Blessed Be the Bigots!

How Northern Voices gives space to opposing views

by Brian Bamford (Joint Editor)

IN a recent critical comment on this Blogg Tony Greenstein, a blogger who is a descendant of Jewish immigrants, proclaims that 'it is a pity that the Northern Voices Blog does not have an anti-racist or anti-fascist politics.'

Let's be clear, Northern Voices doesn't have a party-line or what might be called a politically correct platform

Let me offer some personal history; in February 1963, I met with members of the FIJL (Iberian Federation of Young Libertarians) in the Belleville working-class area of Paris: the refugees from the Spanish Civil War had begun arriving there in 1938.  In 1963, we were keen to involve ourselves in the struggle against the dictatorship of General Franco and were about to be dispatched for the shanty towns of Barcelona.  So if we consider Franco to be a 'Fascist', I suppose I was an anti-Fsscist over 50-years ago.  But what does Mr. Greenstein really mean when he accuses Northern Voices not having 'anti-racist or anti-fascist politics'?

It is not so easy to answer this question because even in 1944, in the journal Tribune, George Orwell struggled to tackle this puzzle in an essay 'What is Fascism' thus:

"Of all the unanswered questions of our time, perhaps the most important is: ‘What is Fascism?’

One of the social survey organizations in America recently asked this question of a hundred different people, and got answers ranging from ‘pure democracy’ to ‘pure diabolism’. In this country if you ask the average thinking person to define Fascism, he usually answers by pointing to the German and Italian régimes. But this is very unsatisfactory, because even the major Fascist states differ from one another a good deal in structure and ideology."

Finally Orwell concluded that:
 "Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’.  That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come.  ....All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword."

Mr. Greenstein makes free use of the word 'fascist' describing Greenswiper thus:  "The little fascist Greenswipe tells us that Robinson or Yaxley-Lennon is ‘a beacon of light.'  And goes on to tell us:
'Here you see the bigot and racist in all his glory. It may be gloomy for this poundshop bigot but not for most people.  Whether it is food or music multi culturalism has triumphed over British marching bands!  Or maybe what he means is that he doesn’t like mixing with Black people but doesn’t like to put it in those words."

But perhaps Greenstein forgets that we had our own 'Bigotgate' in Rochdale in the General Election campaign in 2010.  The then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, on the election campaign trail, was faced with a disastrous turn of events after a Labour supporter, Gillian Duffy, confronted him about his party’s plans to cut the deficit and its stance on immigration as he was interviewed live on TV in Rochdale. 

Later Gordon Brown went on to regret calling Mrs. Gillian Duffy a 'bigoted woman' when he was recorded calling her in such disparaging tones.  To a Northerner this language all comes over as being a bit snobbish about people who take a different view like Tommy Robinson and Greenswiper himself.  Greenswiper is clearly wrong when he claims 'Tommy Robinson represents about 90% of people', but the instincts of Greenswiper and Mrs. Duffy can't be ignored because they do represent a certain tendency, call it an impatience, among white working people.  Some are arguing that the phenomena of political correctness and identity politics is fueling the rise of people like Trump, Tommy Robinson and the Brexit Party.

No amount of smug sneers about 'racism' and 'fascism' from Tony Greenstein will change what is the deeply embeded xenophobia in our culture.  Nor will implying that because English people like to eat Indian food or aren't still fond of brass bands must therefore mean that they have accepted the triumph of multi-culturalism as a political entity.

One can still enjoy a jitterbug dance, and the same person could delight in 'traditions' on a local scale, like the annual Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at the chapel of King's College, Cambridge on Christmas eve.    

Fascism is often identified with nationalism and tradition, but this is not always the case.  In the book 'The Inventon of Tradition',  edited by the Marxist Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger, HUGH TREVOR-ROPER wrote:

"It is ironical that if the Highland dress had been banned after 'the Fifteen' instead of after 'the Forty Five', the kilt, which is now regarded as one of the ancient traditions of Scotland, would probably never have come into existence. It came into existence a few years after Burt wrote, and very close to the area in which he wrote. Unknown in 1726, it suddenly appeared a few years later; and by 1746 it was sufficiently well established to be explicitly named in the act of parliament which then forbade the Highland dress. The actual inventor, I understand was an English Quaker from Lancashire, Thomas Rawlinson. The Rawlinsons were a long-established family of Quaker iron-masters in Furness."

So even the iconic Highland kilt so central to the Scottish nationalists was originally made in Lancashire by an English Quaker?
 
Meanwhile, Mr. Greenstein rages on about Greenswiper's complaints of an England in the 21st century shrouded in an ‘Alien multicultural gloom’; to whichTony Greenstein is nothing if not pompous:   'Here you see the bigot and racist in all his glory. It may be gloomy for this poundshop bigot but not for most people. Whether it is food or music multi culturalism has triumphed over British marching bands! Or maybe what he means is that he doesn’t like mixing with Black people but doesn’t like to put it in those words.'

Here we may be experiencing bigotry from both Greenstein and Greenswiper, yet in some ways it  is the canary in the coal mine that warns us of approaching disaster. 

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