.
11/28/14,
"A Collision With ‘White-Van Man’," NY Times op-ed, Kenan Malik, London
"Rarely
can such an unremarkable photo have such heavy political repercussions.
Last Thursday, a senior Labour Party member of Parliament, Emily
Thornberry, tweeted a photo
of a rowhouse in Rochester, Kent. It showed three flags of England
draped across the facade and a white van parked outside. Her caption
said: “Image from #Rochester.”
This
seemingly innocuous message was freighted with political meaning. By
the end of the day, the tweet had become headline news, and Ms.
Thornberry had lost her job as the opposition’s chief spokeswoman on
legal affairs.
Why such a rumpus?
The
flag of England (the Cross of St. George) and the white van have both
become symbols of working-class identity. They are, for many, markers of
racism, philistinism and social conservatism.
The flag is as closely
associated with far-right groups and with football fans as with England
as a nation. “White-van man” has become an archetype of the
self-employed tradesman, assumed to be xenophobic, hostile to
immigration and dismissive of liberal values.
The
phrase has the same kind of resonance as the term redneck in American
culture. And like redneck, this cultural shorthand implies a snobbish
contempt for the masses.
As
it happens, Ms. Thornberry is a member of Parliament for the North
London borough of Islington.
In British political iconography, it stands
for the liberal metropolitan elite — the polar opposite of white-van
man.
The
immediate context of the ill-fated tweet was a by-election in the
constituency of Rochester and Strood, southeast of London. The election
was triggered by the defection of the local Conservative member of
Parliament, Mark Reckless, to the populist, anti-immigration U.K.
Independence Party, or UKIP, whose appeal to the white-van men has
caused consternation in British politics.
The
situation mirrored events the previous month in a constituency just
across the Thames estuary, in Clacton, Essex. In a spiky by-election
there, another defector to UKIP humiliated the Conservatives. In
this febrile atmosphere, Ms. Thornberry’s tweet seemed to reveal the
metropolitan elite sneering at the customs and traditions of the working
class. It was politically inept, certainly, but what made the affair so
incendiary was not the photo itself but Labour’s response to it.
Rather
than deftly dealing with an insensitive comment, the party chose to
treat it as a potentially mortal blow to its electoral prospects.
Labour’s leader, Ed Miliband, was reportedly “more angry than he has ever been in his life.” A plethora of opposition ministers lined up to condemn Ms. Thornberry, seeming almost to revel in her sacking.
Thanks
to Labour’s clumsy handling, the story of the Rochester by-election
became as much about Labour snobbery as Tory humiliation. It exposed the
panic that now grips not just the Labour Party but the entire British
political class.
British
politics has been turned upside down as voters have deserted the
established parties, while UKIP has transformed itself into a major
player. (In Rochester, the Liberal Democrats, the junior party in the
Conservative-led coalition government, received a derisory 349 votes.)
Mainstream politicians have been left flummoxed and scrambling for
answers.
.
This
scramble has created an “arms race” over immigration policy. UKIP’s
electoral success has led the main parties to conclude that they need to
raise the temperature of their rhetoric. White-van man may be a
stereotype, but politicians seem to imagine that all of Britain thinks
like him.
In reality, the public’s attitude is far more nuanced than they assume. A new survey of views on immigration
— the result of three years of research by the think tank British
Future* — shows that Britons are evenly split, with about a quarter
termed “rejectionists,” who want sharp reductions in immigrant numbers,
and another quarter who are “migration liberals,” who would like fewer
restrictions.
The
rest of the population, about half according to the report, make up an
“anxious middle,” who understand the benefits of immigration but also
want reassurance that there are efficient controls. The report
demolishes the assumptions that “public opinion is unvaryingly hostile
toward immigration” or that “the only way to connect with people is by
‘getting tough’ on immigration.”
Still more strikingly, Gavin Jackson of The Financial Times has found
that hostility to immigration does not correspond with the presence of
immigrants themselves. Plotting attitudes to immigration against the
numbers of immigrants in an area, Mr. Jackson found that the more
migrants there are, the more pro-migration public attitudes are, too.
With one or two notable exceptions, the greatest hostility is found in
districts with fewer migrants.
The
received wisdom is that the failure of the political elite to control
immigration has corroded public trust. These findings suggest a more
complex story. Instead of hostility to immigration leading to political
disengagement, it may be that political disengagement is expressed
through fear of immigration. So great is the distrust of politicians
that when British Future researchers asked people whom they trusted in
talking about immigration, more would sooner trust a migrant than any of
the party leaders (including even UKIP’s leader, Nigel Farage).
All
of which brings us back to Ms. Thornberry’s tweet. If the furor shows
the chasm between the political class and the public, it also reveals
how, in their desperation to bridge that gap, politicians become even
more blind to public attitudes.
Both
liberals and conservatives view the public through the lens of the
white-van man stereotype, imagining people to be viscerally hostile to
immigration. As a result, liberals are wary of engaging with the public
at all on the issue, while conservatives are convinced that draconian
immigration policy can win voters’ trust.
In
truth, such condescension is the real problem. “Politicians don’t trust
the public,” the British Futures report astutely observes, “so the
public doesn’t trust them.”"
Kenan Malik,
a writer, lecturer and broadcaster, is the author, most recently, of
“The Quest for a Moral Compass: A Global History of Ethics.”"
==========================
*George Soros Open Society Foundation is among 6 funders of "British Future" thinktank:
"The Open Society Foundations work to build vibrant and tolerant
democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens. To
achieve this mission, the Foundations seek to shape public policies that
assure greater fairness in political, legal, and economic systems and
safeguard fundamental rights. On a local level, the Open Society
Foundations implement a range of initiatives to advance justice,
education, public health, and independent media. At the same time, we
build alliances across borders and continents on issues such as
corruption and freedom of information. The Foundations place a high
priority on protecting and improving the lives of people in marginalized
communities."
.
