June 28, 2011

A proudly diverse nation

This article was submitted by one of our readers, Daniel Pitt. We welcome any contributions from our supporters (as long as those contributions conform to the law and are in reasonably good taste). Please send your articles to us via email.

Britain is a land built by migrants. After all, there was no one inhabiting these islands 50,000 years ago, and for most of human history there were no international borders. The emergence of the modern British nation state and the advent of a global economy brought with it the movement of capital in search of profit and the movement of people in search of work. Britain, home of the industrial revolution, saw successive waves of immigration from the 19th century onwards. It was driven by the needs of capitalists to find an adequate supply of workers. However, from the beginning, the capitalist class also grasped that the migration of cheap labour into the country provided them with a ready mechanism for dividing working people.. This was not automatic; it depended on an invented common identity of Britishness, which offered a false sense of solidarity between workers and bosses, while dividing native born from “foreign workers”. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the treatment of Irish workers who came to Britain in the 19th century to work on the canals and railways. They were forced to leave their homes—much like Roma people in Slovakia today—because of impoverishment or oppression, and usually both.

Our rulers have always tried to sow divisions among workers but there is a powerful history of class solidarity.The next time you walk down a canal towpath or ride a train think of the thousands of Irish labourers—the navvies—who died building the infrastructure of the industrial revolution, housed in the most squalid living conditions imaginable. Textile mill bosses also imported Irish workers. Initially this was often to use them as strikebreakers. In situations of sharpened competition in the labour market among low-skilled workers, it is not difficult to see how tensions arose. Karl Marx observed the process and got straight to the heart of the matter: “Every industrial and commercial centre in England now possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps… The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standards of life. In relation to the Irish worker he feels himself a member of the ruling nation and so turns himself into a tool of the aristocrats and capitalists of his own country against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself.” Marx went on to explain how this antagonism was kept alive by “the press, the pulpit and the comic papers” in much the same way that the Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express do today, with their relentless attacks on migrants and Muslims. But there was another process cutting aganist the divisions between workers. The bringing together of workers in the factory system created a need for unity against the common enemy exploiting their labour. Despite the best efforts of the capitalists to stoke racism, the impulse to class solidarity was often stronger. Many leading members of the Chartists, Britain’s first mass workers’ movement in the mid 19th century, came from the ranks of Irish labourers. Class fighters such as Feargus O’Connor and James Bronterre O’Brien led British workers into struggle, as did other “foreign” workers like the black Chartist organiser William Cuffay. Unfortunately the Chartists were defeated, and racist ideas were able to fester.

The New Unionism of the 1880s brought a new wave of Irish activists into politics. Ireland was officially part of Britain at this time so there was no issue of immigration controls—it was the availability of work not controls that adjusted the flow. At the end of the 19th century millions of Jews from the economically undeveloped parts of eastern Europe fled poverty and persecution. State-sponsored anti-semitic pogroms killed thousands of Jews in Russia and Poland. Three million largely poor Jews migrated to the US and perhaps a quarter of a million to Britain. Ruling class figures responded with racism. Tory MP William Evans Gordon said in parliament in 1902, “Not a day passes but English families are ruthlessly turned out to make room for foreign invaders.” This racism paved the way for the Aliens Act of 1905, the first to limit immigration and which defined some groups of migrants as “undesirable”. It made it easier for racists to argue that Jewish people were a problem in British society - however, Jewish workers came together with other sections of the working class. In the 1930s fascist attempts to turn “native” Britons against Jews were defeated on the streets. The long economic boom after the Second World War saw capitalists respond to increasing demand for labour by again looking to workers from overseas.

This time they looked further afield in the British Empire—to the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent—for workers to plug the shortages in areas such as public transport and the hospitals. Black people soon found that the land of opportunity was also a land of racism. Some landlords and pubs in places like London and Birmingham put up signs saying, “No blacks, no Irish, no dogs”. But socialists and trade unionists organised reception committees to welcome the new workers and to help them settle in. However there was no automatic unity among the oppressed. Some established migrants, who had become assimilated into British society, came to view more recent immigrants as outsiders, and at times as a threat.

Some British people of Irish backgrounds could be among the most antagonistic towards Black people, seeing their own “whiteness” as making them superior to African-Caribbeans. Post-war Britain’s open door policy wasn’t to last as the boom ebbed and turn into crisis towards the end 1960s. The Tory politician Enoch Powell who had once implored Jamaicans and others to come to find work in the “mother country”, now scapegoated black and Asian immigrants for the mounting problems faced by a British economy in decline. This was even though many so-called immigrants were in fact born in the country. The 1971 Immigration Act brought a shuddering halt to “primary” immigration to Britain. Future migrants would be the dependants of those already here and not new workers. But the rising racism, especially in the mid 1970s, led to a powerful anti-racist response that reached a crescendo with the formation of the Anti Nazi League (ANL). The ANL drove the predecessors of the Nazi British National Party (BNP), the National Front, off our streets. Today asylum seekers, living in forced destitution, are blamed for “ruining areas” and bringing crime. Or in the case of “economic migrants”, like those from new European Union countries in eastern Europe like the Irish before them, lowering wages.

It can sometimes appear easier to kick the “foreign” worker next to you, especially during times of low class struggle, such as after the defeat of the Chartists in the 19th century. Equally however, during times of rising struggle, divisions are overcome time and time again. A key task of socialists today is to harness that class solidarity to fight both against the bosses and in defence of the rights of all working people, regardless of spurious notions of nation and race. Socialists must act as “tribunes of the oppressed”, as the Russian revolutionary Lenin put it. We must oppose all racism and bigotry. Today that means standing up against Islamophobia and racism, and breaking the back of the organisations these twin poisons are breeding, the Nazi BNP and the English Defence League.

