The UK Government Must Represent The Working Class

by A. Millar
August 30, 2011 at 4:30 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/2390/uk-government-working-class

Many people had hoped that the Conservative Party would be different from its predecessor, the Labour Government, which rode roughshod over the wishes of the electorate, especially the working class that once formed its base. After coming to power in 1997, Labour allowed immigration to spiral out of control, radical Islam to rise up in the UK, and Britain to relinquish more sovereignty to the European Union.

Such hope was not unreasonable, even if it was unrealistic. Although theoretically Labour party and the Conservative parry occupy opposite sides of politics, the reality is very different, as the electorate has begun to grasp. Like the Labour Government, the current Conservative-dominated administration betrays every sign of being unable and unwilling to tackle, in particular, the problems of mass immigration and the emergence of radical Islam and sharia law inside the UK. Like its predecessor, the current Government appears to be more interested in shifting the responsibility for the country's problems onto the White working class than in fixing problems or addressing the concerns of those that they were elected to represent.

Part scapegoat and part collective personae non gratae in Britain, the working class and their legitimate concerns are simply ignored, while those who dare to air concerns are routinely denounced as "racists" or "thugs" in the hope of shutting down dissent.

Both the Conservative Party and its "opposition" Labour Party agree on almost ever issue of significance. They are both politically correct, pro-European Union, pro-political multiculturalism, and seem to believe that the UK is an empty space that is given life through immigration. More disturbing, and less often observed, hatred of the English working class and its traditional culture appears also to unite them, not only with one another but also with large parts of the media class.

The most extraordinary example came in the year 2000, when then Conservative Party leader William Hague appeared with Jack Straw, the Labour Home Secretary on BBC Radio 4 to vilify the English. For Straw, they were largely a not especially tolerant people who had accepted huge changes in their country to make immigrants welcome, but a "potentially very aggressive, very violent" people who had subjugated neighboring countries and needed taming. For Hague, English nationalism was "the most dangerous of all forms of nationalism."

Is it any wonder that, with such hostility to the British – the English in particular – the Institute for Public Policy Research found, in 2007, that ethnic minorities were more likely to feel British than White people? Considering the now institutionalized loathing of White working class English men, is it surprising that countless reports have shown that poor White boys are the lowest achieving demographic in Great Britain today, coming only slightly behind the Black British?

Ideas have consequences.

As Robert Wistrich remarked in the Jewish Journal, the recent riots were partly the result of a "relentless assault on British national identity in the name of multiculturalism and "anti-imperialism," as well as on societal norms such as the family. It is an uncomfortable fact, but from the footage, photographs and eyewitness accounts, the perpetrators were largely – in some cases exclusively – Black. It is a complicated situation, but gang culture, drugs, the availability of illegal firearms, single-parent homes, the welfare state combined with the difficulty of finding well-paid employment are, for many people, contributing factors. But, as Wistrich observes, the demolishing of traditional norms by Britain's "elite," combined with "uncontrolled immigration is steadily undermining the social fabric."

Although the major parties tried their best to avoid emotive issues during the last election season, the immigration issue was too big to ignore entirely; eventually, David Cameron was pressured into pledging to cut the level to "tens of thousands" a year.

Britain, a nation slightly smaller than the state of Oregon, has seen two million immigrants settle since 2000. Poorer areas have, in some instances, been transformed to such an extent that one group of Islamists is now calling for some cities and areas to be controlled not by British law, but by sharia law. Despite Cameron's pledge on immigration, however, it has increased significantly since the Conservative-dominated coalition Government was formed. In 2010, under Cameron's leadership, immigration was up a staggering 21% from 2009.

Immediately after Britain's riots, David Cameron was promising to get tough once again. This time it was about the rioters. He would "not let any phony concerns about human rights get in the way of the publication" of photographs of the perpetrators, and those prosecuted would face stiff sentences. Many have.

Stiff sentences are undoubtedly welcomed by the majority of the British public, but caution should be advised. It is not the job of a national leader or Government to dictate sentences, and, in this case the punishments handed down were so unusually harsh that it can only be that political pressure had its affect. According to the center-Right Daily Mail, one young Brixton man was sentenced to six months for stealing six bottles of water during the riots, while a mother in the city of Manchester was given a five month sentence after she was given a stolen tee-shirt. Both these acts may be reprehensible, but neither individual would have received a prison sentence --– or even probably would have been taken to court --– if these events had occurred a day before the riots.

Once the riots have faded from the public consciousness, such crimes will once again be unlikely to be punished with prison sentences. Britain, after all, is a country that, a decade after 9/11, still routinely fails to deport criminals -– including convicted terrorists -– on the basis that it might impinge upon the very human rights that Cameron promised would not affect investigations into the riots.

Cameron's response was in every way a rerun of former Prime Minister Tony Blair's reaction to the London bombings: the promise to get tough coupled with more understanding for the perpetrators.

The Prime Minister had suggested the return of national service -– a phrase that traditionally indicates military service or its equivalent. This quickly turned out, however, to be a massive extension of the taxpayer adventure holidays that are already in operation. According to This Is London, these are "three-week summer courses aimed at improving confidence and skills with community work and activities such as abseiling, mountaineering and canoeing."

