Salma Yaqoob: A strengthening sense of English identity in the face of recession cannot be left to those who want to exclude outsiders
For most black and Asian people, English nationalism conjures up uncomfortable associations. Many, like my parents, remember living through the rise of the National Front in the 1970s and associate it with reaction, racism, and worse. With Britain heading deeper into recession, and the far right again re-emerging as a growing political force, there is an understandable nervousness about any political discourse centred on notions of English identity. This is particularly the case when the discourse is so often framed as a reaction against those of us who see our identity as more complex than one all-embracing category, whether it is nation, gender, class, faith or race.
The appeal of this brand of Englishness is understandable, if simplistic. Two decades of new Labour's embrace of casino capitalism has seen a dramatic growth of inequality. Swathes of the white working-class feel abandoned - used as cannon fodder at election times, and left stranded thereafter. Poverty and disadvantage have fuelled resentments and tensions as people feel in competition over scarce resources. While the recent announcement in the budget of £1bn to be spent on council housing is to be welcomed, it is wholly inadequate to address the already huge needs, as housing waiting lists and the scale of home repossessions grow.
A dangerous mixture of myths have been fostered in which too many people too easily ascribe their difficulties in securing housing or jobs to newly arrived immigrants. The simplistic answers of the far right have found fertile ground. Non-British and non-Christian identities have been situated as problems or threats, whether through attacks on asylum seekers and refugees, demonisation of Muslims and Islam post-9/11, or the more sophisticated critiques of Britain's multicultural model.
But grievances underpinned by economic injustice, and the tensions they give rise to, are not just confined to disadvantaged white working-class communities. As someone who runs an advice surgery in inner city Birmingham, the sense that another ethnic grouping or nationality is always doing better is quite common, whether it is Pakistanis expressing such concerns about Somalis or African-Caribbean people about Pakistanis. Such tensions were an important underlying cause of disturbances in the Lozells area of the city between members of the African-Caribbean and Asian communities that left two people dead.
Rob Berkley, director of the Runnymede Trust, has summed up the challenge ahead:
There is an urgent need to ensure that a re-emergence of class onto the political agenda will not feed divisions, but promote equality for everyone … it's possible to have a progressive debate on race and class in 21st-century Britain that can lead to better outcomes for all.
The challenge for progressive politics is to build coalitions among the most dispossessed and excluded, anchored in a commitment to multiculturalism, social justice for all, and tackling exclusion from economic and political power.
Only a political culture that acknowledges the realities and specificities of disadvantage associated with race and class can marginalise the appeal of those with the worst kind of identity politics: whether of a white, Asian or black communalist nature or religious sectarianism. Such a politics must seek to shape a political discourse within the mosaic of communities and between them. continues here
For most black and Asian people, English nationalism conjures up uncomfortable associations. Many, like my parents, remember living through the rise of the National Front in the 1970s and associate it with reaction, racism, and worse. With Britain heading deeper into recession, and the far right again re-emerging as a growing political force, there is an understandable nervousness about any political discourse centred on notions of English identity. This is particularly the case when the discourse is so often framed as a reaction against those of us who see our identity as more complex than one all-embracing category, whether it is nation, gender, class, faith or race.
The appeal of this brand of Englishness is understandable, if simplistic. Two decades of new Labour's embrace of casino capitalism has seen a dramatic growth of inequality. Swathes of the white working-class feel abandoned - used as cannon fodder at election times, and left stranded thereafter. Poverty and disadvantage have fuelled resentments and tensions as people feel in competition over scarce resources. While the recent announcement in the budget of £1bn to be spent on council housing is to be welcomed, it is wholly inadequate to address the already huge needs, as housing waiting lists and the scale of home repossessions grow.
A dangerous mixture of myths have been fostered in which too many people too easily ascribe their difficulties in securing housing or jobs to newly arrived immigrants. The simplistic answers of the far right have found fertile ground. Non-British and non-Christian identities have been situated as problems or threats, whether through attacks on asylum seekers and refugees, demonisation of Muslims and Islam post-9/11, or the more sophisticated critiques of Britain's multicultural model.
But grievances underpinned by economic injustice, and the tensions they give rise to, are not just confined to disadvantaged white working-class communities. As someone who runs an advice surgery in inner city Birmingham, the sense that another ethnic grouping or nationality is always doing better is quite common, whether it is Pakistanis expressing such concerns about Somalis or African-Caribbean people about Pakistanis. Such tensions were an important underlying cause of disturbances in the Lozells area of the city between members of the African-Caribbean and Asian communities that left two people dead.
Rob Berkley, director of the Runnymede Trust, has summed up the challenge ahead:
There is an urgent need to ensure that a re-emergence of class onto the political agenda will not feed divisions, but promote equality for everyone … it's possible to have a progressive debate on race and class in 21st-century Britain that can lead to better outcomes for all.
The challenge for progressive politics is to build coalitions among the most dispossessed and excluded, anchored in a commitment to multiculturalism, social justice for all, and tackling exclusion from economic and political power.
Only a political culture that acknowledges the realities and specificities of disadvantage associated with race and class can marginalise the appeal of those with the worst kind of identity politics: whether of a white, Asian or black communalist nature or religious sectarianism. Such a politics must seek to shape a political discourse within the mosaic of communities and between them. continues here
![Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War](http://patbuchananbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/bk-pjb-chuw165.jpg "Churchill_Hitler_the_Unnecessary_War\")
Post a comment on AAWR
0 Responses to "Devolved identity politics"Post a Comment
We welcome contributions from all sides of the debate, at AAWR comment is free, AAWR may edit and/or delete your comments if abusive, threatening, illegal or libellous according to our understanding of, no emails will be published. Your comments may be published on other nationalist media sites worldwide.