by James Curran
Environmentalism
The environmentalism of the new urban left was less controversial than its feminism because green politics had significant minority right-wing as well as left-wing support in the 1980s. But it was widely viewed as a fringe interest, part of the eccentricity of the ‘newt-loving’ leader of the GLC, Ken Livingstone. This tolerance evaporated, however, when Livingstone – elected as Mayor of London in 2000 – introduced in 2003 a congestion charge for cars entering the centre of London in order to reduce both traffic congestion and pollution. The Daily Telegraph (25 January 2003) denounced ‘Ken Livingstone’s mad-cap plans for London Traffic control’, while the Sunday Times (29 January 2003) attacked the ‘madness’ imposed by a ‘barmy’ dictator. The Sun, in a succession of articles, called Livingstone variously the ‘madcap mayor’, ‘crazy’, ‘loopy’, ‘crackpot’, ‘potty’ and ‘barmy’.28 The Sunday Mirror (14 July 2002) joined in, calling Livingstone ‘barmy’, and the congestion charge a ‘farce’ created by a ‘power-crazed and authoritarian politician’, while a feature article in the Daily Mirror (24 January 2003) denounced the congestion charge as ‘nothing short of legalised mugging’.
Yet, despite this press excoriation, the congestion charge proved a success in reducing traffic in central London, and addressing the growing problem of pollution. No attempt was made to abolish the congestion charge when a Conservative London Mayor was elected in 2008. Indeed, congestion charge schemes were introduced in numerous other cities (such as Milan and Singapore).
The green politics of the new urban left – its desire to prevent the destruction of the environment, its drive to preserve wildlife in the capital and crusade to support public transport – no longer seemed so marginal due to a change in the zeitgeist. In the new millennium, there was a growing realisation that the world faced a catastrophe unless accelerating climate change was arrested. Indeed, climate change sceptics were increasingly confined to free market fundamentalists, like former Conservative Ministers Nigel Lawson and Peter Lilley, whose voices were amplified by the right-wing press. But only a handful of MPs opposed the Labour government when it introduced the Climate Change Act in 2008 setting out a detailed plan for reducing carbon admissions. Britain’s support for the Paris Agreement on Climate Change in 2016, under the aegis of a Conservative government, had all-party backing. Public opinion also turned strongly against climate change deniers. In 2014, a mere 6% disputed that the planet was warming; and a further 6% disagreed that human activity was contributing to climate change.29
In short, the climate warming crisis cast the new urban left’s green politics in a new light. It made the desire to protect the environment less of a minority concern.
Anti-racism
The new urban left had argued in the 1980s that an abstract commitment to equal opportunities was not enough, and that ethnic monitoring of employees, targets for increased ethnic minority recruitment, anti-racism training courses and the funding of ethnic minority organisations were needed to overcome the cumulative effects of racial disadvantage and discrimination.30
The right-wing press had angrily denounced this at the time as ‘inverted racism’. Yet, when the baby boomer generation took control in the Blair years, the new urban left’s ‘positive action’ race agenda became mainstream policy. In 1999, the Home Secretary, Jack Straw (born in 1946) established targets for increased recruitment of Black and Asian officers in the fire, immigration, probation and prison services.31 In 2001, the BBC’s new Director General, Greg Dyke (born in 1947) called the corporation ‘hideously white’ and introduced targets for ethnic minority recruitment.32 The Metropolitan Police, troubled by how unrepresentative it was of multi-ethnic London and disconcerted by the damning criticisms of police failings in the Macpherson Inquiry Report, had done the same thing two years before.33 Large numbers of commercial organisations, with a social responsibility orientation, also adopted ‘positive action’ policies on race. For example, the great majority of premiership and first division football clubs in the early 2000s ethnically monitored their staff, sought to recruit from minority communities, and opposed with growing success racism in football.34 In 2004, the Football Association decided to ‘fast-track’ ethnic minorities on its decision-making bodies at both national and local level.35 By 2016, the promotion of greater ethnic diversity in the recruitment of the police, teaching and other public services had become part of the new consensus. The issue had become not whether to pursue an ethnic diversity programme but how to do it more effectively, particularly in the higher reaches of management.36
