THE LANGUAGE OF BREXIT

by STEVE BUCKLEDEE

  8

  The language of racism lite, and not so lite

  One of several ironies involving UKIP is the fact that the EU’s electoral rules have given the party far more representation than the UK’s first-past-the-post system has. Following elections to the European Parliament in 2014, UKIP found itself with twenty-four MEPs (four of whom subsequently left the party), while in the UK general election of 2015 only one UKIP candidate was elected to the Commons (Douglas Carswell, the former Conservative MP for Clacton, who retained his seat after defecting to UKIP, but he too resigned from the party in March 2017).

  In France, the Front National made significant gains in the 2014 European elections, a result that encouraged Marine Le Pen to try to form her own European Alliance for Freedom grouping in the European Parliament with – she rather took for granted – the support of UKIP. To the surprise of many, Nigel Farage chose to ‘shun Marine Le Pen’s advances’ (Newman 2016) and instead allied himself with the Movimento Cinque Stelle in Italy, a new political movement that is difficult to pigeonhole as either right or left and, crucially, has none of the embarrassing ideological baggage that the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen has to cart around. Ever since its formation the UK Independence Party has faced the accusation that it is little more than a more circumspect version of the unapologetically xenophobic British National Party (BNP), and Farage’s decision to steer clear of any formal alliance with the Front National was clearly another step in his ongoing efforts to rid the party of persistent suggestions of thinly disguised racism.

  His job was not made any easier when in February 2015 a YouGov poll commissioned by the Sunday Times revealed that only 49 per cent of UKIP voters considered themselves free from racial prejudice (compared with 72 per cent of Labour voters and 73 per cent of Liberal Democrats), 42 per cent described themselves as ‘a little’ racially prejudiced and 6 per cent admitted to being ‘very’ prejudiced (Stone 2016). Curiously, many UKIP voters who confessed to having some degree of racial prejudice denied that they were racists; in a separate question 64 per cent declared that they did not hold ‘racist’ views. It is not clear what criteria they applied to distinguish between racial prejudice and racism, but the figures suggest that the former was seen as something easier to admit to, perhaps a question of choices in personal relations that did not break the laws of the land, while the latter was an altogether more serious matter.

  Farage was quick to get rid of people who made racially offensive remarks. When Rozanne Duncan, a UKIP councillor for the Thanet district in Kent, told a BBC documentary-maker that she had a problem with ‘negroes’ because there was ‘something about their faces’ (Pitel 2015), she was immediately expelled from the party. Two years earlier Chris Scotton, a prospective UKIP candidate at council elections in Leicestershire, was hastily dropped after it emerged that on his Facebook page he had repeatedly ‘liked’ inflammatory posts on the website of the far-right English Defence League (EDL) (Hookham and Gadher 2013). In the same period Alan Ryall, a UKIP candidate for Wickham in Suffolk, stood down when it was discovered that he had not declared his previous membership of the BNP. Farage made his position very clear regarding BNP and EDL supporters: ‘They are completely on our proscribed list. I have done everything I can to insulate us from this problem’ (ibid.).

  Two years before the referendum Nigel Farage (2014) drew attention to UKIP’s increasing support from ethnic-minority Britons:

  I have been noticing for a few months something very encouraging: a surge of support and new members from Britain’s ethnic minority communities. In one of my debates with Nick Clegg (bless him) a young woman from an Asian background asked a question about migration and I noticed her nodding as I set out the absurdity of Britain’s current immigration policy: to have an open door to more than 400 million people, many unskilled, from more than two dozen countries, while imposing restrictions that made it difficult for a New Zealand surgeon or an Indian engineer to come and make a positive contribution.

  Among UKIP’s successful candidates in the 2014 European elections was one Amjad Bashir, MEP for the Yorkshire and Humber region, who was eight years old when his family emigrated to Yorkshire from Pakistan in 1960. It was quite a coup for UKIP to have Bashir aboard but less than a year after his election he defected to the Conservative Party.

