Right-wing England – the social and
political basis of UKIP
The quite astonishing vote for the UK
Independence Party (UKIP) in June’s Euro-election crystallised deep-seated
political, social and demographic changes in England and Wales. These will
progressively re-cast politics and pose major problems for existing political
forces, including the socialist left.
To the surprise of many, UKIP came third with
17%, behind the Tories with 25% and Labour with 22%, beating the Lib-Dems into
fourth place. These are historically low figures for both Labour and the
Conservatives, representing the fact that both are in long-term decline. This
much is easy to see, although in parliamentary elections it is disguised by the
iniquitous ‘first past the post’ system, which always punishes minority
parties. In the general election, we can be sure that the majority of UKIP
voters will return to the Tory party for the simple reason that the Tories can
form the government and UKIP cannot.
Thus, it is difficult to be certain about the
future of UKIP as a political force, but what it represents politically and
socially will not go away. What does it represent? Its policies appear to be
based upon xenophobic, racist and nationalist reaction. But this is posed in a
new context, and those on the left who take no heed of this (Socialist
Worker’s coverage of the election hardly mentioned UKIP) are in for some rude
shocks. A good place to start analysing UKIP is to look at what they say about
themselves.
A rare insight into their own thinking has been
given in a document published by several right-wing websites. It is a report of
a discussion with UKIP local Councillor Toby Micklethwait. This may well be
boasting and exaggerated, but it shows their thinking nonetheless, and is worth
quoting at some length.
“He [Micklethwait] said that when canvassing
you do not waste time by arguing. You just say you are from UKIP and please vote
for us (talk about their flowers). He said Kilroy had helped UKIP a lot. He said
that UKIP had done well in a great doughnut, so to speak, in places which are
not London itself, but which are all around London – the South East, the South
West, the Midlands, East Anglia.
“He said that Conservatives and UKIP people get
on really well with each other, and the Conservatives now talk as if they and
UKIP were on the same side, which for practical purposes most Conservative
activists are (UKIP gives them a stick to beat their leaders, and an exit if
their beating up their leaders gets nowhere)…
“Electoral politics is like warfare. You need
lots of soldiers, and you deploy them where they will (make the) most
difference. You do not ask these soldiers to convince anyone of anything. You do
that with posters and advertisements.” (He then goes on to talk about how
about how UKIP got more media coverage than it deserved, which was aided by
Kilroy-Silk and bribing newspapers with expensive whole-page advertisements).
“…UKIP has now and is going to have in future
years a lot of money – more, he said, than the other parties. More than the
Conservatives? More than Labour? Yes, he said, more than any of the others.
“How come? Well simply most of the business people in Britain support UKIP.
They hate the EU and want out. Maybe not the big business people. But in terms
of sheer numbers, the majority of them support UKIP. The majority of people
whose job description is ‘Managing Director’ want Britain out of the EU…
People in general do not have much spare cash…. Big business people used to
have a ton of discretionary money, but not anymore. No, it is the ‘small’
business folk, the individual capitalists, the people who can afford weekend
boats and fancy houses with garages for three cars, and three cars, which have
the money. A few thousand from this guy, another few thousand from that guy –
that is how political money is raised, and UKIP is at the moment better than
anyone else, because these people, of all people, now hate Britain being in the
EU – hate it, hate it – and are willing to spend big money – boat money,
car money – to damn well buy whatever it will take to get Britain out of the
EU.”
Bombast aside, what Toby Micklethwait is saying
in Marxist terms, is the following: a) The key base of support for UKIP (but not
the only one) is the petty bourgeoisie b) Support is especially concentrated in
rural areas in the south of England and on the periphery of London c) Most Tory
activists agree with them ideologically d) In ideological terms they have a big
plus in that lots of the media really agree with them and are prepared to give
them a big splash in publicity terms. This spells big problems for bourgeois
politics, and for working class politics as well.
Political Polarisation
Before we return to UKIP we should of course note
that UKIP’s vote was part of a generalised dispersal of support for the major
parties, which also benefited the Greens, the BNP and Respect, the left-wing
unity coalition. We could say that given the general discrediting of Labour,
especially by the Iraq war, privatisation and the crisis in public services –
together with the general dislike of the Tories – there is a polarisation, to
the left and the right. But on an all-UK basis the right, the UKIP plus the BNP,
got much more support than the Greens and Respect. It is an uneven polarisation,
which outside of the inner cities and Scotland, tends to go to the right. Why?
First there is an obvious political factor. Since
Labour’s victory in 1997, all the forces of British reaction have been
gathering around two great themes: hostility to the European Union and hostility
to immigrants and asylum seekers. That Britain is a ‘soft touch’ for
welfare-scrounging asylum seekers and cynical ‘health tourists’ has become
the general accepted view of much of the mass media, television and radio
together with the usual suspects like the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and the
Sun.
