In the
final paragraphs of part 1 of this blog I gave an example of the way in which
the white working class, particularly males, were betrayed by “New”
(liberal-left) Labour , citing Deputy Leader Harriet Harman's so-called
“equality” proposals on employment.
Harman, the privately educated daughter
of a solicitor and a Harley Street surgeon, and niece of the Countess of
Longford, proposed that all groups of workers who could be designated by sexual
orientation, religion, colour, ethnicity, age, disability and sex, had recourse
to law if they claimed discrimination in employment opportunities on any of
these grounds. Only white, heterosexual, able-bodied males, most of whom would,
by sheer weight of numbers, be working class, were disbarred from doing so.
This was further proof the party
had abandoned the utilitarian socialist left principle of “the greatest good for
the greatest number” for the narrow, liberal-left policy of championing
diversity and minority rights, mainly those of immigrants, deliberately
encouraging multiculturalism rather than emphasising integration into the long
established, social and cultural structures of the host nation.
It was the liberal-left's equivalent of
China’s cultural revolution. But unlike in China, as far as these cultural
revolutionaries were concerned the UK's existing and long settled working class
was irrelevant, even a hindrance to their objectives. Mao’s “Red Guards” aimed
to destroy the “four olds” – old customs, old culture, old habits and old ideas
– by using peasants and workers to shatter the traditional ways they wanted
replaced. But with Britain short on peasants, or even a proletariat in the
Marxist sense, the liberal-left looked to other groups to achieve a rejection of
past values.
For them minority rather than workers’ rights, coupled with
multiculturalism, middle class liberal guilt over racism and what they
considered the iniquities of colonial
“exploitation” - even residual shame over the slave trade despite the fact that
that British imperialism had been at the forefront of ending it - would be used to fracture the traditional
structures responsible for what they regarded as the privilege, patriarchy and
sexual repression that had blighted society in the past.
As far as the last two were concerned though the attitudes of some of the new cultures
now embraced were often less enlightened
than those of the host nation – eg: the treatment of women and gays by many
Muslims, blacks and Afro Caribbeans. But as was so often the case with these new
ideologues such was their arrogance and belief in the “rightness” of their
ideas any inconvenient contradictory evidence was ignored.
It was as if the ethos now driving them was that if their policies proved detrimental
to the WWC then so be it because they too were one of the “olds “, as much a
part of the outdated traditional societal structure as the aristocracy and the
Tory middle class.
In fact many people who would now smugly describe
themselves as of the new
“concerned, and caring” middle class,
had little difficulty supporting these new policies as their employment status,
financial background and post-codes
ensured relative immunity from their effects.
New immigrants settled in Tower Hamlets and Hackney not Hampstead,
Islington or the affluent suburbs.
Although the class structure of the UK had not changed
fundamentally the political philosophy of the growing middle class who were now
a dominant force, certainly had. This
was centre left liberal rather than Tory and much more willing to accommodate
Britain’s own cultural revolution.
Forget the aristocracy, they were dinosaurs facing extinction
or eccentric conversion to new causes, and in the new politics the WWC were
equally antediluvian. “Sun readers and
chavs” whose votes equated to mob rule. Or as one particularly arrogant
believer in the new politics put it “majoritarianism (sic) hijacked by the tribal” proving, if proof was
needed, the new ideology was neither liberal nor democratic.
The WWC's alienation
from the political process may have been disguised in recent years by
the fall in voter turnout at general elections, down from 85% in 1950 to
60% in 2001, the lowest for six decades.
In '05 it rose to just above that and in
2010 turnout of 65% was still the third lowest in 60 years. But by sheer weight
of numbers it is statistically inconceivable that this reduction was due to
anything other than working class abstention.
“New” Labour victories relied on its move to the centre
ground of politics with new “enlightened”
middle class liberal-left voters doing enough on such low turn-outs to
compensate for the loss of its old working class constituency, many of whom no
longer bothered to vote for a party from which they were estranged by policies
they felt were often directly detrimental to their interests.
The essay from which this extract has been taken focused on
the betrayal of the WWC by the intellectual left. However we are now beginning to see
something similar on the Conservative
right and this time it's traditional Tory grass roots supporters who are being
betrayed.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in Cameron's enthusiastic, but as many Tory
traditionalists would say, unnecessary
pursuit of gay marriage. In this they'd be joined by many from the working
class and, it would appear, less strident members of the gay community itself,
particularly as he has no mandate for such legislation.
Cameron himself may not have used the phrase “swivel-eyed loons” to describe his
party's long-standing members. But when
any new leader makes a virtue of “de-toxifying” the party he's inherited, and
one of his most senior ministers
describes it's stance on issues which many traditionalists previously supported as “nasty”, it's hardly surprising they too are beginning to share
the sense of disenfranchisement and betrayal inflicted on the white working
class by the intellectual left.
* * *
This two part blog was supplied by Colin Harrow and was extracted from his essay “The Betrayal of the White Working Class by the Intellectual Left.” After a working life as a journalist he retired as Managing Editor of Mirror Group Newspapers
However he was born in the East End of London and has never forgotten his working class roots. A lifelong “Old” Labour supporter he describes himself as being on the radical left, a “Blairite” as in Eric (George Orwell) rather than Tony.
Although retaining an interest in politics in retirement he has re-invented himself as a painter and his work can be seen on www.colinharrowart.co.uk
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