“Alarm” quoted in The Independent today at the recent success of the BNP in a series of local government by-elections, most recently, and spectacularly, in the hitherto safe Labour ward of Swanley, in Sevenoaks, Kent. Well, of course I share that alarm, we all do - though I imagine the quality of the alarm has a more hysterical quality among Labour councillors, fearful of losing their seats. But I don’t share any of the surprise.
My partner K is an electrician, a properly qualified electrician, who gained his certificates through a three-year apprenticeship and then honed his skills in sixteen years with the RAF. Nearly five years ago, we set up home together. We had a choice about location: either K could move to Hackney, where I lived, or I could move to Saudi Arabia, where he was working. Not much of a difficult decision, that one! So here we are, comfortably happy in Hackney.
But K had to find a new job. This is what we found. That over the last few years, the wages on offer to skilled working men have been drastically reduced. Only a fleeting acquaintance with market economics is required to tell you why this should be. A sudden and vast influx of ‘similarly’ qualified artisans has significantly reduced the pay packets of native workers. Well, that’s understandable, and only an idiot would try to promise, Canute-like, to roll back that tide, by making fatuous remarks about providing ‘British Jobs for British Workers’. Oh.
So tempered resignation, I think, describes the attitude of the working man to the influx from the eastern reaches of the EU. Grumbling can be heard regarding the quality of the supposed qualifications on offer, but this is no different in quality from similar grumblings in any profession. I had an argument about 15 years ago with a French bureaucrat over the quality of my doctoral qualification, because the University of Glasgow provides the documentary evidence about such degrees on parchment, in Latin. At root was the French woman’s desire to give preference to a native (French) candidate for the job I was after.
But then you add some more ingredients to the mix, and the mood can turn uglier. Tony’s son was stopped-and-searched by the police last week in an outer south London borough. Tony’s black, and an excellent father - this is a guy who spends most of his free time ferrying his kids around from football to swimming and so on - all of which he does in order to minimise the amount of time his kids have to fall in with the disorderly and frightening gangs which proliferate in his town. To no avail. I expected to hear that Tony was furious with the cops. In fact his fury was with his son, about the company he was keeping. And his fury was in fact nothing more than impotence and despair. It don’t matter how hard you try, when Out There is so broken and feral and dangerous; you can bang your head against a brick wall and still not be able to prevent your son falling under the influence of the disreputable. Tony said: they’re all black, aren’t they? It’s not white kids stabbing white kids. In fact, that’s not even true. But it’s what Tony felt. Working men are fearful for the future of their children, in a country where they feel that no-one is on their side. Those tabloid stories about fathers being killed when they intervene with gangs have resonance for a reason. It’s because everyone shares the fear.
There’s a final element. Most of K’s colleagues have already moved from London - only the ultra-rich can afford, in the financial or educational sense, to have children in London. Only the ultra-rich or the extremely poor. I don’t believe you can overstate the impact that the East End post-war clearances had on the consciousness of the working man. Families were ripped apart and those left behind have seen their estates turned into multicultural - actually, let’s be honest, in places like Bethnal Green, they are monocultural - un-English zones of disorder. I’ve lived in Bethnal Green and Hackney for ten years now, so I’m familiar with the complaints from those who remain. But what I’m learning from K is about the attitudes of the generation who came after, whose families had already left. Those who moved to places like Swanley, in Sevenoaks, in Kent. The unspoken contract seems to have been: OK, you shipped us out, we start again in these new towns with their ugly soul-destroying architecture, our sons will continue to be the slaves of the rich, and fight in your wars, and build your cars, we will continue to find dignity through our work, we will build again a sense of community, but you must, under no circumstances, permit the disorder from the cities to be allowed to spill over into our new homes and towns.
It is that contract which is breaking down. Priced out the jobs market, the artisan is remembering what happened to his parents and grandparents in the London boroughs. He sees that even the most attentive parenting is no guarantee that his children will grow up safe. He sees the racial character of his town changing, and while this is the least of his worries, it’s the easiest to identify, being the most visual, and hence the easiest to register an electoral vote against.
Last night I had a drink with Vic, the old bloke from our pub, who runs a second hand stall under the arches at Bethnal Green. I like Vic a lot, but I could only print what he says here by altering it beyond recognition, to spare your sensitivities. The thing is, Vic is not a bad man, and nor is he an insular racist (his pub group consists of two black guys and a Turk), no more than the old chap I overheard being unkind in Harlow some months ago. But he is powerless over his environment and this enrages him.
I could never vote BNP, but I get very frustrated at the kneejerk condemnation of the left for those who do, because it's missing the point and it's aiming at the wrong target. It is not fascist to be angry if your family can’t access housing, while, around you, estates are filled with people whose relationship with Britain is, to be kind, tangential. It is not fascist to point out that the unintended consequence of expanded EU immigration is the suppression of wages for the skilled working class. It is not fascist to spend your waking life fearful about what your children are exposed to when you’re not there to protect them.
New Labour’s worst crime was to relax the hurdles on immigration. It’s second worst crime was to describe as racist anyone who disapproved of the consequences of that relaxation. The pity is that it is Tony - a Labour party voter all his life - who pays the price for that failure. And this, in my opinion, is why more and more “Tony”’s are doing the previously unthinkable, and giving their vote to the hideous BNP.
