by Andrew Wallace (24/04/17)
IN just a few weeks’
time the British working class will turn out in unprecedented numbers
in order to support a right wing Conservative government, marking an
apotheosis of trends in which working people of modest means have
enthusiastically endorsed a party pursuing an historical agenda which
would seem on the surface at least to be hostile to their interests.
However I would say
that as a leftist because I have already accepted it as self-evident
that a Conservative agenda is not commensurate with the interests of
those at the bottom of our socio-economic hierarchy. I have imbibed
sufficient life experiences and also by way of exposure to arguments in
books and articles over the years to convince me of the malevolence of
their brand of free market fundamentalism.
So like many lefties
I feel irked to say the least with that most heretical act of political
deviancy, the perverse irrationalism of working class Toryism. Social
networks are presently going into overdrive as Corbynistas are
confronted with the rude reality as many of their friends and family
have the temerity to circulate a number of pugnacious right wing memes.
The echo chambers are being systemically punctured and we are being
cumulatively disabused of the progressive habitats of alternative media.
And thereby hangs a
dilemma for us to collectively confront, the left’s deep denial and
impotence to comprehend, let alone combat, the reality of the great
‘heresy’.
‘Heresy’
Working class
Toryism has a long standing history. Marx thought that the advent of
universal suffrage equated with the ‘political supremacy of the working
class’. 19th century parliamentarians
fretted that the Reform Acts would destroy their dominance. This of
course never happened and Conservatives like Disraeli were canny in
cultivating blue collar Tories.
As maverick social thinkers like Michael Collins (labelled a ‘bête
noir of the liberal left’ for his ‘destructive nostalgia') have argued
with increasing plausibility, the instincts and sentiments of certain
traditional working class communities are often far removed from the
left liberal worldview. His discussion of the costermongers of old
delineates their Tory and royalist sympathies and their antipathy to
anything that might constitute a bohemian socialist import.
Collins
also breaks rank with liberal niceties when he talks of culture and the
salience of race and the white working class. For Collins,
multiculturalism has been used as a tool by a metropolitan elite to
censor and marginalise the indigenous white left behind, inviting a
backlash that further strengthens forces on the far right.
Powellism
Enoch Powell’s controversial Rivers of Blood speech from 1968 (described aptly by Stuart Hall’ essay as ‘A torpedo aimed at the boiler room of consensus’),
was a powerful reminder of the traction and mass appeal of a right wing
doyen. Socialists of the day had no choice but to acknowledge Powell’s
formidable appeal to many workers at this time, particularly when
organised labour in the form of the dockers and building workers marched
in his support. As the International Socialists (forerunners of the
Socialist Workers Party) conceded: The
ready response to his speech has revealed the prevalence of racialist
ideas among workers, inculcated by centuries of capitalism and
imperialism
From Ragged Trousered bankruptcy to Vanguardism
Robert Tressell’s
famous novel, The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, is essentially an
extended Socratic dialogue in the form of a novel, as the main
protagonist, Frank Owen, engages with the congenital working class
conservatism of his work colleagues. The novel is actually a useful
reminder as to socialism’s problematic nature with its ostensible
working class base. Owen has to go to great lengths to proselytise for
the superior virtues and rationalism of socialism. Owen’s fellow workers
are highly resistant to left wing ideas and generally happy to
acquiesce in the status quo. This is surely a salutary reminder that
such ideas are far from having a privileged locus and position in
working class communities, there is no spontaneity or easy populist
reception for socialism.
On the contrary, socialism is now seen as a
didactic radical import. Without the hoped for organic growth of working
class left wing movements, this would have to be remedied by
vanguardism, thereby negating one of the original premises of socialist
thought, that working class emancipation had to be the work of the
working class themselves. Unfortunately as the unfolding of history
goes, that innovation didn’t work out particularly world.
Acknowledging the reality of a rightist working class
We urgently need to
understand the limitations of conventional leftism and the elephant in
the room – how the working classes have defected on mass to the right.
There will be lots of heads banging against walls come June 9th,
but as I have argued here, this is not a new problem. Each generation
have to partake of this bitter fruit. However we are still compounded by
our collective delusions and failure to understand the reality on the
ground.
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