As Ed Miliband promises to
make ‘curbing immigration’ a priority for the next Labour government,
HANNAH SELL analyses David Goodhart’s book, The British Dream –
Successes and Failures of Post-War Immigration, that has influenced
Labour Party thinking.
The British Dream: successes and failures of
post-war immigration
By David Goodhart
Published by Atlantic Books, 2013, £20
David Goodhart is the great,
great grandson of the founder of Lehman Brothers, the bank whose
collapse triggered the deepest economic crisis since the 1930s. It is
not Goodhart’s ancestry, however, that has been responsible for his
prominence in the press over the last year, but the views he has
expressed on immigration, which Operation Black Vote, for example, has
argued could be ‘more dangerous than Nick Griffin’, the leader of the
British National Party (BNP).
Goodhart comes from Britain’s
elite and, like many of the Tory cabinet, studied at Eton. However, he
is a longstanding Labour supporter and his book is not aimed primarily
at the Tories, although he praises many of the current government’s
immigration policies and is in turn praised by them. David Willetts,
universities minister, for example, describes the book as "the best
guide yet to one of the hottest topics in British politics".
Goodhart’s aim is to shape
future Labour Party policy on the issue. He is pushing at an open door,
as indicated by recent statements by shadow cabinet members, including
Miliband’s promises to make ‘curbing’ immigration a priority for the
next Labour government. ‘Blue Labour’ supporter and Labour policy
coordinator, Jon Cruddas MP, has written a favourable review of
Goodhart’s book. Nor is Goodhart’s ambition limited to influencing
Labour Party policy in Britain. He has also produced a joint statement
with the Labour deputy prime minister of the Netherlands, Lodewijk
Asscher, arguing that the EU "put the downsides of the free movement of
workers high on the agenda". (The Independent, 18 August 2013)
Goodhart’s book has received
very negative reviews in a number of publications, including The
Guardian and The London Review of Books (LRB). However, this is not a
disagreement between right and left. Jonathon Portes (director of the
National Institute of Economic and Social Research) who slated The
British Dream in the LRB, correctly summed up his own position as:
"Markets are usually the best way to allocate resources, and that
accordingly, a more rather than less open approach to migration and
trade will deliver better outcomes".
Capitalism and the nation state
In essence both Goodhart and
his mainstream detractors reflect different sides of the capitalist
classes’ contradictory approach to immigration. Capitalism came into
being based on the nation state, but from very early on also strained
against national barriers as world trade developed. At different stages
the capitalists have had different priorities. At some points, ‘freedom
of trade’ has been at the fore, at others, the importance of protecting
domestic markets. Today the productive forces have long outgrown nation
states, and yet still remain partially constrained by them.
In the era before the great
recession, capitalism worldwide became more integrated than ever before,
and the corresponding ideology of ‘globalisation’ reigned supreme. New
Labour in office was enthusiastic in its support for capitalist
globalisation, reflected in its immigration policies. Under capitalism,
for all Jonathon Portes’ statements about allowing market forces to
determine immigration levels, no major economy will ever have completely
open borders. It would give a completely wrong impression to suggest
that New Labour in government ceased repressive measures against
immigrant workers. On the contrary, for some sections, above all asylum
seekers, they were intensified. Nonetheless, overall freer movement of
labour did go further than in other European countries, although this
was often carried out by covert means.
The biggest single change was
the establishment of the right of workers from the A8 accession states
(including Poland) to freely travel and work in Britain. The A8 joined
the EU in 2004. Britain was the only major European economy to
immediately allow workers from those countries to work in Britain
without restriction and the result was the biggest net immigration in
modern history.
Despite globalisation,
however, capitalism remains economically and politically based on, and
partially bound by, national states and is incapable of fully overcoming
that. We predicted that, particularly in a time of crisis, national
barriers would once again tend to come to the fore as different
capitalist classes attempted to defend their own national interests.
They would also use nationalism to increase their support in society in
the face of mass opposition to the consequences of capitalist crisis.
This has been proven correct in numerous ways, not least the growing
national tensions within the European Union (EU). Those tensions have
also been reflected in the growing anti-immigration rhetoric of
virtually all capitalist parties.
Nationalist propaganda
While Goodhart’s book does
propose a number of measures to ‘cut immigration’, it is less about
cutting the numbers of people actually entering Britain – his proposals
include, for example, simply reclassifying foreign students so they are
not included in the immigration statistics. It is more concerned with
strengthening supposedly ‘liberal’ arguments for British nationalism
and, in particular, encouraging Labour to move further in a nationalist
direction.