The legacy of the new urban left thus appeared to be reshaping the politics of race relations. This was seemingly in tune with a wider change in society. When Labour governments had passed the historic Race Relations Acts of 1965 and 1968 outlawing racial discrimination, they had faced fierce opposition. But whereas only an average of 45% had supported national legislation against race discrimination in the period 1967–8, this rose to 69% by 1983.37 This was in a context where most people recognised that racism was widespread, and thought that something should be done about it. In 1983, nine out of ten people thought that British society was racially prejudiced against its black and Asian members.38 Two-thirds also believed that these minorities suffered discrimination in terms of getting jobs.39
After the 1980s, the progressive tide seemingly continued to rise. The British Social Attitudes Survey asked at periodic intervals whether respondents would mind if a close relative married someone who was black or Asian. Whereas over 50% expressed hostility to inter-racial marriage in their family in the late 1980s, this dropped to 35% in 1996 and to 20% in 2013.40 This shift was related to generational change: young people growing up in multiracial Britain were much more accepting of ethnic inter-marriage than elderly people growing up in a largely white society.41 It was also linked to the rapid expansion of universities: graduates were more accepting than school leavers.42
But if one part of society became less racist, another part dug in its heels. Between 1983 and 2017, the percentage of people saying that they were prejudiced against other races fell from 36% to 26%. But this decline was not linear. Setting aside temporary fluctuations, explicit racism moved downwards until 2001, then increased reaching a peak in 2012 (38%), before falling back again. Even though the overall trend was downwards, those saying that they were racially prejudiced never dropped below a quarter of the population for over thirty years.43
One explanation for the resilience of this racism is that it was anchored by beliefs about racial inferiority. In 2014, 44% said that some races or ethnic groups were born harder-working than others, while 18% said that that some were born less intelligent.44
Racism was further fuelled by the rise of Islamophobia, in the context of terrorist attacks after 2001 and sustained newspaper criticism of Muslim communities accused of incubating home-grown jihadis.45 In 2013, twice as many people said that they would mind a family member marrying a Muslim as said the same of a black person.46
A third reason is that racism was boosted by growing opposition to high migration into the United Kingdom. By 2013, 77% of people wanted immigration reduced, with 56% saying that they wanted a large reduction. This was a significant jump compared with 1995 when 39% wanted immigration reduced by a large amount.47 Growing resentment was reinforced by a right-wing popular press campaign against migrants that began in 2002 and persisted up to the 2016 Brexit referendum. Popular papers exaggerated the number of migrants, attacked them for importing crime and terrorism, criticised them for their alien ways and lambasted them for imposing a heavy burden on already strained public services. Popular newspaper articles about migrants rarely quoted them or offered perspectives from their point of view.48
There were further indications that the progressive tide in relation to race was receding. In keeping with the symbolic proselytising of the new urban left, the Blair government initially promoted a multicultural, plural definition of what it is to be British in opposition to a tradi
tionalist understanding emphasising Britain’s historic national heritage. But, as we have seen, when New Labour encountered strong headwinds on this issue, it backed down.49
So what emerges is a mixed picture. A rising tide of social liberalisation gave rise to more tolerant attitudes in relation to sexuality, gender and race (among other issues).50 This caused the policies of the municipal left – which had been reviled in the 1980s – to become more politically acceptable. However, race was the one area where the advance of social liberalism encountered entrenched resistance. It was an early indication that the pendulum could swing back.
Brexit revolt
In 2016, Britain voted by a narrow majority (52–48%) to leave the European Union. The level of turnout (72%) was relatively high, significantly higher than in recent general elections. Numerous people, who tended not to vote, participated in this historic poll.