22 comments:

James W said...

A very nicely written article. Thank you Daniel.

Anonymous said...

Well done Dan for writing such a concise, passionate and grounded article about the historical diversity of Britain. I can tell that you are a strong anti-racist and anti-fascist acolyte with a real passion for fighting injustice wherever it comes. I sincerely hope that this article will help some people realise that their bigotry is effectively harmful to British values because we are a melting pot of different, wonderful cultures.

Anonymous said...

Fabulous article!

DD said...

More article, Daniel. :)

Barbara said...

Britain has always been "multi-cultural", and here is some evidence through art:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01271x1/Hidden_Paintings_London/

(Hardeep Singh Kohli visits some of London's museums and galleries to find the paintings of the sailors, slaves and scholars who shaped the city that exists today.)

Anonymous said...

Yes, a wonderful melting pot. A beautiful article. Well done!

Mike B. said...

Good to see a new writer on here and with such a fine article too.

Anonymous said...

Well, historically it's important to remember those workers who have united against racism and fascism. Workers in Leeds, meeting on Holbeck Moor, in support of exploited Jewish slipper workers during the 19c is a case in point, however, a recent poll, with 30 percent of young people holding racist views, suggests there's some work to be done in the here and now.

Anonymous said...

What is the last thing a sensible jeweller would do with gold, platinum, silver and a melting pot, and why? I don't like that term, each race is a precious metal in its own right.

Daniel Pitt said...

Thank you all for the positive feedback in response to my article. I can confirm that more material is in the pipeline so keep your eyes open! I am especially glad to be writing for such a marvellous blog which has established itself as a productive force in the fight against racism and fascism; I hope that the endeavours of Lancaster Unity continue with their valuable informative material and continue to be a thorn in the side of toxic fascist organisations such as the British National Party and English Defence League respectively.

Anonymous said...

each race is a precious metal in its own right.

Race is a social construct.

Landale said...

Well Done! - a good article.

Kev Scott loves The Jam said...

Anonymous said...
What is the last thing a sensible jeweller would do with gold, platinum, silver and a melting pot, and why? I don't like that term, each race is a precious metal in its own right.
3:54 PM, June 28, 2011


Some of our most important and useful metals are alloys!!!!
Nuff said

Kev Scott loves The Jam said...

Anonymous said...
What is the last thing a sensible jeweller would do with gold, platinum, silver and a melting pot, and why? I don't like that term, each race is a precious metal in its own right.
3:54 PM, June 28, 2011


Pure gold is far too soft to make useful jewellery... its better when alloyed.

Have I 'done' the jeweller analogy enough, or shall I carry on pulling your silly comment apart?

Anonymous said...

The ANL drove the predecessors of the Nazi British National Party (BNP), the National Front, off our streets.

The reasons for the NF's decline were a bit more complex but overall a good and positive article. Thanks for posting.

Anonymous said...

Nick Griffin has publicly proscribed the English Defence League, but it is essentially the product of the demise of the British National Party. Paedophile founder Richard Price, who was jailed for child pornography despite a mortifying campaign by the EDL to free him under 'political prisoner' status & fellow perverts Brett Moses & Kevin Jenkins have BNP memberships. Chris Renton who was at one point the EDL webmaster is a BNP member and so is leader Stephen Lennon (Tommy Robinson) who has convictions for violent crime and posession of Class A drugs; there are pictures still circulating of him as well as several other members snorting cocaine. They are nazis and always will be but if we do nothing to stop them then we are aiding them. Smash the fascists!

Daniel Pitt said...

Only last week an EDL member wrote on his Facebook page that Muslims and Jews were 'rats' who were 'poisoning the Aryan race.' Dangerous as these ideas are, due to infighting and a very strong anti-fascist campaign from organisations such as Hope Not Hate and UAF, the far-right are eventually being eroded but even when dormant they are still a threat to democracy. My theory is that fascism seems to crop up every twenty years - Oswald Mosley's BUF in the 30s, White Defence League in the 50s, NF in the 70s and the BNP in the 1990s now being replaced by the EDL which was created in 2009. We must strongly oppose any far-right threat and any form of discrimination whether or not it is related to the toxicity of these odious politics; the words 'Never Forget' which are attributed to the Holocaust are still as relevant & potent today as they were then.

John Golding said...

I wish that this marvellous article wasn't limited to this blog solely; I think everyone should read this and realise the importance of multiculturalism as a foundation block in our social construct. Daniel writes with obvious passion and flair with an extremely well-researched article that I just can't see any flaws in. My great uncle was an Irish immigrant who worked on constructing docks and when I showed him this article even he showered it with praise. Please keep writing as your excellent work is of great value and importance to us all.

Barbara said...

Good article, but it's not just "socialists" who should oppose racism and bigotry, of course.

Mandy Jenkins said...

I agree with Barbara that the fight against racism and fascism should not be restricted to one political ideology, but I think she misses the point. Daniel is merely pointing out that, unlike the mainstream parties, the Left has a particularly strong record on waging war on intolerance, catalogued in a superbly intelligent but accessible form.

James King said...

I can hear the teeth of fascists like terrorist supporter Griffin grinding at an article this well-written and powerful, especially for someone who's only nineteen! My ancestors are of Caribbean descent and my best friend's Jewish grandmother who died last year aged 98, is a Holocaust survivor. Having shared this with my family they raved about it, although I sorely wish that my friend's nan could have read it. Keep up the good work!

David Smith said...

Are the EDL and the BNP not essentially the same thing? Can someone clear it up for me?