Goodhart gives a number of
statistics showing increased immigration having a downward effect on
wages for the lowest paid, and increasing unemployment. Undoubtedly,
many workers, including some whose parents or grandparents were
migrants, would agree with the points he makes on this, reflecting their
experience of the employers’ relentless drive to push down wages, with
super-exploited migrant workers being one means the employers have used
to try and carry out their ‘race to the bottom’. It would be utterly
wrong, however, to conclude from these passages that Goodhart is writing
with the interests of the working class at heart. On the contrary, he is
attempting to find a means to increase support for Labour’s
pro-capitalist programme via nationalist and divisive propaganda.
Goodhart’s argument is that
it is only possible to win public support for the continuation of good
public services if immigration is much lower, as people will only
support the provision of a social safety net for people who are similar
to themselves. This position is disingenuous, however, because Goodhart
is not in favour of the continuation of good public services! He agrees
that it is necessary to slash public spending, supporting even some of
the current government’s most unpopular measures, such as the hike in
student tuition fees (Prospect magazine editorial, November 2010).
Goodhart gives figures
showing a fall in public support for the ‘welfare state’ in the decade
up to 2012. He links this to immigration but ignores the key factor that
this was a decade when New Labour was in power and, unlike Labour in the
past, continued the Tories’ propaganda offensive against the public
sector. Goodhart’s argumentation is fundamentally no different to the
Tories’ campaign against supposed ‘health tourism’. Whether from the
Tories or Goodhart, trade unions must warn that these attempts to limit
public services for immigrants are the thin end of the wedge to attack
universal access to essential services and benefits.
New Labour to the core
Goodhart is New Labour to the
core. He is completely hostile to Marxism. In passing he outrageously
draws a comparison between right-wing Islamist organisations and Marxism
and specifically Trotskyism. He also repeatedly attempts to consign the
working class to history, for example declaring that: "The British
working class no longer exists in the way it did 50 years ago", and
attributing this to "growing affluence". He repeats the Blairite mantra
‘we are all middle class now’ at a time when it is so glaringly obvious
that this is not the case that even the Tories have started trying to
claim to be ‘the workers’ party’.
While it is true that the
working class today has changed over the last 50 years, it is not
growing affluence but increasingly growing impoverishment that has
transformed it. Once adjusted for inflation, real incomes fell by more
than 7% between 2009 and 2012, the biggest three-year drop on record.
Nor did austerity begin with the great recession; we have been squeezed
for decades. If the share of national wealth taken in wages had remained
static since 1980, the average full-time worker would be taking home
£7,000 a year more than at present.
Goodhart correctly says of
Labour in office: "It tentatively made the case for immigration in
speeches and seminars to elite audiences but, aware of the unpopularity
of greater openness, it used restrictive and hard-nosed rhetoric for
Labour’s blue-collar base, especially on asylum. David Blunkett, who
became home secretary after the 2001 election, was a symbol of this
two-facedness – happy to employ robust, populist language about
immigration at times and yet presiding over the largest inflows in
British history". In essence, Goodhart’s solution is to overcome
Labour’s ‘two-facedness’ by increasing both the hard-nosed rhetoric and
the anti-immigrant policies.
This gives an indication of
the kind of approach that a future Labour government would take. The
Tories used immigration to increase their vote in 2010, and will
undoubtedly try to do the same in the next general election, even though
immigration figures have not fallen significantly while they have been
in power. UKIP is also gaining votes by whipping up anti-immigrant
feeling, although the primary reason some workers are voting for it is
to demonstrate their anger with the establishment parties. It is
Labour’s struggle to deal with these issues, and its anxiety to gain
votes by repudiating the more open Blair-era approach to immigration,
which is driving the positive response Goodhart’s ideas are now
receiving in parts of the Labour leadership.
Echoing right-wing prejudice
The result, of course, of
adopting the ideas put forward in The British Dream will not be to cut
across the support of parties that are even further to the right on
immigration, but instead to give them more room to grow. Not only UKIP,
but also potentially even more dangerous forces of the same type as the
English Defence League, can make breakthroughs in the future, as all the
establishment parties attempt to blame immigrants for austerity.
Nonetheless, it is clear that this is the direction that the Labour
leadership are empirically being pushed towards. They hope the likes of
Goodhart can provide them with a coherent justification of this
approach.