The police response to the riots had been severely criticized, both for being too soft, and for being too hard -– the BBC, which thought the looting and arson was a political protest, managed to take both positions during the same day.

Those in charge of deploying officers made serious tactical errors. Initially police were instructed to "stand and observe" the anarchy, and to somehow contain the situation without making arrests -– not exactly an easy task. For the first couple of nights, too few officers were deployed. This meant that police were unable even to be present at every scene of trouble. When, in Clapham, in South London, a mob of young Black men and women strolled causally along Lavender Hill, smashing up every shop and business they passed, the Sky News reporter at the scene said he had not seen even a single police officer [video].

During the four nights of rioting, shops and homes across England were burned to the ground. Property damage was estimated at $300 million. Passersby were mugged, assaulted, and in some cases, forced to strip naked in the streets. Three young Muslim men were murdered when a car of young Black men drove into them. Witnesses believed the act was deliberate. The scene across England was one of absolute carnage.

Muslims came out to defend their neighborhoods during the four nights of rioting, and Sikh's also gathered, holding hockey sticks and swords, to protect their neighborhoods, pubs, and temples. Although the BBC inferred that such scenes could lead to inter-ethnic conflicts, its concern was muted, to say the least. In many cases, the Muslims and Sikhs were praised. Not so the White working people who came out to defend their neighborhoods. Astoundingly, this particular demographic was soon portrayed as the real menace.

Even before the last night of rioting, the media had shifted its political narrative away from the rioters ("protesters"), and zoomed in on the White working classes that had had promised to defend their areas. This group -– in sharp contrast to the Muslims and Sikhs –- was described as "far-Right." As Brendan O'Neill of the irreverent Libertarian magazine, Spiked, remarked,

"You may have looked at the groups of men in Enfield and Eltham and seen working people keen to protect their homes and shops, but the upper echelons of society, through their snob-goggles, saw the emergence of an English version of the Third Reich – they saw 'race hate' and 'fascists patrolling the streets'."

In the largely-White London suburb of Eltham, as the Telegraph reported, locals gathered to protect their property and area. They were reportedly joined by about 50 members of the English Defence League, a controversial anti-Islamist organization that had previously focused on protesting against the intrusion of sharia law into Britain. One man told the Telegraph, "the police are unable to control the street. These are local people, not EDL. These are patriots that have come out to defend their area, so the EDL has come down -– about 50 of us -– to manage and control them, to guide them to make sure they don't move out of order." Some of those who gathered attempted to brawl with several young black men on a passing bus, although they were held back by police, who set their dogs on them.

The Telegraph also reported that "Riot police were hit with missiles including bottles as more than 1,000 officers battled with dozens of middle-aged men on the streets Eltham, south-east London," and "Witnesses reported that many of the 200 men were chanting in support of the English Defence League, the controversial Right-wing group." An accompanying video of police chasing down the White youths that had gathered to protect their homes stands in stark contrast to others in which rioters go unmolested as they engage in criminality, or in which police stand and watch, and then run, as a mob of young Black men goad them and then charge at them.

Yet, it was White working class in Eltham that was on the mind of the Prime Minister as he stood up in Parliament, to denounce not the rioters than had caused hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage, that had mugged, robbed, stripped people of their clothes, and murdered, but to say that "there is none sicker than the EDL."

The presence of EDL members is largely irrelevant. Most were simply locals; whatever one may think of the organization, like the Sikhs and Muslims that gathered throughout the nights of rioting, its members had turned out in order to prevent rioting, not to start it.

The assaults on White youths who wanted to defend their homes, and the comparatively weak response in regard to the actual rioters, show that the hatred of Britishness, and of the working class in particular, has consequences.

Why were a thousand police officers sent to police an area where trouble had not occurred, while rioters were given free reign elsewhere?

Political correctness is the answer. The authorities understand that scenes of White working class people standing around and defending their neighborhoods will be portrayed as proof of the emergence of the extreme-Right. This, to put it bluntly, means failure in all areas -- the failure of the political class, the failure of the police, the failure of law, and the failure of education to have eliminated patriotism and to have instilled instead political multiculturalism.

Such scenes would have serious consequences for those in power, the least of which would be constant vilification in the press.

Britain's political class appears, on occasion, to be in simple denial, and although scapegoating is one response, refusal to budge is another. Despite the orgy of violence visited upon Britain for four nights, and the $300 million in damage to property, the Prime Minister has insisted in that the Government will press ahead with plans to impose a 20% cut on the police. The cuts would mean potentially 34,000 fewer police officers, resulting in an estimated increase of 3% in property crime.

Such cuts, in the light of the riots, seem to border on insanity. No one could believe that the police had the situation under control, even if they were able to contain it in areas.

Despite the obvious racial and religious element of the riots and those that turned out to defend their neighborhoods, the Government does not need to make race an issue. Rather, it needs to begin to treat British citizens as citizens. It needs to begin to represent the public. That means more, not fewer, police on the beat. It means removing obstacles to employment for those lower down the economic level -– such as the council tax -– and it needs to encourage aspiration and high expectations, and to put an end to the soft bigotry of low expectations.

It will also mean taking the bold step of addressing the substantive issues -– the rise of radical Islam in the UK, mass immigration, the EU -– and representing the wishes of the citizenry regarding them.

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