The predominant issue to gel the right wing has
been that of immigration and asylum. The EU, which for many people is an
irrelevance, only really becomes relevant as part of a more general xenophobic
discourse. One telling example: Respect was the only ‘party’, which has
defense of asylum seekers up-front in its electoral material. Every day the
Respect office workers had phone calls from people who said they agreed with
nearly everything, but what was this nonsense about asylum seekers? Racist and
chauvinistic attitudes have gone beyond the ruling class and the middle class,
and are deeply entrenched in sections of the working class in England. This is
not something new of course; working class xenophobia, and the idea of British
exceptionalism has its historical roots in the ideology (and reality) of the
British Empire. But the scale of it is new. Labour has been totally incapable of
combating it, because it has run scared in front of the racist offensive and
incorporated the panicked frenzy about asylum seekers into its own ideology and
practice. David Blunkett and Tony Blair have been the best recruiting sergeants
to the racist cause.
Europe
The anti-EU line of the Daily Telegraph and the
Sun has been fueled by the pro-US orientation of their North American owners –
Murdoch (now an American) and Conrad Black. But in addition, xenophobia cannot
be kept neatly in a separate box called ‘asylum seekers’, and spills over
onto other questions – it fits in perfectly with anti-EU hysteria. This is not
based on any rational assessment of what is wrong with the undemocratic
structure of the EU or the proposed constitution, but simply on hostility to
‘Frogs’ and ‘Krauts’ who want to interfere with ‘our’ pound. This
creates immense problems for the British left in any future referendum on the EU
constitution, where it will be hugely difficult for a left-wing campaign against
the EU constitution to get its message heard.
It also creates problems for the Conservatives.
Michael Howard will have no problem whatever opposing the EU constitution, but
he and the shadow cabinet have a permanent problem with their base – the fact
that the Tory leadership do not, and cannot, call for British withdrawal from
the European Union. The above-quoted report of what Tom Micklethwait says
accurately exempts top business people from EU-hatred. No serious force in the
British ruling class wants Britain out of the EU. For manufacturing capital the
reason is obvious – 80% of British manufacture exports go to the EU, and the
biggest customer within that is Germany. How can the captains of the
manufacturing industry want to award themselves higher tariffs than their
competitors? That would be economic suicide.
On the other hand, financial capital is also
generally opposed to EU withdrawal, despite its heavy investment in the US, the
single biggest destination of British outward investment. Financial bosses do
not want to be excluded from any market, and least of all do they want an
increasingly united Europe to make Frankfurt the biggest financial centre
outside New York, pushing London into third or fourth place. Facing towards
America and Europe simultaneously will do nothing but benefit the UK financial
moguls. Michael Howard take note.
The latter is therefore caught between his
frenzied petty bourgeois base and the economic/financial needs of the ruling
class. This means a hardened Euro-sceptical rhetoric from Howard, but also
heightened tensions with the real Tory Euro-sceptics over withdrawal. One thing
is clear. The British ruling class cannot abandon the Tory party, a key
historical instrument. This is why we can expect to see a cranking up from many
quarters of a major campaign in defence of Britain’s role in the EU, and
pro-Tory columnists being wheeled out to rubbish UKIP. This is something which
Toby Micklethwait leaves out of his assessment, and why UKIP are wrong to think
the bourgeoisie is incapable of giving the Conservatives enough money to vastly
outspend UKIP come the general election next year.
Roots of Reaction
If the success of UKIP is based on a long- term
reactionary xenophobic campaign in the media, it has also been spurred by
long-term political and social factors. First and foremost are the defeats of
the labour movement at the hands of Thatcher and her successors. This has had
major structural effects. The working class and the labour movement are not like
they were in the 1970s. Trade union membership has declined, and major centres
of working class strength – in the mines, engineering plants, car factories
and beyond – have been dispersed. Neoliberalism has deepened class divisions,
leading to centres of the newly affluent and the long-term poor.
If UKIP has found a base in some
‘traditional’ sectors of the petty bourgeoisie, it has huge support among
the newly affluent. UKIP got its biggest vote in the huge ‘Eastern’ English
constituency, which includes London’s hinterland in wine bar and sports
utility vehicle land - reactionary Essex and parts of Hertfordshire. In
all-white Chesunt (Hertfordshire), home of Britain’s largest branch of Marks
and Spencer, a councillor was elected from the BNP. Two BNP councillors were
elected in virtually all-white Loughton (Essex). Strong support came also in
areas that have Britain’s per capita richest towns – places like Guildford
and Kingston in Surrey.
Following the American example there is a flight
of the affluent middle classes from the major cities towards the new suburbia on
their outskirts. If the present trends continue, inner-London will have an
ethnic ‘minority’ majority within ten years. In London at least there is a
strong overlap between ethnic identity and social status, despite the growth of
the Asian middle class. What is being consolidated is an old story, seen in many
parts of the world – racist reaction grows on the all-white edges of the
ethnically mixed communities, while the urban mixed communities themselves
remain centres of socially progressive attitudes on race (and many other things
as well). London is being consolidated as the most left-wing part of England.