In reality, The British Dream
is not coherent. However, it does have some clear themes: that
immigration to Britain has been much too high and that this could have
been partially prevented; that the levels of immigration have had a
negative effect for the working class in particular; that
multiculturalism as it has been interpreted in Britain, especially
within the Labour Party, has allowed Britain to become too segregated;
and that a future Labour government should strengthen nationalism and
put greater pressure on minorities to become more ‘integrated’.
Goodhart declares: "The
tabloid press is often blamed for fanning prejudice but its bluntness
may also have acted as a psychological safety valve for those who feel
unrepresented by the mainly liberal political class". This suggests that
the right-wing tabloids have been a bit ‘blunt’ in stating ‘truths’ that
the politicians are scared to declare. Of course, the capitalist media
are not neutral reporters of truth but are owned by billionaires and are
peddlers of lies. The right-wing tabloids have repeatedly scapegoated
different sections of society; whether predominantly working-class
Liverpool fans at Hillsborough, the unemployed, young people, single
parents or migrant workers.
Is Goodhart agreeing with The
Daily Star front page declaring that migrant workers have "stolen all
our jobs. 1.3 million migrants took every job vacancy since 2001"? Or
the Daily Express headline: ‘White Men to Face Jobs Ban’? Or the
hundreds of other similar headlines? In fact, while it is written in
more ‘moderate’ language, The British Dream is full of numerous
assertions about ethnic minorities in Britain which are lifted straight
from the right-wing tabloids and are stated without adequate, or in some
cases any, factual back up.
To give one of numerous
examples, Goodhart declares: "Not all minority groups do make a great
contribution. In 30 years’ time British Somalis may be considered as
successful and entrepreneurial as the East African Asians are today, but
currently only about 30% of them work". He clearly lays the blame for
this with the character of the Somali community: "Somalis are heavily
welfare dependent and notoriously clannish", and "rare Somali success
stories like… Mo Farah, have only advanced by painfully breaking away
from their families and community and finding mentors within British
society".
These are sweeping
distortions. The truth is that 21% of Somalis arrive in Britain with
degrees, higher than most other immigrants from the neo-colonial world.
It is true that levels of unemployment are high in the Somali community,
but there are numerous causes for this other than ‘welfare dependency’.
Asylum seekers, as most new Somali arrivals are, are not allowed to
work. In addition, many are women with large families, who have come to
Britain after their husbands have been killed in the civil war, and for
whom it is very difficult to find work which would cover the costs of
childcare. Even on an individual level Goodhart is inaccurate. Mo
Farah’s family, like many Somali families, has been scattered across the
world as a result of the civil war, but it is clear from his
autobiography that they play a very important part in his life.
There is no point in an
article like this spending time unpicking the many other generalisations
and distortions about specific nationalities contained in The British
Dream. However, they reveal the completely reactionary character of
capitalist nationalism, even when it is dressed up in ‘liberal’ clothes.
This is doubly so because this is not the nationalism of a small and
under-developed capitalist class, oppressed by the major imperialist
powers, but the nationalism of the first, and for centuries the most
powerful, capitalist class on the planet.
Goodhart makes an attempt to
sum up some inoffensive sounding universal British qualities, including
‘readiness to compromise, indirectness, support for the underdog’, and
many more. In reality, however, he is arguing for a campaign of
propaganda about the superiority of ‘British culture’ which, far from
supporting the underdog, is designed to bolster support for the
capitalist ruling elite, for the super-rich and the giant companies
which dominate the British economy, and which would inevitably also
increase racism and prejudice against minority communities as his book
demonstrates.
Goodhart has the nerve to
quote approvingly an earlier leader of the French Parti Socialiste, Jean
Jaurès. He was murdered at the start of the first world war because of
his unwillingness to go along with the nationalism of his own ruling
class. Goodhart, on the other hand, is trying to find arguments to
bolster capitalist nationalism. This is the antithesis of the pride that
class-conscious workers in Britain have for the best of their heritage –
such as the creation of the NHS, the heroic struggle of the miners 30
years ago, or the defeat of the poll tax – all of which were based on
human and class solidarity across ethnic and religious lines.
Multiculturalism and segregation
Goodhart, like the Tories, is
very critical of multiculturalism and particularly what he calls
‘separatist multiculturalism’. He asserts ‘separatist’ multiculturalism
as wanting to "positively promote and fund ethnic difference: all groups
in a society have equal claims to public recognition and financial
support and that should be reflected in policies to protect and promote
minority cultures through exemptions, public funding, and varieties of
affirmative action". Goodhart massively exaggerates the influence of
multiculturalist policies, and the effects they have had on the lives of
workers in Britain.
