Will Self is very good on what's up with sections of the middle classes and how that configures with the rise of UKIP, what might be behind that, and the historical genteel-appeal of British fascism. One thing you notice about kippers - from their often extensive personal website ranting and from personal contact with the brethren - is that apart from enything else they are an alliance of people with often very detailed, personal and idiosycratic plans for national salvation. This is the kind of mulch from what the 21st century will have for fascism will emerge from. The kippers, I think, are parrtly a kind of waystation, or mobile tribal gathering.
Just to cheer you all up, here's Ha Joon-chang on the economic context. This para stuck out:
In reality, though, the coalition government isn't as stupid or stubborn as it appears. It is sticking to its plan A because spending cuts are not about deficits but about rolling back the welfare state. So no amount of evidence is going to change its position on cuts.
You must suffer so that they suffer more. You are suffering now because they are not suffering enough. That leads nowhere good.
an alliance of people with often very detailed, personal and idiosycratic plans for national salvation
...and for retiring to nice parts of other nations as long as the natives know their place. The intersection of UKIP and the readership of the Mail/Torygraph expats section is pretty large.
Posted by: nick s | March 10, 2013 at 09:14 AM
I am kind of amazed that you can write over a thousand words about the resurgence of fascism in Britain, become terribly concerned about the looming menace of flagpoles and Nigel Farage (and, truly, what democratic polity can withstand the twin menace of a fat silly man and a lot of bits of wood?) and not mention, well, this kind of thing.
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/synagogue-set-alight-during-rise-in-antisemitic-attacks-in-london-6933347.html
Posted by: ajay | March 10, 2013 at 11:20 AM
Luckily the Tories are headed for a heavy defeat, and UKIP will still be without any seats at all in 2015. For a big chunk of the population, the grumbling is only grumbling, not backed by action.
Posted by: Charlie W | March 10, 2013 at 11:39 AM
Further to that, if you're worried about the resurgence of violent fascism you should look at a map of where violently fascist stuff is actually happening - as in, people are being attacked by violent fascists for reasons of race, national origin, religion etc - and I would stake a fair amount of money that the big cluster of red dots on said map is not going to be in the bloody Cotswolds, malign influence of the Mitfords notwithstanding.
Posted by: ajay | March 10, 2013 at 11:39 AM
"BAN THE MUSLIMS!! - blimey, Ajay, I thought you weren't a fuckwit.
Meanwhile in the real world, a sizeable percentage of people voting for somebody awful is actually far worse than a couple of silly sods doing some crime.
Posted by: john b | March 10, 2013 at 12:07 PM
"Some kids tried to come to my shop. It's an ANTISEMITIC ATTACK I TELLS YER!". Grow the fuck up.
Posted by: john b | March 10, 2013 at 12:13 PM
Meanwhile in the real world, a sizeable percentage of people voting for somebody awful is actually far worse than a couple of silly sods doing some crime.
If you try to come into a kosher shop while shouting anti-Israel slogans and abusing passers-by as "Jews" the chances that you are there to get some challah rolls are minimal.
Posted by: BenSix | March 10, 2013 at 12:49 PM
Ajay, last time someone checked properly (early noughties), (a) antisemitic abuse and attacks were widespread and (b) they were coming from all other sections of the popuation, with little over-representation of Muslims. Clearly, it's all a problem and need to be fought against, but it's a lot more than Muslim vs Jew, though that gets a lot of the press.
Also, fascism is not the same as violent attacks on ethnic minorities, or even institutionalised discrimination against them. Mussolini managed without any of that for sixteen years.
Posted by: Chris williams | March 10, 2013 at 12:54 PM
There's also the fact that silly twat Farage is getting all the attention and the poll success right now, whereas the thin evidence Ajay links is in an article more than three years old.
