The demonisation campaign against immigrants, appealing to base prejudice, has not been seen for decades in British politics and must be resoundingly rejected on 23rd June
In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the Count menacingly contemplates his future travels to London, keen to avoid detection: ‘I am content if I am like the rest, so no man stops if he sees me, or pauses in his speaking if he hears my words’. Published during a Jubilee year in 1897, Dracula echoed the crises preoccupying the British ruling class at the turn of the century: the collapse of boundaries underpinning imperial power and a decline in global influence; the loss of overseas markets for British products to rising global actors; and a keen sense of decline – politically, morally and culturally – that threatened immutable notions of Britishness.
In many ways, the EU referendum debate has mirrored this sense of intersecting crises and populist paranoias. Whether in discussions concerning the health of British sovereignty within the EU, or the transgression of British borders by unstable and decidedly foreign citizens, the debate has revealed a keen sense of dislocation amongst vast sections of British society. Pointedly, it is clear this dislocation is understood through a causal chain where immigration is central, and the power to include and exclude in a larger schema of order and control is threatened. That so much of the EU referendum has descended into a de facto assumption that immigration is at the heart of almost all of the nation’s problems is somewhat inevitable when the foreignisation of domestic difficulties has an elaborate and dangerous history in Europe. The EU referendum has allowed these sentiments to resurface in appalling fashion.
This is not to diminish the numerous and genuine concerns expressed by large sections of a disenfranchised and disenchanted population. Increased competition for ‘working class’ employment has undermined historic patterns in job security and rendered previously tenured labour transient. In addition, the propagation of grotesque and flamboyant foreign capital has fuelled housing price inflation, extrapolating home ownership into the realm of fantasy. For many, these issues are both cause and effect of an immigration open-door policy that has failed to safeguard their interests.
Concerns about national autonomy, corporate privilege and political entitlement, or the erosion of a perceived national culture have all been successfully exploited by an efficient Brexit campaign. These issues are particularly acute for a Labour party whose heartlands have rejected the EU as part of an accumulated discontent against privilege. That ‘working class’ struggles should be channelled in this way should worry the Labour party immensely.
Despite the multitude of concerns, there can be little doubt that the discourses surrounding immigration have been overwhelmingly reactionary. Immigration has become an all-encompassing watchword, rationalised through a lexicon that mimics classical racism. Although it is known that immigration contributes positively to the UK economy and immigrants are far more likely to contribute to the welfare state than claim from it, these arguments are meaningless when the tone of ‘othering’ has established a fertile ground for unabashed jingoism and xenophobia.
Reiterations that ‘we must control our borders’, threats about an impending hoard of Turkish citizens waiting to expunge ‘our’ national and border security, or suggestions that the white female body might suffer desolation should the ‘other’ make it to our shores, are characteristic. Just when it seemed the Brexit arguments had reached their nadir of sectarianism, a poster depicting desperate migrants fleeing war, persecution and tyranny as a threat to national security has dragged the debate further into territory not seen for decades in Britain.
These arguments rest on assumptions concerning social arrangements and social organisation that reflect embedded notions of racial ordering– the civilised against the vulgar, the normative against the outsider, the homogenous against the different. Often these expressions are explicitly racial, ‘to make Britain British again’, or ‘to take back our country’, reinforcing the exclusionary nature of the vision and the cultural animalisation of those not deemed ‘British’. That these discourses might contribute to the further marginalisation of oppressed groups in society appears to have little traction in the public imagination as far as the EU debate is concerned.
These arguments have not only targeted migrants, but have also sought to delegitimise a political class that seeks to offer an alternative, progressive vision for Britain within the EU. The tragic and calculated death of Labour MP Jo Cox is a frightening reminder that when a glass ceiling of civility has been breached, a cry of “Britain First” is more than an inane reference to an extreme ideology. It has been imagined in, and reflects, a climate of abject hostility and dehumanisation fomented by Brexit.
Britain’s ethnic minority communities, particularly those on the receiving end of both ongoing and historical racial abuse within the UK, must recoil in horror as the tide turns irrevocably towards victimisation and dogmatism. In place of an EU body that guarantees minority rights and has established numerous multinational legal frameworks and policies to address discrimination, one is asked instead to rely on a campaign of base prejudice to deliver these safeguards.
Legitimate questions about the role of the current British government in public sector cuts, the degradation of social welfare services, or its responsibility to provide answers to chronic issues such as health funding and housing, are not considered pertinent – instead these questions are externalised and immigration called to answer on each account.
The future of Britain’s place in the EU hangs by a precarious thread. The deshabille bigotry and lobotomised public discourse that has chosen crude generalisation to considered reality must be rebuffed. It reflects both present and historical paranoias about the cultural and political place of the nation within a larger world order. Ultimately, the sense over the past few months is not of a nation with moral courage and judicious foresight. Whether it is the murder of an MP in a climate of aggression or a parliamentary rejection of child refugees from Syria, the overwhelming impression is of a nation in deep crisis.
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