He repeatedly criticises, for
example, the public sector spending money providing translation
services, stating that "it is estimated that £184 million has been spent
in the past three years on translating official documents and hiring
translators for those… who do not speak English adequately". Yet this is
a tiny sum comparatively, less than the current government spent on PR
and consultants in its first five months in office!
Goodhart also criticises
‘multiculturalist’ Labour councils for ‘funding ethnic difference’ yet,
even before the current brutal austerity cut local authority spending to
the bone, the financial support given to different minority communities
was already very small. In 2011/12 just 3% of local authority spending
was on ‘other services’, of which the funding of minority communities
groups would have been a tiny fraction in most areas. The rest of local
authority spending was on the bare necessities of housing, education,
adult social care and so on.
Nor is the picture Goodhart
paints of an increasingly segregated society wholly accurate. By many
measures Britain is becoming less segregated. According to the 2011
Census, overall the indices for segregation fell between 2001 and 2011
for all ethnic and religious groups in England, Scotland and Wales
(Dynamics of Diversity: Evidence from the 2011 Census). The segregation
figures have improved overall for a number of reasons. Longer-standing
communities have tended to spread out from the places they moved into
when they first arrived in Britain. In outer London, for example,
segregation of the Bangladeshi community decreased by 12%.
In addition, there has been
an increase in immigration from a wider range of countries than was
previously the case. This means that areas which were previously
dominated by one ethnic minority have now often become more ethnically
mixed (although this does not necessarily mean that there is greater
communication between different ethnic groups). Finally, there has been
an increase in the number of people from ethnic minorities, particularly
longer-standing sections, who have moved out of the big cities.
However, there has
undoubtedly been an increased trend towards segregation in some areas.
Even where different communities live in one area it does not
automatically mean that they have meaningful contact with one another.
The destruction of manufacturing industry is an important factor in
this. In the ex-mill towns of the North West, for example, the closure
of the mills means that there is no longer contact between communities –
however limited that was – in the workplaces.
The increase in immigration
has inevitably resulted in many inner-city communities being a patchwork
of different nationalities who, at this stage, are more orientated to
life in their country of origin than to life in Britain and have limited
interaction with people from other communities. Goodhart also emphasises
that some Muslim communities have become more inward looking and that,
particularly, younger Muslims have become more supportive of right-wing
political Islamism. He gives figures that indicate this is the case for
a minority of young Muslims: "A poll conducted for a Policy Exchange
report into Muslim Britain in 2007 found 16-24-year-olds to be far more
fundamentalist in their views than over 55s. Thirty-seven per cent of
the young group claim they would like to live under Sharia law compared
with just 17 per cent of the older; on preferring women to wear the veil
the numbers were 74 per cent to 28 per cent".
Continued discrimination
Nonetheless, it is ludicrous
to suggest, as Goodhart does, that multicultural policies, such as the
provision of translation services (which are needed far more by older
Muslims than by the younger generation) are the cause of this trend.
Goodhart mentions in passing the effect of the New Labour government’s
participation in the war on Iraq and Afghanistan but completely
underestimates the effect this brutal war, and the inevitable global
wave of anti-Muslim propaganda that came with it, had on increasing the
alienation from British society of a layer of young Muslims.
He also completely downplays
the continued discrimination suffered by black and Asian and migrant
workers who, in general, remain among the poorest sections of the
working class. His position on this is contradictory, as he recognises
that big business uses migrant workers as a means to hold down wages and
that this was consciously encouraged by the Labour government: "The
enthusiasm of the Treasury for mass immigration in the 1990s and 2000s
was partly based on the assumption that it did indeed hold down real
wages".
At the same time, Goodhart
brushes aside claims of wage discrimination against minorities as a
minor issue and asserts that, in as far as different groups of migrant
workers are economically disadvantaged, this is primarily the
responsibility not of racism but the faults of their own communities! He
says, for example, that "people who live inside very difference cultures
at home – say Hindu Indian and Turkish – often end up with very
different capabilities and aspirations". He holds up East African Asians
as a ‘success story’ without explaining that many had come from a
relatively privileged business background.
