In 1968 leading Tory politician Enoch Powell made a speech predicting rivers of blood' in the streets of Britain if
immigration went unchecked. Across the political spectrum there was outrage at Powell's idea that ethnic diversity would do irreparable damage and cause endless conflict.
Whatever their private views, even the leadership of the Conservative party felt obliged to disown Powell, who did however become the hero of every kind of racist, not least the then-dominant fascist group, the National Front.
Powell's skill was to sidestep overtly racist arguments about the 'innate inferiority' of non-whites, and play on social cohesion; too much intermixing is unnatural and inevitably lead to conflict - that was the core of his argument.
David Goodhart's article Discomfort of Strangers, last week republished by the Guardian, has the self-same core argument as Powell, albeit updated.
The way he poses the question is this: Britain has become a much more diverse society, with many contrasting ethnic groups and lifestyles. But diversity can conflict with solidarity. Increasingly 'we' (white people) will ask why we should share our welfare state and the benefits of our taxes with "them' (non-whites, immigrants, strangers). I regrese dilems; one of which his is according to Goodhart the
The was made aware by (surprise, surprise) Conservative politician David Willetts, whom he quotes thus:
"The basis on which you can extract large sums of money in tax and pay it out in benefits is that most people think the recipients are people like themselves facing difficulties that they themselves could face. If values become more diverse, if lifestyles become more differentiated, then it becomes more difficult to sustain the legitimacy of a universal risk-pooling welfare state. People ask: Why should I pay for them when they are doing things that I wouldn't do"".
Willetts then goes on to argue that this is "Europe versus America'. In America you have a very diverse and individualistic society, hence no welfare state to speak of. Goodhart adds to this argument by supporting the view that it is ethnic diversity that has undermined welfarism in the US: since a large percentage of the poor in the US are Black or Hispanic, white America just won't extend them welfare benefits. By contrast, he argues, coun tries like Sweden and Denmark with high welfare levels are very ethnically homogenoUs.
This argument about the US stands reality on its head. America is a business state with a ruthless super-rich ruling class, which has unremittingly used violence and racism to suppress and divide the working class and radical alternatives (I).
It is the modern home of neoliberalism, taking back the welfare benefits it granted in the 1940-70 period. Racism in the United States (as elsewhere) isn't just an inevitable fact of ethnic diversity, but a product of a particular capitalist culture, which is constantly regenerated and reiterated (not least by moral panics over 'illegal' immigrants from "south of the border' and the war on terrorism').
But the American example takes us to the heart of Goodhart's argument. For him solidarity has natural ethnic boundaries. Britain is no longer the (white) "family" described by George Orwell.
We are in danger of a society which no longer has a common history - and alas Goodhart is able to quote former Communist Party economist Bob Rowthorn on the dangers of that. These things are dangerous because we are, after all, "social, group-based, primates with limits, however imprecise, on our willingness to share".
See, we're just like groups of monkeys who are hostile to outsiders! The bitter world of in-built ethnic conflict portrayed in Scorcese's Gangs of New York is natural and inevitable. Evidence for this is found in the fact that some of the "thickest" solidarities are now found among minority ethnic groups.
Goodhart does identify a weakness is a crisis of social solidarity, but its root cause is not diversity in lifestyles or ethnic composition. The decline of social solidarity has been caused by the privatisation of leisure and the acquisitive, individualist, consumerist ethos of modern capitalism, especially in its neoliberalist phase.
Solidarity declines when the gap between rich and poor increases, and when the rich insist on cornering a growing share of society's wealth.
The scene is then set for diverting the anger and frustration of the have-nots into competition for diminishing welfare resources. A tragic example of this is the resentment among poor whites in poor areas of some of the towns around Manchester, against the alleged 'preferential treatment for Asians in the same towns
Another example is one quoted by Goodhart himself, the issue of council housing in east London. This was especially acute around the Isle of Dogs in the 1980s and early *90s where white working class couples with no children saw Bangladeshi families put ahead of them in the housing list.
Underlying this was of course the lack of council housing, and indeed the hundreds of unoccupied luxury flats in Docklands, costing upwards of €400,000. This is an almost labo. ratory-pure example of how racism can be used to divert the issue of resources for the rich and poor, into inter-ethnic resentments and conflicts.
A rich society with millions of poor inevitably generates crime and anti-social behaviour. It is not a Daily Mail invention that many older people in run-down areas live in fear of crime and violence.
It is not a surprise that many of these people seek to interpret their situation in terms of ethnic conflict or nostalgia for the lost, nearly all-white, world of the 1940s and '50s where (allegedly) things were more orderly, civilised and harmonious
•• positions and
•• Some of Goodhart's a have pointed out that this world of the 1950s was or stifling conformity and rep sion, at work and in the nuc family, especially for wor lesbians and gay men, for disabled and of course Black and Asian immigrants The freer world of Britai years later - freer in term lifestyles at least - is incap of generating meaningful sc solidarity right across soc because solidarity cannot generated between pe whose objective positions interests conflict. These ob tive interests are those of c and social position, not of nic origin. course not jus oodhart's piece is abstract exercise, linked to the current deba about immigration, espec when citizens from the n EU countries of Europe are able to legally migrate here few months' time. His solutions will welcome in Whitehall.
They revolve around a two-tier bene system, which would allow workers to co here in limited numbers, but not be able immediately access a full-range of ber rights, including access to the health sen and education Clearly he also wants to down access to the NHS for foreign visit as well.
Immigrants who are here must be 'in grated' - here Goodhart echoes Blunk They must get a forced education into t broad sweep of British history and cultu so that they become more like 'us'. And help this process, apparently we must b ster nationalism - possibly even resorting the populist device of a "British national ho day," like they have in the US
Goodhart has elicited strong support fro Melanie Phillips of the Daily Express a Peter Hitchens of the Daily Mail. No wond He has articulated from an allegedly pr gressive position what the devil on t shoulder of every racist whispers in their e "they' are not like 'us'.
Footnote
(I) See Mike Davis, Prisoners of ti American Dream, Verso 1986.
page 10 of the scan
Inside the USA 10 sockalist resistance March 2004 war" doctrine.