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The Sunday Times - Comment



The Sunday TimesApril 23, 2006


Leading article: Fairness v fascism


Like a deathbed convert, the new Labour millionaire minister Margaret Hodge
has warned that her white working class east London constituents are
disaffected with the government and tempted to vote for the racist British
National party. This call for help could be dismissed as a last-minute
rallying cry to get the faithful out to vote. Indeed some Labour figures
have always been tempted to talk up the threat from the "far right" (though
its economic policies are frequently of the left) in order to deprive the
Conservatives of their patriotic working class support. But at the local
elections on May 4 the BNP and other extremist parties, such as George
Galloway's Respect, could register a big protest vote against the mainstream
parties, which are all hugging the middle ground as if their lives depended
on it. But then such a protest vote may hardly be surprising when turnouts
are so low.
Yet Mrs Hodge is unwittingly on to something. There is a problem with the
white working class in this country, or more accurately, there is a problem
with the liberal establishment's attitude to the white working class. The
multiculturalism preached by Mrs Hodge and her friends has honoured alien
cultures and disowned traditional British values. The white working class
has been seen as the chief threat to this faith, although Labour has still
needed its votes. Found guilty of racism, the working class has been
banished to new towns, high-rise flats and then policed with anti-racist
legislation.


Perceptive critics such as Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for
Racial Equality, have come to realise that the baby is being thrown out with
the bathwater. A colour-blind Britain, yes. But how could a cohesive country
be built in which new citizens could be integrated if the state seemed to
despise its own history and people? How bewildering for immigrants who
admired this country and wanted to share its values.
In today's News Review Kate Gavron, co-author of a new book about London's
East End, chronicles the fracture of a tight-knit neighbourhood under
pressure from immigration and the collapse of the traditional family. After
the second world war, locals found themselves in competition with newcomers
for council housing. They resented seeing their children forced to move out
of neighbourhoods to get a home when they had expected the state to honour a
promise to house them after the blitz. But they had to watch as immigrants
jumped to the head of the queue and got the most desirable residences.
Fairness is an established and honourable tradition in this country. People
had waited their turn and they wanted their fair share. The benefits of
immigration to the economy are always clearer to affluent people in need of
nannies and cleaners than to those at the bottom of the heap.
The answer is to reinstate fairness. Gordon Brown has desperately tried to
raise the banner of Britishness, though England scarcely gets a look in.
Labour's divisive legislation to make decrying religious (particularly
Muslim) faith a crime has been dropped. Economic competition between new
arrivals and indigenous folk can be tackled too. Bangladeshis and other
immigrants are as fed up as whites with queue jumping by new arrivals. Frank
Field, a rare voice of sanity on Labour's backbenches, has pointed out that
in areas where there is no competition from immigrants there is still
resentment that single mothers and "bad" families get the best housing. It
should not be beyond the wit of the state to start ensuring that length of
service as good tenants should go towards housing allocation and that
welfare benefits go fairly to those who have paid their way.
The welfare state has been corrupted. It began on the contributory
principle. You paid something in, therefore you were entitled to take
something out. Today it has been changed into a series of entitlements.
Government needs to sort out the mess. Fairness really is a virtue.