Posted by: a3t | March 10, 2013 at 12:56 PM
Ajay, last time someone checked properly (early noughties), (a) antisemitic abuse and attacks were widespread and (b) they were coming from all other sections of the popuation, with little over-representation of Muslims.
I didn't mean to imply that they were. Anti-Jewish beliefs pop up in every part of the glorious tapestry that is modern Britain. john b is, as is often the case, resolutely seizing the wrong end of the stick.
a sizeable percentage of people voting for somebody awful is actually far worse than a couple of silly sods doing some crime.
Whoa. Seriously? Yes, the occasional teenager is getting beaten up, the occasional synagogue is getting torched (though that was three years ago, ffs, and they're still whining about it thanks a3t), but let's not forget that the real problem is that a fringe party with zero presence in Westminster has peculiar views about the rules governing the free movement of labour as they relate to the UK's commitments under the Treaty of Rome!
Posted by: ajay | March 11, 2013 at 09:45 AM
No Ajay, you can't get away with that one. People aren't voting for UKIP because they don't like the arcana of EU rules - it's very clear from the data that they're voting UKIP through a combination of "hating everyone" and "especially hating immigrants", with "hating the concept of the EU" being a tertiary concern.
To me, if a tiny minority of people do a few hundred crimes, most of which aren't very major, that's a policing problem, not a political problem worth worrying about at societal level. Even if one of them is arson on an empty building (which is a serious crime, but still some way short of a pogram).
Meanwhile, if 20% of people somewhere fairly educated and economically-not-screwed vote for a properly bigoted (not quite fascist, but certainly Poujadist) party, that's far more concerning - whether they're voting for them out of bigotry, or just out of unfocused rage at everyone else.
Posted by: john b | March 11, 2013 at 01:30 PM
(pogrom. Need to get with the program)
Posted by: john b | March 11, 2013 at 01:31 PM
1960s, British Movement - Fascists ! (more Nazis, actually)
1970s/80s National Front - Fascists !
1990s/2000s, BNP - "we are the Labour Party your grandparents voted for" - Fascists !
2010s, UKIP "we are the Tory Party your grandparents voted for" - Fascists !
It strikes me that the label is the same no matter how far the politics moves away from it.
It must be something to do with wanting to stop mass immigration. I wonder what kind of label a clone of the early-80s Toynbee-esque SDP, but against mass immigration, would attract?
"The main purpose of the bourgeois in relation to the worker is, of course, to have the commodity labour as cheaply as possible, which is only possible when the supply of this commodity is as large as possible in relation to the demand for it"
Posted by: Laban | March 11, 2013 at 09:39 PM
Shorter Laban: why, oh why, must the liberal left media label racist parties as racist?
As for the SDP, Benn caused a bit of a stir back in 1983 when he described the new party, and David Owen in particular, as hard right ("to the Right of Thatcher's Tories" or words to that effect). I've always thought a superficially liberal racist party could have had a lot of drawing power across large parts of England; a different Owen could certainly have led it. Just as well we got the Owen we did.
Posted by: Phil | March 11, 2013 at 09:57 PM
Yes, the occasional teenager is getting beaten up, the occasional synagogue is getting torched (though that was three years ago, ffs, and they're still whining about it thanks a3t), but let's not forget that the real problem is that a fringe party with zero presence in Westminster has peculiar views about the rules governing the free movement of labour as they relate to the UK's commitments under the Treaty of Rome!
I think this analysis is conflating a law enforcement problem with the political problem that Self is talking about. Fascists and/or Islamists attacking people and churches are a law enforcement problem not particularly different from any other. But the criminal political parties aren't anywhere near the mainstream of British politics, while UKIP is (the BNP is, as always, a corner case, in that it has an opaque relationship with its criminal element and it isn't currently in the mainstream).