  Despite the determination of Farage and other leading figures to present UKIP as a non-racist, non-sectarian party, accusations of stirring up racial tension continued, not least when in the last month of campaigning Farage himself scored a spectacular own goal by authorizing the use of a poster featuring a long, winding column of migrants – mostly young, male and dark-skinned – with the slogan ‘Breaking Point: the EU has failed us all’. Farage’s abandonment of his previous commitment to eschewing anything that could be interpreted as racist was seen by many as a last-ditch effort to swing voters with an appeal to the fear factor, and the Breaking Point poster was condemned by Boris Johnson, who pointed out that the official Vote Leave campaign and UKIP were entirely separate entities. In his defence, Farage said that the poster depicted ‘an accurate, undoctored photograph’ of migrants crossing the Croatia-Slovenia border in October 2015, and that he believed that we ‘should open our hearts to genuine refugees’ but not to economic migrants (Stewart and Mason 2016).

  If the Breaking Point poster used an image to imply that migrants represented a serious danger to our security, many articles in the pro-Brexit media used highly emotive language, in particular metaphors of natural phenomena capable of causing enormous damage – flood, tidal wave, even tsunami – or terms from the semantic fields of military operations – invasion, army of immigrants – and great numbers – hordes, swarms and the like. Such language implies a degree of risk hardly backed up by hard facts, but professional journalists generally take care not to be too explicit in linking migrants to criminal acts and avoid criticisms of specific ethnic or religious groups likely to lead to legal action. Newspaper readers providing feedback, their identities hidden behind a nickname, have no need to be cautious, and it is here that we find openly racist and Islamophobic attitudes expressed in strong, sometimes vulgar terms. Nick Gutteridge (2016) for The Express wrote of the tensions between Angela Merkel and leaders of other member states – notably Austria, Poland and Hungary – who wished to impose strict quotas on the number of migrants they would admit, a policy that contrasted with the markedly more welcoming approach adopted by Germany at the time. Gutteridge focuses on the discord within the EU and resentment at Germany’s dominant role. He does not attack Chancellor Merkel, stresses the numbers of migrants (‘unprecedented migration’ ‘vast influx of newcomers’) but does not use the word invasion and makes no reference at all to the religion of most of those seeking a new life in Europe. His readers do not hesitate to express views that would be actionable if their identities were known and, as the following sample demonstrates, do not merely denigrate migrants, but also recycle old stereotypes about bullying, war-mongering Germans. Graphological deviations have been retained.

  Dutchie75

  The only one to really blame for this migrant mess is Merkel and nobody else but Merkel she first dropped germany and then the rest of the EU into this disastrous situation of a tsunami of muslims who have no culture and will nev er ever assimilate because of their Islamic attitudes and beliefs which is not even a religion but a terroristic and barbarian behaviour, based on an evil book wqritten by a man in 632 called mohammed who ‘married’ 11 wives the youngest being 9 years old thus he was a pedophile.

  Kipper4u

  If these filthy invaders are such a benefit,,

  WHY DOESNT SHE WANT TO KEEP THEM ALL?????

  method man

  this is a real easy problem to solve just take the muslim refugees to a muslim country, all of them

  Doug82

  Ya! You vill obey der fuhrer – resistance is futile!.

  Botley Mike

  Austria, be careful or Fuhrer Merkel will be sending the pan
zers in again for another take over of your country.

  When President Hollande and Chancellor Merkel commemorated the centenary of the Battle of Verdun, one of the bloodiest episodes of the First World War which, over a period of ten months, claimed 300,000 French and German lives, the former declared: ‘Our sacred destiny is written in the ravaged soil of Verdun. It can be stated in a few words: we should love our country, but we should protect our common home, Europe, without which we would be exposed to the storms of history.’ Patrick Maguire (2016) interpreted this as a coded message to British electors to vote to remain in the EU (a ‘thinly-veiled ATTACK on Brexit’), but after an initial reference to ‘grovelling heads of state’ his language is restrained and much more in keeping with the solemnity of the tribute to the men who lost their lives at Verdun. Indeed, the thinly veiled attack is later referred to as a ‘passionate appeal’. Readers’ feedback was much less restrained, with Islamophobia again accompanied by Second World War stereotypes of German bullying and French pusillanimity.

