White Working Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality. Oxford: Oxford University Press
History and Policy (2012) The Labour Party and the trade unions. Available at: http://www.historyandpolicy.org/trade-union-forum/meeting/the-labour-party-and-the-trade-unions, (Accessed: 27/2/2018)
Ipsos Mori (2017) How Britain Voted in the 2017 election. Available at: https://www.slideshare.net/IpsosMORI/how-britain-voted-in-the-2017-election, (Accessed: 2/3/2018)
LSE (2012) The Working Class Hasn’t Gone Away. Available at: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2017/05/03/the-long-read-the-working-class-hasnt-gone-away-by-ron-johnston/, (Accessed: 2/3/2018)
New Statesman (2017) How political parties lost the working class. Available at: https://www.newstatesman.com/2017/06/long-read-how-political-parties-lost-working-class, (Accessed: 2/3/2018)
Slideshare (2015) The Miners’ Strike: 1984 – 5. Available at: https://image.slidesharecdn.com/revisionprotest-150615122740-lva1-app6892/95/revision-protest-18-638.jpg?cb=1434371402, (Accessed: 2/3/2018)
Standing (2011) The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. London: Bloomsbury Academic