This matters, because the success of UKIP has created the impression that its policies need to be taken seriously and compromised with by mainstream political parties (including, annoyingly, the one I vote for). The proximate result of this is that, reliably, hundreds of people get detained in disgusting conditions and dozens of them get sent to places where it is predictable that they will be tortured and killed. States are so much more powerful than individuals that even a little bit of baleful influence on government policy is likely to do more damage than even a very nasty criminal-fascist movement (rather like Vioxx killed a lot more people than polonium ever will).
Posted by: dsquared | March 12, 2013 at 08:50 AM
Ajay - I don't see it as whining, and nor do I see it as irrelevant, and I'm sorry it came across like that.
It's just that since then, we had, for example, the abuse of stop and search against blacks and Asians that led to a summer of rioting, and, now, loads of verbal violence, endorsed by the prick Farage, about the swarthy Bulgarians and Romanians.
There's been plenty since, there will be plenty more, and dwelling on a newspaper's angle from more like four years ago neither broadens nor deepens the discussion.
Posted by: a3t | March 12, 2013 at 02:19 PM
It must be something to do with wanting to stop mass immigration.
Just like euroscepticism, another populist cause that has everything except popularity!
Posted by: Alex | March 12, 2013 at 02:56 PM
Shorter Phil - being against mass immigration = racist.
I guess that's worth a (cheap) shot if you're dedicated to continuing the impoverishment of the UK working class while wearing the Che t-shirt.
Not to mention the abolition of the welfare state, which you'll doubtless roundly condemn when it happens.
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/09/the_political_e_6.html
"Diversity undermines solidarity. People don't mind paying high taxes to support people "like them." But free money for "the other" leads to resentment and political pushback. If you're a social democrat, this implies a tragic trade-off between social justice for natives and social justice for potential immigrants.
But if you're a libertarian, the opposite is true. The welfare state doesn't make open borders impossible. It's open borders that makes the eventual abolition of the welfare state imaginable."
Posted by: Laban | March 12, 2013 at 08:32 PM
I'd have more time for that point of view if I had ever had much to do with anyone who (a) was really into the welfare state and the protection of the working class, therefore against immigration, perhaps more in sorrow than in anger, or else (b) had the bottle to own their prejudice rather than assign it to focus groups, while nevertheless (c) didn't also take every opportunity to diss the Muzz, bang on about the clash of civilisations, note that they are threatening our women, etc.
Also, I note the strange absence of a situation where the owners are desperately defending the welfare state in the face of a Strasserite critique from below. The 'failure of the welfare state owing to mass resentment of brown people' remains confined to opinion polls and has yet to happen: perhaps it's the Combined Bomber Offensive to the actual Zhukov of the piece, the 'actually existing dismantling of the welfare stare owing to rich people not wanting to pay for it'. Those resentful racists are going to have to get their rebellion in pretty sharpish, or else there won't be much left of the postwar settlement for them to destroy.
Posted by: Chris Williams | March 12, 2013 at 09:20 PM
Shorter Phil - being against mass immigration = racist.
perhaps not definitionally, but it's certainly the way to bet.
Posted by: dsquared | March 12, 2013 at 10:14 PM
Chris: while I'm inclined to agree, I suppose there is a logically consistent argument that *if* all these damn furriners hadn't eroded public support for the welfare state, then the population would be putting up far more hostility to the current plutocracy's attempts to dismantle it. I doubt that would be borne out by a detailed attitude study, were such a thing even possible, but it's hard to disprove in the absence of one.
Posted by: john b | March 12, 2013 at 11:53 PM
Just as well we got the Owen we did.
I wish to register my dissent from that.
Posted by: Strategist | March 13, 2013 at 03:05 AM
Strategist - imagine a cross between the actual David Owen and Pim Fortuyn. I think you'd have ended up with a larger split from Labour - with more of a Left element - and a respectable home for liberal-sounding why do these people have to be so backward? racism. I'll take our very own Dr Death any time.