  RegKing

  Germans destroyed two generations of young British men, which led to us having to import foreigners from the commonwealth to do menial work following WW2 –this led to the multi-culti invasion which has destroyed the country.

  Marmaduke

  Germans caused two wars, France ran away from 2 wars and sent jews to the Germans to be exterminated, they only want to be liked lol, and they are telling us the EU is vondvar.Brexit

  middleengland

  Thirty years from now this pair of idiots will be dead and buries, leaving behind a Muslim Europe if they get their way. Think about that before doing as poodle Cameron tells you on the 23rd of June.

  BEARLY ALIVE

  IF I WAS IN DANGER OF SEEING MY HOUSE OF CARDS COLLAPSE I’D BE WORRIED TOO . . . ESPECIALLY MERKEL, HAVING OPENED THE DOOR TO THE MIGRANT LOCUSTS . . .

  As we see in Chapter 13, the pro-Brexit press did distort the facts on occasion, particularly with regard to the number of migrants entering the UK, and during the referendum campaign The Telegraph, The Mail and The Express were all reported to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). This resulted in the newspapers concerned having to publish corrections, but the language used was not sufficiently direct to be deemed an incitement to racial hatred, and thus in breach of UK law (although Dave Prentis of the Unison trade union reported the Breaking Point poster to the Metropolitan police). What was left implicit in an article became explicit and somewhat nauseating in feedback on it.

  No British newspaper is detested by the left quite as much as the Daily Mail, and its editor-in-chief, Paul Dacre – a man with a predilection for calling his staff ‘a load of cunts’ (Addison 2017, Kindle edition: position 3772) – has acquired a notoriety rarely achieved by members of his profession. The Mail’s great rival, the Daily Express, is similar in terms of ideology and style but has never acquired the same level of opprobrium, partly because it does not have a similarly unwholesome history. Today the Daily Mail flaunts its patriotism but during the 1930s its owner, Lord Rothermere, praised Oswald Mosley and his British Union of Fascists, was on friendly terms with both Hitler and Mussolini, published scare stories about German Jews flooding into Britain, and in 1938 sent Hitler a telegram of support for the annexation of Sudetenland. Only when armed conflict was imminent did the editorial line turn 180 degrees, by which time it was clear to Lord Rothermere that a war-time government would not hesitate to use emergency powers to close down his newspaper. Since the war it has consistently espoused right-wing economic policies, praised the monarchy and promoted ‘family values’ (thus opposing abortion, same-sex marriage and the feminist movement), and has opposed the trade unions, immigration and, since the days of the EEC, Britain’s involvement in greater European integration.

  Because of these last two characteristics, the Daily Mail actually spent decades preparing for the 2016 referendum with a series of articles intended to raise fears about immigration and resentment towards European institutions. Three of the more recent pre-2016 headlines are sufficient to illustrate the approach: ‘By 2066, white Britons “will be outnumbered” if immigration continues at current rates’ (Shipman 2010); ‘4,000 foreign criminals including murderers and rapists we can’t throw out . . . and, yes, you can blame human rights again’ (Shipman and Doyle 2013); ‘Wish you were here? Refugees are taken on jollies to zoos, theme parks and even to the beach to help them “integrate” into British life . . . and guess who’s paying for it all’ (Tonkin 2015).

