“Blind” to the needs of the white working class: it’s time to put immigration front and centre

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

For me, the most powerful passage from Michael Merrick’s brilliant, frank assessment of Labour’s recent relationship with the poor last week was the part that said:

“The Labour Party has embraced an ideology that actively undermines the beliefs and culture of ordinary working people. Immigration, whilst the most topical, isn’t the only battleground. One by one, it seems that the social and cultural outlook of many is scorned upon by an elite who, whilst laughably painting themselves as on the side of the ‘oppressed’, choose to studiously ignore this particular subjugation. On issues ranging from school/parental discipline (‘child abuse’), to capital punishment (‘barbaric’), to patriotism (‘Little Englander’), to Euro-scepticism (‘xenophobic’), to immigration (‘racist’), to morality (‘bigoted’) – across all these issues and more, the general beliefs of vast swathes of the electorate are demonised and ridiculed by an elite interested only in securing the dominance of their own particular worldview.”

It was a passage that struck a chord with me when I first read it, but which chrystalised yet again yesterday when I encountered two BNP voters on the doorstep in an area that would formerly have been considered dyed in the wool Labour. These people weren’t racist – not at all – but they did feel personally let down.

One woman said to me:

“Labour only cares about helping immigrants. All our rights have gone to Europe, all our money’s gone to helping people who have just arrived when we always had problems of our own. Immigrants seem to get brand new houses, we get nothing.”

Another man said:

“I’m not racist, but I feel like only the BNP speak for me now.”

It’s reassuring to see that government ministers are at last beginning to understand the ferocity of this resentment. John Denham said today that some local agencies, in tackling issues of racism and race inequality have been too often “blind” to the issues of the “poorer, white working class communities” and must “re-assess the way they work”. And earlier this month, Gordon Brown said “immigration is an issue to be dealt with…if people ask me, do I get it? Yes, I get it.”

It’s an issue I addressed at an event last week, when I argued that No Platforming the BNP merely gives the message that we’re not even willing to engage with people’s deepest concerns.

But I do still doubt that these new realisations, after twelve years in power, are taking hold because they are at the core of our party elders’ social and economic thinking or whether they are being set merely as a result of this year’s BNP advances. They do still seem to be either perfunctory or reactionary.

Instead of a few deliberately crafted asides or speeches to the assembled lobby, Labour’s position on immigration will require much deeper thought, and a broad, wide-ranging and open debate.

For better or worse, immigration is an issue that should be front and centre in the next general election, and a key topic for discussion in the possible televised debates, as it almost always is in the US. Only when that happens will Labour be able to address voters’ concerns on these matters and make the positive case for immigration that it has – up to now – too often failed to do.