The image of London as a liberal, tolerant and multicultural haven is one not recognised by millions of its citizens...
PAUL EMBERY Our working class is not racist — they’ve just been shafted by the liberal elite
Comment
By Paul Embery
4th May 2018
WE all know the propaganda.
London: It’s the best city on the planet. A vibrant metropolis, at ease with its diverse, tolerant self.
London is a tale of two cities
A shining example to the world of how folk from different backgrounds and cultures can rub along together.
At least, that’s what we’re invited to believe. But the truth is this depiction of our capital city is not one recognised by millions of its citizens. That’s because London is, in fact, a tale of two cities.
There are the gentrified hotbeds of liberal cosmopolitanism — the Islingtons and Camdens — top-heavy with the professional classes and cultural elites, the type of areas that were a bedrock of Remain support in the EU referendum.
But then there are those places outside the bubble. On the one hand the grittier, traditional working-class areas — the Canning Towns and Bermondseys — populated by those steamrollered by globalisation, for whom austerity and mass immigration have exacerbated the problems of low wages, poor housing and under-pressure public services.
Those outside the multicultural bubble have experienced rapid social and cultural change
On the other, the middle-class suburbs — the Upminsters and Eastcotes — inhabited by those who sense that their “small c” conservatism is increasingly incongruous with the image of their city as a beacon of progressive modernity.
It is between these places that a new and unintended coalition has emerged, born out of resentment at having to watch their old-fashioned, socially conservative — what some describe as “faith, family and flag” — views shunned and disparaged by the liberal elite.
You can see something similar writ large across England: An accidental alliance between once-loyal Labour voters in the post-industrial towns and Conservatives in the shires.
It’s an alliance which manifested itself most starkly in the Brexit vote.
The 'faith, family and flag' conservatives of the shires have formed an unlikely alliance with the traditionally Labour-voting working-class of the cities
For the Londoners that fall within these groups, their city is not the harmonious and cohesive ideal seen through the eyes of the chattering classes.
It is, instead, a place increasingly atomised, where millions feel a diminishing sense of belonging and in which entire communities within a few hundred yards of each other live utterly parallel lives.
Take, for example, the borough in which I grew up, Barking and Dagenham.
As working-class as it gets, it was once the very essence of a traditional Labour heartland. Never affluent, but stable, close-knit and settled.
Centred around a sprawling 1930s council estate and with generally healthy levels of employment — the dominant Ford factory being at the heart of local industry — Barking and Dagenham enjoyed its steady constancy, its social and cultural familiarity.
For those short on money and opportunity, the concepts of place, belonging, identity and relationships take on so much more meaning.
But then things changed. Over a few very short years, around the turn of the century, there was a sizeable influx of migrants, precipitating rapid social and cultural transformation.
Middle class liberals live a very different reality to million
The demographic convulsions meant stable, settled Barking and Dagenham found itself in the eye of the storm of the debate over mass immigration.
The indigenous population cried out for respite. The letters page of the local paper was filled with correspondents begging to be heard.
But nobody in power took a blind bit of notice, other than to patronise them with trite arguments about improved GDP and cultural enrichment.
Rather than rally to their support, the Left — including, shamefully, the Labour Party and trade unions — treated these marginalised working-class folk like an embarrassing elderly relative, imploring them to “stop blaming migrants” (something they hadn’t done in the first place).
What was genuine bewilderment and disorientation on the part of local citizens was, inexcusably, dismissed as casual racism and bigotry.
Yet it wasn’t their sense of race that had been violated by the sudden upheaval in their community. It was their sense of order.
So, in 2006, locals took the only route of protest they thought left available to them and returned 12 British National Party councillors at the local elections.
The BNP got a foothold in Barking and Dagenham because voters were fed up of being marginalised in the communities they had lived in for generations
The noxious far-Right, which previously had never gained a foothold in the borough (though it had penetrated areas close by) now formed the official opposition on Barking and Dagenham council, not because thousands of locals had overnight turned into vile racists, but because they had repeatedly been ignored by a tin-eared establishment.
But even then, nothing changed. Locals were told to get with the zeitgeist.
Women in their eighties who had lived in the borough for most of their lives, had raised families there and in many cases now lived a life of lonely isolation, were told to embrace the vibrancy of the new multiculturalism.
That was the level of condescension to which the liberal establishment had sunk
So thousands of people simply upped sticks and left. In the first decade of the new century, Barking and Dagenham experienced a vast exodus of families who had been rooted in its streets, workplaces and institutions for generations.
It was the only home that many had ever known, but they went all the same. They departed for the Essex coast or Kent. It wasn’t “white flight”, for skin colour was irrelevant to most of them.
It was, instead, a flight to familiarity.
The tragedy was that most of these people never were anti-immigration. They would not have objected to the integration of a modest and manageable number of arrivals over a reasonable period.
Betrayed . . . a London docker in the 1950s
But the whole debate around immigration has been toxified by what the ruling elites imposed on places such as Barking and Dagenham.
They shook a kaleidoscope then stood back in surprise when the pieces didn’t fall exactly where they wanted. Remember all this the next time you hear someone speak of London as the greatest city in the world.
Chances are the words are being spoken by a politician or a celebrity or a middle-class liberal from one of the trendier parts of town.
For there are, in reality, two Londons. One half — alienated, neglected and resentful — represents a potentially formidable army at the ballot box.
Who will speak for it?