But it would be a mistake to see the UKIP
phenomenon (or the BNP for that matter) as simply a middle-class affair. You
don’t get 17% of the vote without some support coming from the working class.
There are a number of factors here. First there are areas – the ‘sink
estates’ around Manchester being the most notorious – where traditional
industries have declined and whole communities of the long-term unemployed and
their families have consolidated.
These people are the losers from neoliberalism
and the Thatcher counter-revolution, based in areas which previously were
strongly Labour, but now say ‘what has Labour done for us?’. The answer, of
course, is nothing or very little. Support for UKIP probably came from some of
these areas.
Frequently overlooked by the left are the growth
of rural poverty, and the creation of areas of disaffection with the main
parties, especially those on the left. Devon and Cornwall had high UKIP votes,
and this part of South West England has for a long time had the highest
unemployment rate in Britain. The swell of South West UKIP support spilled over
into some traditional Labour urban areas like Portsmouth, where most local
workers are poor by national standards. In addition, there is no doubt that even
within the inner cities a small section of white workers, often I suspect older
people, voted with the racists, either the UKIP or BNP.
Xenophobia
For students of European politics there is
something quite chilling about this roll call of UKIP support. It has much in
common with the political base of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National (FN) in
France. Le Pen is also the beneficiary of the affluent in the most right-wing
parts of France like the Côte d’Azur, as well as sections of the working
class in former industrial heartlands like the Pas-de-Calais and the former
coalfields. Le Pen’s success gives us a clue about a crucial factor in the
deepening of English xenophobia and the advances of UKIP and the BNP. In France,
the most exploited and marginalised in the working class previously looked to
the Communist Party (PCF). In all probability the forging of support inside the
working class by the FN would have been impossible if the Communist Party had
not all but collapsed, in a situation where the far-left organisations like
Lutte Ouvriere and the LCR, although strong by British standards, are far from
mass parties on the scale of the PCF at its height, and unable to provide a
truly mass alternative.
In Britain the Communist Party was never a mass
force, but the parallel with the collapse of the PCF is the decline of the
labour movement and the attrition of Labour’s links with the organised working
class, towards becoming merely the second party of big business. In a certain
sense the decline of reformism creates an opportunity for the militant socialist
left, like the SSP in Scotland. But the decline of the workers movement overall
is a massive negative factor in the situation. UKIP is the historical reward for
two decades of working class defeats. And those defeats create a huge strategic
problem for socialists.
Left Response
Under the impact of further attacks and a
fightback against them, it is not too difficult to predict that the workers
movement throughout Britain will revive. However, it will not become what it was
in the 1970s and into the1980s, a movement based on huge factories and millions
of manual workers. Although this is highly speculative, it seems logical that a
changed productive base will lead to different forms of trade unionism, probably
more minority and heavily based on the public sector, and probably much more
politicised – like the RMT and the FBU are today. It is also likely to lead to
new forms of party organisation on the left, which do not conform to the old
patterns familiar in the 1920-1980 period – mass social democratic or
Stalinist parties, plus small Leninist competitors. Numerous trends on a
European scale, not least the Scottish Socialist Party, point in that direction.
Furthermore, the differentiated character of the working class, and the
emergence of numerous new fronts of radical struggle, will certainly generate
new forms of social solidarity and organization. This will tend to transform the
bases of support for revolutionary politics – beyond having a profile of
simply ‘the extreme left of the labour movement’.
In this context it is necessary to say something
about Respect, which had some extraordinary successes in inner-city areas,
especially in London, but also in places like Preston. Respect suffered from
lack of name recognition, an unbelievable media blackout, the fact that ballot
papers were very complex and only in English, which meant that thousands of
votes from Asian supporters were disqualified, and the fact that many of its
potential voters were not registered or were illegally turned away from the
polling stations because they had no identification. Nevertheless Respect raised
the banner of a left-wing alternative and this was itself vital; Respect was the
only nationally based left wing alternative. The quarter of a million votes cast
for Respect were an important beginning, a vital opportunity. But as explained
by Murray Smith in the last issue of this journal, the real challenge starts
now. To capitalise its gains, it has to move towards becoming a party-type
organisation.
This means above all that the Socialist Workers
Party accept what their central leader John Rees is arguing, to make Respect a
“mass alternative to Labour”. As Alan Thornett said in the last
issue of Frontline: “It is important that Respect develops in this way.
The SWP conception would mean carrying on in the old way. Every demonstration,
and major event of the left, would continue to lose its visual identity to the
revolutionary organisations - in particular to the SWP because it is by far the
biggest. Dozens of SWP stalls and flags and placards and paper sellers ensure
that every major event looks at first sight like an SWP event. This is what
shocked the European left when the SWP arrived in Florence for the ESF in 2002.
We need to get to a position where the visual impact is made by a single united
party with the bulk of the left within it. Already Respect is trying to increase
its profile, but this needs to go a lot further.”
From Frontline
no 14
|
