Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2001 23:06:53 +0000 To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com, revo-readers at egroups.com From: James Heartfield <James at heartfield.demon.co.uk>
The WEEK ending 16 December 2001
THE RACE DEBATE THAT WASN'T
A report into rioting in British northern towns and cities over the summer threw Home Secretary David Blunkett into confusion, bordering on incoherence. The Community Cohesion Review Team under Ted Cantle was investigating fighting that took place between police, white and Asian youths in Bradford, Oldham and Oldham. Some recommendations provoked angry charges of racism, such as the proposal that their should be an oath of allegiance to British society sworn by immigrants, or that immigrant communities should make a greater effort to assimilate to the host culture, by speaking English for example.
Certainly, the northern influence on the debate, both from the local white politicians' input, and indeed from the Home Secretary, was apparent in a lack of metropolitan political-correctness - something that Blunkett played up to, hoping to score some points by appealing to his own cultural identity of Sheffield philistine. But though political instincts suggested that the idea that support for minorities had 'gone too far' might play well to the gallery, the government lacked the authority to demand a patriotic loyalty to the country.
Blunkett growled as if he was talking tough, but failed to make any sense. Blunkett insisted that there would be an end to platitudes from politicians, and that an esoteric debate about what it meant to be British was not what was needed. Then he went on to open a debate about the lack of a common cause amongst Britons. The Home Secretary suggested that single faith schools were adding to racial separation, but declined to argue for their abolition, or even reform. (The report, by contrast, suggested that faith schools should recruit one quarter of their number from outside their cultural base - a requirement that Christian denomination schools could achieve, on the basis of better results, but that would leave Muslim schools the unlikely task of trying to recruit 25 per cent white Britons to stay open.)
The confusion over the summer riots arises from the foolish attempt to make them the basis of a debate over race relations in Britain - foolish because the government has nothing coherent to say about race relations in Britain. New Labour politicians fantasise that they can pull the rug out from under their more liberal critics by appealing to a popular nationalism - as they tried to do over asylum legislation. But as the early response to the Cantle report showed, New Labour is even less sure of its relation to the British people than it is to the metropolitan elite.
The underlying assumptions to the debate have precious little to do with the events over the summer, and everything to do with the elite's anxiety over its own isolation from wider society. The Cantle report's conclusions are contained in its original title and remit, 'social cohesion' - an enduring preoccupation of the government's that runs through every initiative from the Social Exclusion Unit to the Department of Culture Media and Sports. How these issues are seen generally inverts the government's own sense of its isolation from society, and projects it outwards onto the targeted group - whether young offenders, teenage mums or third generation Asians. When they say that they are worried that people do not show allegiance to society, what they really are worried about is that they show no allegiance to the elite.
Race, which has been so important in past debates about popular identification with the elite, really is incidental to the government's preoccupation with oaths of allegiance, which they would plainly like everyone to swear.
SARAH PAYNE'S PARENTS
When Roy Whiting was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of the schoolgirl Sarah Payne, the judgement reopened the campaign launched by her parents to reform the policing of convicted sex offenders. The proposed legal change is draconian and an incursion on civil liberties - starting from an assumption of guilt - that would be difficult to win if it were not for the Paynes.
Throughout the police investigation Sarah Payne's parents emerged as the model for a new style of political activism that draws its moral authority from victimisation. The couple were likeably ordinary, and genuine in their anguish and anger. With the mediation of the News of the World and the police liaison team they also became compelling political actors, whose demand for the enactment of 'Sarah's Law' gathered momentum through the force of their personalities. More coherent than the mother of Moors Murderer victim Keith Bennett, or the (separated) parents of murdered Jamie Bulger, the Paynes were became adepts at conveying their personal hurt, the better to advance their cause.
This is the political process in an age that eschews politics and celebrates victimhood. It makes personal tragedy into its own motor, but only ever travels in one given direction, towards greater regulation and control over people's lives, at the cost of their individual freedom.
-- James Heartfield