As for "mass immigration", I think in practice it's not that hard to distinguish "I don't want my job taken off me and sold to the lowest bidder" from "I don't want Those People living next door". (The Lindsey action was about free movement of labour, but it wasn't about racism.) But historically almost all opposition to migration into this country has in fact been racist, partly because the conditions for a more principled opposition don't often arise and partly because racism was perfectly respectable until very recently. Open expressions of racism have gone in my lifetime from being so normal as to go unremarked to being borderline illegal (and I'm not that old). That's bound to leave a residue of people - mostly my age and older - who miss being able to call a spade a spade whoops! no harm meant! sorry mate, didn't see you standing in the shadows! no offence! So if I see British people complaining about "immigrants" or "immigration" in general terms, without being able to say who's done what and exactly what they've lost by it, I tend to assume it's the racist script that they're using. It's a rebuttable presumption, certainly; one day I'll probably meet a workerist Kipper - they wouldn't be much lonelier than a workerist Labour Party member. But it hasn't happened yet.
Posted by: Phil | March 13, 2013 at 08:29 AM
I suppose there is a logically consistent argument that *if* all these damn furriners hadn't eroded public support for the welfare state, then the population would be putting up far more hostility to the current plutocracy's attempts to dismantle it
But then, how could we tell if it was actually the other way round, i.e. racism was being fostered (along with a more general hostility to claimants) as a way of building support for cuts in welfare?
Apart from looking at the papers, that is.
Posted by: Phil | March 13, 2013 at 09:50 AM
*if* all these damn furriners hadn't eroded public support for the welfare state, then the population would be putting up far more hostility to the current plutocracy's attempts to dismantle it
Contra this thesis, worth noting that the current welfare state was set up simultaneously with the postwar wave of Commonwealth immigration. The Empire Windrush docked a few months before the NHS was founded. The foreigners were there from the start.
Posted by: ajay | March 13, 2013 at 09:52 AM
The Empire Windrush docked a few months before the NHS was founded. The foreigners were there from the start.
indeed, a lot of the foreigners were working as nurses, having been specifically invited to do so by Enoch Powell.
Posted by: dsquared | March 13, 2013 at 11:21 AM
And then, we descend into an infinite mire of empire and commonwealth confusion. When the NHS was founded, commonwealth citizens were British citizens. It's only gradually over the last 65 years that the distinctions have been made, and still only to some extent.
Given the history of the affair, I'd have a great deal more respect for an old geezer who viewed Nigerians and Jamaicans as legit British but thought Bulgarians should probably sod off home than someone who viewed things the other way round.
Posted by: john b | March 13, 2013 at 12:16 PM
When the NHS was founded, commonwealth citizens were British citizens. It's only gradually over the last 65 years that the distinctions have been made, and still only to some extent.
Well, subjects, but yes. 1949 is when the distinctions start to appear: the first time when there is an actual status of, say, Canadian citizen, rather than a British subject who just happens to like ice hockey. But the Jamaican nurse getting off the gangplank in 1947 was just as much a British subject as the docker who'd put the gangplank into place.
But 1947, when the Windrush docks, is also the year of the Polish Resettlement Act - 200,000 Poles are granted British subject status (and, the Act specifically says, access to health and education services). So from the birth of the welfare state, there have been hundreds of thousands of Eastern European asylum seekers using it, and mass immigration.
Posted by: ajay | March 13, 2013 at 01:16 PM
Britain is a pretty densely populated country, so you could in theory make an argument against mass immigration that wasn't racist. I think it would be hard to stop it becoming racist however.
Unlike the US where the argument is just stupid - how dare all these indigenous people cross the border and settle in places that were their ancestor's homes 150 years ago until we took them by force...
JohnB: I think it's pretty easy to make the argument. Yeah foreigners are used to attack the welfare state, but so are scroungers, the work shy, feral youth, teenage mums... There's no shortage of people to blame, you don't need immigrants.