The referendum result did not reflect a conventional left-right split. Thus, Conservative supporters divided 54/46% in favour of Leave. A third of Labour supporters, and over a quarter of Liberal supporters, joined the Conservative Brexiters.51 The referendum registered a deep-seated cleavage not so much on party as on educational, generational and class lines. Only 22% of graduates voted to Leave, compared with 72% of those without educational qualifications. Just 28% of those aged eighteen to twenty-four voted Leave, compared with 63% aged sixty-five or over. And only 36% of voters in the managerial and professional groups opted for Leave, compared with 60% in routine or semi-routine occupations.52 What gave rise to this new political geography?
First, the Leave vote was, in part, a protest against migration. Of those who cited immigration as a concern, 73% voted Leave.53 In another survey, 80% of those who thought that immigration is ‘a force for ill’ voted Leave.54
Net migration had risen sharply between 1998 and 2015, provoking growing opposition which had been ignored or been met with misleading reassurances. The free movement rules of the European Union ultimately made it very difficult for any party in power to prevent migration to relatively prosperous Britain.
However, it was not just the openly racist minority who were opposed to increased migrant numbers. Most new migrants in the recent period came in fact from Eastern Europe and were not ethnically different from the majority in the UK. Something more lay behind this opposition. People in unskilled and semi-skilled jobs tended to view migration negatively, whereas those in managerial and professional grades tended to view migration positively.55 While this divergence could reflect differences of outlook between those anchored in local communities (‘somewheres’) and geographically mobile graduates open to new people and experiences (‘anywheres’),56 it also stemmed from a basic economic fact. The unskilled and semi-skilled faced the brunt of competition from cheap migrant labour.
Second, the key driver of the Brexit vote was the ‘lure of greatness’.57 Leaving Europe offered the promise of national renewal. Leave campaigners argued that the British people would be able to take back control from stifling European bureaucracy and regain the vigour and dynamism that had made Britain great. This vision of national renewal was evoked by Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson when he spoke in Manchester in 2017:
Two hundred years ago people used to come to this city to see something revolutionary – the beginning of the modern world. And once again this country has had the guts to try to do something new and different: to challenge received wisdom with a democratic revolution that we can turn into a cultural and technological and commercial renaissance. … We [the government] have been privileged collectively to be placed in charge of this amazing country at a critical moment in our history. We are not the lion. We do not claim to be the lion. That role is played by the people of this country. But it is up to us now – in the traditional non-threatening, genial and self-deprecating way of the British – to let that lion roar.58
This vision of ‘Brexitannia’ resonated more with older people, who had a stronger sense of Britain’s national decline and of a connection to a glorious past, than to the younger generation. It also appealed more to people with a strong English rather than more inclusive British identity,59 reflecting in part differences of national identity and outlook in divergent parts of a conglomerate country.60
‘Taking back control’ also chimed with what the British press had been publishing for two decades. For example European bureaucrats, it was reported, were about to ban barmaids from wearing low cut tops (‘Hands off our barmaids’ boobs’) (Sun 4 August 2005); instruct ‘women to hand in worn-out sex toys’ (Sun 4 February 2004); outlaw corgis (‘the Queen’s favourite dog’) (Daily Mail 30 April 2002); stop the weekday sale of booze by off-licences (Sun 21 February 2005); insist on the relabelling of yoghurt as ‘fermented milk pudding’ (Sunday Mirror 5 March 2006); ‘rename Trafalgar Square and Waterloo Station’ (Daily Express 16 October 2003); and impose a quota of gypsy MPS on the UK (Daily Express 30 September 2013). Not one of these stories was true.61 Yet, they conveyed the impression that the British people were being bossed about by Brussels in pettifogging and absurd ways.