  The three themes of these headlines – the threat to traditional British culture and identity posed by immigrants, compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights which often prevents the UK from deporting foreign criminals, and the money spent on welcoming refugees that could be used for more worthy causes – were recycled on an almost daily basis once the referendum campaign got under way. The Daily Mail gave considerable coverage to the so-called Calais Jungle, the inadequately equipped camp on the outskirts of Calais for migrants who wanted to reach Britain but were denied admittance by the UK government. The majority were Syrians, and therefore were legitimate asylum seekers rather than economic migrants, and they included unaccompanied children. The Mail’s focus, however, was not so much on the humanitarian issues as on episodes of violence, such as clashes with the French police and threatening behaviour towards lorry drivers in an attempt to secure a lift through the Channel Tunnel. When the British actors Jude Law and Toby Jones, the comedian Shappi Khorsandi and the singer Tom Odell visited the camp to draw attention to the plight of people who had got so frustratingly close to their objective, The Mail dedicated most of its report to a heavily hedged account of an alleged attack on the celebrities’ security team (Linning 2016):

  Security guards hired to protect Jude Law when he visited the ‘Jungle’ migrant camp were reportedly targeted by rock-pelting migrants just moments after the actor boarded the coach home.

  The star made the journey to northern France last week to highlight the plight of child refugees who are being evicted under a move by French authorities to demolish the southern part of the camp.

  He was joined by Tom Odell and a film crew, who captured him on camera as he urged David Cameron to let the hundreds of children at the camp come to the UK.

  But moments after the celebrities boarded the production team coach back to Britain, their security team was ambushed, according to the Sunday People.

  The attackers reportedly hurled stones at the men before stealing their mobile phones.

  A source told the newspaper: ‘We were shocked to see some of the migrants acting like football hooligans. The security team had stones thrown at them and two had phones smashed and stolen.’

  The hedging techniques we investigated in Chapter 2 with regard to Remain’s cautious approach are here used by a committed pro-Brexit newspaper to pre-empt questioning of the factual accuracy of the piece. The adverb reportedly appears in the first and fifth of the quoted paragraphs, which allows The Mail to shift potential challenges to the unidentified reporter. Similarly a source is cited in the last paragraph, but his/her identity is not revealed. The most obvious hedge is the journalist’s confession that she is writing of events she had not witnessed, so any comeback should be directed towards the Sunday People.

  The original Sunday People article (Boyle 2016) is available on the website of its sister newspaper, the Daily Mirror, which, as already noted, supported Remain and had little in common with The Mail or The Express on the immigration issue. Apart from the unidentified source, there is no hedging. A somewhat surprising similarity between the two reports concerns readers’ feedback, which on The Mirror site looks for the most part as if it had been posted by Mail readers.

  GeorgeTyrebyter

  Celebrity slumming. What a stupid gat this idiot is. You are not gaining anything in proving your liberal weeper credentials. These are still illegal scum. You’re lucky to get away. Better luck, migrant scum, next time.

  C
dricBallet

  Those well thinking libnuts millionaires are a danger to our societies. They have not a single idea about what they are doing, never had to live with migrants and islam and criminality. Pathetic

  The predictability of The Mail’s treatment of immigration – catastrophe precipitated by invading Muslims and the cost to the long-suffering tax payer – lends itself to parody. A brilliant spoof of a Daily Mail front page, with the headline Terror as Gigantic Muslim Spiders Bring Deadly Ebola to UK (2014), is available on the democraticunderground.com site. A bizarre image of giant spiders in burqas attacking a passenger train illustrates a text in which the capitalized words are almost obligatory lexemes used in every edition of the Daily Mail:

  Swarms of giant, MUSLIM spiders illegally entered the country yesterday, bringing TERROR and DEATH – and although there is no evidence to support it, we’re going to say that they are BENEFIT SCROUNGERS.

  The arachnid army, which will probably force your local shop to make all your pasties HALAL, arrived in the UK via Folkstone and was no doubt helped by the bloody FRENCH.

  Although scientists have said categorically that the huge bugs definitely do not carry the deadly ebola virus, we’re going to put EBOLA in block capitals anyway, because they help to increase unwarranted FEAR.

  The creepy crawlies, wearing BURQAS, have no sexual interests beyond the evolutionary desire to reproduce but we’re still going to speculate that they are PAEDOPHILES because nonces sell papers to people like you quicker than PRINCESS DIANA headlines do these days.