Many years ago, I was an active member of a political party. Being active mainly involved listening to speakers and debating resolutions at monthly meetings. More exciting were the elections campaigns, local and national. The most time-consuming task in elections was to identify those people most likely to vote for your candidate so that they could be encouraged to go out and vote on election day. Voters varied from friendly to hostile with many indifferent. Some would offer opinions of the parties or the candidates. But one group puzzled me - the people who told me that they never voted because the parties were ‘all the same’. This was puzzling because in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when I was politically-active, the two main political parties were further apart than ever before (or since). It is only now, with hindsight, that I realise that for some of these voters the parties were indeed the same: neither was explicitly racist.
The racist undercurrent in British politics has indeed been under-represented, and only bursts into the open on infrequent occasions. In April 1968, the MP Enoch Powell made a much-publicised speech calling for an end to non-white immigration and the repatriation of minority ethnic groups, and opposing anti-discrimination laws. The speech included many of the themes common to racist organisations before and since. There were the scary (and almost certainly invented) tales of elderly white people threatened by black neighbours, the absurd idea that white people would be ‘swamped’, and the paranoid idea that black people secretly wished to dominate the country. To his credit, the Conservative Party leader, Edward Heath, sacked Powell from his post as Shadow Defence Secretary. But public opinion polls at the time showed that Powell’s views were widely-supported and there were several short strikes as well as marches to Parliament by thousands of London dockers and porters.
None of the main political parties since that time has explicitly endorsed racism and both the Conservatives and Labour have promoted black and minority ethnic politicians to cabinet rank. Anti-racist laws were strengthened and racist views essentially banned from the broadcast media. As a result, racism was driven underground. If you are white, other white people would express racist views to you in confidence with a sort of illicit glee. Racism and discrimination could be practised in similarly disguised manner in recruiting and promoting staff. Nevertheless, public opinion polls show a steady decline in racist views, perhaps as a result of an older generation being replaced. But this progress was reversed with the vote on leaving the European Union.
After the vote on our villages neighbourhood plan, I spent some time chatting to the polling clerks. They told me (without prompting) of their miserable experience at the EU referendum. Many voters had clearly never voted before and were paranoid about the vote. Some demanded to use a biro instead of a pencil “because the secret service will rub out our votes”. Some men insisted on directly supervising how their wives voted to make sure they voted to leave the EU. This group of undercover xenophobes, who had previously dropped out of voting ‘because they’re all the same’, had now found a cause.
The racist undercurrent in British politics has indeed been under-represented, and only bursts into the open on infrequent occasions. In April 1968, the MP Enoch Powell made a much-publicised speech calling for an end to non-white immigration and the repatriation of minority ethnic groups, and opposing anti-discrimination laws. The speech included many of the themes common to racist organisations before and since. There were the scary (and almost certainly invented) tales of elderly white people threatened by black neighbours, the absurd idea that white people would be ‘swamped’, and the paranoid idea that black people secretly wished to dominate the country. To his credit, the Conservative Party leader, Edward Heath, sacked Powell from his post as Shadow Defence Secretary. But public opinion polls at the time showed that Powell’s views were widely-supported and there were several short strikes as well as marches to Parliament by thousands of London dockers and porters.
None of the main political parties since that time has explicitly endorsed racism and both the Conservatives and Labour have promoted black and minority ethnic politicians to cabinet rank. Anti-racist laws were strengthened and racist views essentially banned from the broadcast media. As a result, racism was driven underground. If you are white, other white people would express racist views to you in confidence with a sort of illicit glee. Racism and discrimination could be practised in similarly disguised manner in recruiting and promoting staff. Nevertheless, public opinion polls show a steady decline in racist views, perhaps as a result of an older generation being replaced. But this progress was reversed with the vote on leaving the European Union.
After the vote on our villages neighbourhood plan, I spent some time chatting to the polling clerks. They told me (without prompting) of their miserable experience at the EU referendum. Many voters had clearly never voted before and were paranoid about the vote. Some demanded to use a biro instead of a pencil “because the secret service will rub out our votes”. Some men insisted on directly supervising how their wives voted to make sure they voted to leave the EU. This group of undercover xenophobes, who had previously dropped out of voting ‘because they’re all the same’, had now found a cause.