During the campaign itself, only 27% of articles concerned with the Referendum in nine national papers were pro-Remain, whereas 41% were in favour of Brexit.62 The imbalance was even greater due to the circulation dominance of the Leave press. Over 80% of consumers who bought a daily newspaper read a title favouring British withdrawal from the EU.63
Third, the Brexit vote was an anti-establishment protest. The neo-liberal consensus at Westminster was not shared by the majority of British public which clung, as successive surveys over more than thirty years demonstrate, to key aspects of the post-war social democratic settlement.64 In addition, the 2008 crash led to a long period of stagnant wages, and gave rise to increased resentment of an unrepresentative political class. In 2015, 72 % agreed that politics ‘is dominated by self-seeking politicians protecting the interests of the already rich and powerful’, with just 8% disagreeing.65 Reluctant public consent for austerity measures as being necessary ebbed in 2015.66 Above all, there was a backlog of resentment in the declining parts of Britain. This is why areas with long term declines in manufacturing (but also in agriculture and public employment) were more inclined to vote Leave.67 Those thinking that ‘life in Britain today is worse than 30 years ago’ were disposed to vote Leave, while those thinking that life is better were strongly in favour of Remain.68 The Brexit vote was thus partly an expression of anger and disappointment by people who felt that they had been left behind and disregarded.
Fourth, Brexit reflected a resurgent social conservatism. The referendum was a mobilising moment for an anti-liberal reaction. 81% of those who thought multiculturalism is a force for ill voted Leave. By contrast, 71% of those who viewed multiculturalism as a force for good voted Remain. 74% of people with a negative view of feminism voted Leave, whereas 62% with a positive view voted Remain. In line with this, 80% with a negative view of social liberalism voted Leave, whereas 68% of those with a positive view voted Remain. This cultural schism extended into other areas. Thus, 69% of those with a negative image of the green movement voted Leave, in contrast to the 62% of those with a positive image who opted for Remain.69
John Curtice also found that the Referendum triggered an analogous clash between what he termed ‘authoritarians’ and ‘libertarians’. ‘Authoritarians’ who feel that everybody in society should adhere to a common set of social mores and cultural practices, making for a more cohesive society (about a third of the country), voted overwhelmingly to vote Leave. By contrast, ‘social libertarians’ (another third of the nation) who emphasise the value of personal freedom and social diversity overwhelmingly voted Remain.70
The European Union referendum was thus a veiled culture war between social liberals and social conservatives. However, social conservatives had the wind behind them. The global re-division of labour, and consequent de-industrialisation in Britain, had created huge resentment. Indeed, 71% of those who said that globalisation was a for
ce for ill voted Leave.71 But this bottled up sense of anger and impotence found a focus in opposition to rapid immigration, and hope in the vision of national renewal. Economic resentments were channelled in a conservative direction: into hostility towards foreigners and resurgent nationalism.
This brought into focus the uneven nature of the supposed ‘success’ of the new urban left. In its 1980s incarnation, the new urban left was both economically interventionist and socially radical. It believed that an activist state should generate jobs and redistribute resources from rich to poor. Its social radicalism in promoting greater tolerance and embracing diversity was only one part of its programme.
But while the social radicalism of the new urban left won increasing support, its economic activism was rejected. The period between 1979 and 2015 marked the political ascendancy of neo-liberalism – in the sense of support for privatisation, deregulation, a more open market and the legal emasculation of trade unions. Measures that could have been taken to support failing, de-industrialising regions by an activist state were rejected because they were deemed to be misconceived within the prevailing economic orthodoxy. This fuelled the anger and despair that contributed to the Brexit vote, and the reinvigoration of a nationalist conservatism.
The new urban left was thus influential in the cultural sphere but was decisively defeated in the economic sphere. The Brexit result is a warning that failure in one area may undo success in the other.
Notes
1. See Chapter 7.
2. See Chapter 2.
3. Cited in S. Watney, Policing Desire (London: Commedia, 1987), p. 147.
4. Sun, 6 March 1987.
5. K. Swales and E. Taylor, ‘Moral issues: Sex, gender identity and euthanasia’ in E. Clery, J. Curtice and R. Harding (eds.) British Social Attitudes 34 (London: National Centre for Social Research, 2017), p. 88. Available at: www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/latest-report/british-social-attitudes-34/moral-issues.aspx (accessed January 3, 2018).