Paul Embery is a firefighter and Labour Party member. This article first appeared on UnHerd.com.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6206841/london-brexit-immigration-working-class-multiculturalism/
PAUL EMBERY Our working class is not racist — they’ve just been shafted by the liberal elite
Comment
By Paul Embery
4th May 2018
WE all know the propaganda.
London: It’s the best city on the planet. A vibrant metropolis, at ease with its diverse, tolerant self.
London is a tale of two cities
A shining example to the world of how folk from different backgrounds and cultures can rub along together.
At least, that’s what we’re invited to believe. But the truth is this depiction of our capital city is not one recognised by millions of its citizens. That’s because London is, in fact, a tale of two cities.
There are the gentrified hotbeds of liberal cosmopolitanism — the Islingtons and Camdens — top-heavy with the professional classes and cultural elites, the type of areas that were a bedrock of Remain support in the EU referendum.
But then there are those places outside the bubble. On the one hand the grittier, traditional working-class areas — the Canning Towns and Bermondseys — populated by those steamrollered by globalisation, for whom austerity and mass immigration have exacerbated the problems of low wages, poor housing and under-pressure public services.
Those outside the multicultural bubble have experienced rapid social and cultural change
On the other, the middle-class suburbs — the Upminsters and Eastcotes — inhabited by those who sense that their “small c” conservatism is increasingly incongruous with the image of their city as a beacon of progressive modernity.
It is between these places that a new and unintended coalition has emerged, born out of resentment at having to watch their old-fashioned, socially conservative — what some describe as “faith, family and flag” — views shunned and disparaged by the liberal elite.
You can see something similar writ large across England: An accidental alliance between once-loyal Labour voters in the post-industrial towns and Conservatives in the shires.
It’s an alliance which manifested itself most starkly in the Brexit vote.
The 'faith, family and flag' conservatives of the shires have formed an unlikely alliance with the traditionally Labour-voting working-class of the cities
For the Londoners that fall within these groups, their city is not the harmonious and cohesive ideal seen through the eyes of the chattering classes.
It is, instead, a place increasingly atomised, where millions feel a diminishing sense of belonging and in which entire communities within a few hundred yards of each other live utterly parallel lives.
Take, for example, the borough in which I grew up, Barking and Dagenham.
As working-class as it gets, it was once the very essence of a traditional Labour heartland. Never affluent, but stable, close-knit and settled.
Centred around a sprawling 1930s council estate and with generally healthy levels of employment — the dominant Ford factory being at the heart of local industry — Barking and Dagenham enjoyed its steady constancy, its social and cultural familiarity.
For those short on money and opportunity, the concepts of place, belonging, identity and relationships take on so much more meaning.
But then things changed. Over a few very short years, around the turn of the century, there was a sizeable influx of migrants, precipitating rapid social and cultural transformation.
Middle class liberals live a very different reality to million
The demographic convulsions meant stable, settled Barking and Dagenham found itself in the eye of the storm of the debate over mass immigration.
The indigenous population cried out for respite. The letters page of the local paper was filled with correspondents begging to be heard.
But nobody in power took a blind bit of notice, other than to patronise them with trite arguments about improved GDP and cultural enrichment.
Rather than rally to their support, the Left — including, shamefully, the Labour Party and trade unions — treated these marginalised working-class folk like an embarrassing elderly relative, imploring them to “stop blaming migrants” (something they hadn’t done in the first place).
What was genuine bewilderment and disorientation on the part of local citizens was, inexcusably, dismissed as casual racism and bigotry.
Yet it wasn’t their sense of race that had been violated by the sudden upheaval in their community. It was their sense of order.
So, in 2006, locals took the only route of protest they thought left available to them and returned 12 British National Party councillors at the local elections.
The BNP got a foothold in Barking and Dagenham because voters were fed up of being marginalised in the communities they had lived in for generationsThe noxious far-Right, which previously had never gained a foothold in the borough (though it had penetrated areas close by) now formed the official opposition on Barking and Dagenham council, not because thousands of locals had overnight turned into vile racists, but because they had repeatedly been ignored by a tin-eared establishment.
But even then, nothing changed. Locals were told to get with the zeitgeist.
Women in their eighties who had lived in the borough for most of their lives, had raised families there and in many cases now lived a life of lonely isolation, were told to embrace the vibrancy of the new multiculturalism.
That was the level of condescension to which the liberal establishment had sunk
So thousands of people simply upped sticks and left. In the first decade of the new century, Barking and Dagenham experienced a vast exodus of families who had been rooted in its streets, workplaces and institutions for generations.
It was the only home that many had ever known, but they went all the same. They departed for the Essex coast or Kent. It wasn’t “white flight”, for skin colour was irrelevant to most of them.
It was, instead, a flight to familiarity.
The tragedy was that most of these people never were anti-immigration. They would not have objected to the integration of a modest and manageable number of arrivals over a reasonable period.
Betrayed . . . a London docker in the 1950s But the whole debate around immigration has been toxified by what the ruling elites imposed on places such as Barking and Dagenham.
They shook a kaleidoscope then stood back in surprise when the pieces didn’t fall exactly where they wanted. Remember all this the next time you hear someone speak of London as the greatest city in the world.
Chances are the words are being spoken by a politician or a celebrity or a middle-class liberal from one of the trendier parts of town.
For there are, in reality, two Londons. One half — alienated, neglected and resentful — represents a potentially formidable army at the ballot box.
Who will speak for it?
Paul Embery is a firefighter and Labour Party member. This article first appeared on UnHerd.com.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6206841/london-brexit-immigration-working-class-multiculturalism/