Posted by: Cian | March 13, 2013 at 01:23 PM
This YouGov poll is interesting: if you ask a representative sample of the public what they think the most important issues for "the country" are, and what they think the most important issues for their interests, you get different results. Specifically, "immigration & asylum" drops from second place with 52% to sixth with 16%. (respondents were asked to name three issues)
Conclusion: it's an air-war issue led by national political discourse, not a ground-war one growing out of personal experience. If it really was about the welfare state or wages, you'd see it in people's estimate of what affects their interests.
This would also explain why literally two whole MPs in the entire history of Parliament (Powell, and the guy who beat Patrick Gordon Walker - and you know, 1964 is quite a while ago) got elected on hating immigrants. It's projected as an issue because politicians jawbone about it, not demanded because people care.
Posted by: Alex | March 14, 2013 at 09:48 AM
... which is why the best way to counter the jawbone meme is to campaign on (and maybe even do something about) the issues that people really care about - like housing and jobs.
Posted by: gastro george | March 14, 2013 at 10:35 AM
the jawbone meme
I don't recommend coming to this thread straight after the Brazilian skulls.
Posted by: Phil | March 14, 2013 at 01:10 PM
Ajay - "Contra this thesis, worth noting that the current welfare state was set up simultaneously with the postwar wave of Commonwealth immigration. The Empire Windrush docked a few months before the NHS was founded. The foreigners were there from the start."
They were there in VERY small numbers - I don't call 0.1% of the population a "wave". Churchill's cabinet minutes, 1951 :
"David Maxwell-Fyfe, the home secretary, reported that the total of "coloured people" in Britain had risen from 7,000 before the second world war to 40,000 at the time of writing, with 3,666 of those unemployed, and 1,870 on national assistance, or benefits."
Posted by: Laban | March 16, 2013 at 08:30 PM
Given the history of the affair, I'd have a great deal more respect for an old geezer who viewed Nigerians and Jamaicans as legit British but thought Bulgarians should probably sod off home than someone who viewed things the other way round.
I seem to recall La Burchill claiming this was her view (that week)
Posted by: hellblazer | March 17, 2013 at 08:19 AM
(not sure if my reply to Chris Williams was deleted by the spam filter for too many links, or touched a nerve, so I'll try again sans links)
Chris Williams : "The 'failure of the welfare state owing to mass resentment of brown people' remains confined to opinion polls and has yet to happen"
As d2 said above in a different context, the wish might not equal the deed, but might still be the way to bet. A policy with public support AND the obvious self-interest of the powerful behind it has got to be in with a shout.
The BBC report on attitudes to welfare on 17/9/12 puzzled the Today programme presenters - according to NatCen, in the early 90s recession 58% thought we should increase welfare spending, now it's down to 28%. What could possibly have changed since the early 90s? They just couldn't understand such a dramatic shift in attitude.
"You beat your Pate, and fancy Wit will come ..."
The post-68 Left social agenda has almost completely triumphed in the UK - witness Cameron joining Hope Not Hate and campaigning for gay marriage.
At the same time the Left economic agenda has been so utterly defeated that terms and conditions for the average worker are being driven down remorselessly - even as total remuneration for the top few percent accelerates into the distance.
Haven't any of you educated lefties wondered why this might be? So much success in one sphere, so little in another?
Why, it's almost as if there's an inverse relationship between the two!
Perhaps the things that worry the Today programme - "what's happened to political commitment over the last 40 years?" - turn out to be features, not bugs. The political changes of the last 45 years have been very good for a small elite - the intelligent, the wealthy, the well-connected, preferably all three - and very bad for Joe Average, whose power vis a vis his employer is back at 20's levels.
Posted by: Laban | March 17, 2013 at 07:49 PM
How the hell does gay marriage affect 'Joe Average' and his power vis a vis his employer? But then, considering 'Joe Average' doesn't exist anyway, maybe it's a bit pointless asking that question.
Posted by: Igor Belanov | March 17, 2013 at 08:41 PM