The objective consequences of
poverty and overcrowding are pushed aside for the more nebulous effects
of ‘culture’. In reality, it is the driving down of the wages of the
working class as a whole, and particularly its poorest sections, which
is primarily responsible for the further impoverishment of the majority
of black and Asian workers. In 1993, black workers were paid an average
of 18% less than white workers. By 2008, the gap had grown to a massive
48% (TUC press release, Unions Must Tackle the Toxic Debate about
Immigration). Black workers are twice as likely to be unemployed as
white workers and this situation is worsening as the public sector,
where black workers are more likely to be employed, suffers huge job
cuts.
The capitalist Labour Party
The capitalist class’s
success in undermining the living standards of the working class has
been enormously helped by the transformation of Labour into a capitalist
party. Goodhart fully supports this transformation but, accidentally, in
his criticisms of multiculturalism, makes some points which are at least
tangentially connected to the real betrayals of the Labour Party. He
describes how "municipal anti-racism was also part of the cultural turn
of the young, white left in the 1970s and 1980s in which a ‘rainbow
coalition’ of the dispossessed, led by ethnic minorities, would be the
new driver of change now that affluence had blunted working-class
radicalism". In reality, this process was part of a move to the right by
sections of the Labour Party, many of whom later became supporters of
New Labour. Their mistake was not that they fought against racism and
discrimination but that, under the guise of doing so, they abandoned a
struggle to defend the working class as a whole.
There were Labour councils in
the 1980s which were attacked by the tabloids of the day as being
‘trendy lefties’ on the grounds of their multicultural and pro-gay
rights policies. Ironically, these included the councils led by David
Blunkett (Sheffield) and Margaret Hodge (Islington) who have since swung
dramatically in Goodhart’s direction. The real problem with these
councils, however, was that – when the crunch came – they were not
prepared to follow the road of Liverpool council and lead a mass
struggle to demand a reversal of the Tory cuts to their budgets. As a
result, they presided over cuts which were detrimental for all sections
of the working class, and particularly black and Asian workers. When
this was combined with their largely empty ‘multicultural’ propaganda it
allowed the Tories and right-wing tabloids to whip up the idea that
black and Asian workers were being given ‘special treatment’.
The historic link between
Labour and the majority of immigrant communities – a memory of which
still remains today in the higher percentage of African-Caribbean and
South Asian workers who vote Labour – was built because of their
positive associations with the Labour Party and the trade union
movement. This was based on the record of the labour movement at its
best in fighting against racism. However, it was also linked to Labour
being seen as the party of the working class, which the overwhelming
majority of migrants were part of. They saw Labour as the party that had
founded the NHS, launched the mass building of council housing and so
on. Goodhart is right when he talks about the role Labour played in the
East End of London to engender ‘community spirit’. This was only
possible, however, because wide sections of the working class saw Labour
as a party that fought in ‘their interests’, including opposing racism
and discrimination. There is an urgent need to build a new mass party of
the working class, with a clearly anti-racist programme and capable of
uniting workers from every background.
For a united workers’ struggle
Goodhart’s book, in reality a
mishmash of prejudices stitched together into a theory, is a warning of
the direction that can be taken by the majority of capitalist
politicians in the next period. Whether or not some of the specific
policies – such as a six-month compulsory citizenship service for all
young people – are ever implemented, it is clear that many of the ideas,
including preventing access to the benefit system, the NHS and council
housing for many migrants, are already becoming commonplace.
Socialists have to approach
the question of immigration carefully. We understand the fears of
workers about increased immigration. A socialist world would be a world
without borders, but also a world without poverty and war forcing people
to move. However, under capitalism, it would be completely wrong to put
forward a bald slogan of ‘open borders’, which would alienate the vast
majority of the working class, including many more long-standing
immigrants, who would see it as a threat to jobs, wages and living
conditions (see Capitalism, Globalisation and Migration, in Socialism
Today No.160, July-August 2012).
Our task is to patiently
explain to the working class – indigenous and immigrant – that the only
way to prevent the race to the bottom is a united struggle of all
workers to demand decent pay and the ‘rate for the job’ for all. At the
same time, we have to stand clearly against the racism and nationalism
increasingly being spouted by the capitalist politicians. We have to
defend the right to asylum and oppose deportations, the splitting up of
families, and the many other inhumane acts of an ever-more brutal
immigration system.
We have to condemn the
cynical attempts of capitalist politicians and their ideologues – such
as Goodhart – to play on these genuine fears in order to try and secure
a social base for their system. Goodhart talks about ‘the British way of
life’ but most of what is good in that life is being destroyed – not by
immigration, but by the brutality of 21st century capitalism and its
diet of endless austerity, which is fully supported by Goodhart.