David Cameron and institutional racism
A couple of weeks ago I concluded a post on David Cameron’s war in Libya in the following manner:
“The problem for David Cameron, and for his sidekick Nick Clegg is that, unlike the case of the Falklands, in this conflict there is no neat end that can be engineered, a la carte, for the public relations calculus at the heart of the operation. As Milne notes, public support for the Libya adventure is low, and whatever support there is can only be lost as more and more people become aware of the operation’s hypocrisy, and of its failure to secure any of its own stated objectives.
This raises a worrisome question: what stunt will the ConDems engineer next to try to keep the British public in a state of distraction from the real issues of our time?”
Today we have the answer: Cameron appears to have decided to replay the ‘race’ card, making statements about immigrants which, in my view, make it difficult to distinguish his discourse from at least the official discourse of the British National Party (BNP). Here again, we see a striking similarity between Cameron and Thatcher—if Thatcher used the war on the Falklands to distract public opinion from her neoliberal policies, many believe that she also played the ‘race’ card by stoking up fears of immigration.
The only slightly positive news is that the Lib Dems—or at least Vince Cable—appear to be distancing themselves from this new move on the part of the Conservative Party towards the far right.
One other thought: let us not forget that it was David Cameron who was willing to travel to Poland to establish a pan-European pact with extreme right-wing parties. For more on this, see
What does David Cameron have in common with the Kaczynski twins?
See also my piece on the nature of institutional racism:
The DHS and the nature of institutional racism
Update 18:00 BST. A good article by Daniel Trilling lays out the hypocrisy of Cameron’s, and the Liberal-Conservative Coalition’s position when he notes that:
on Thursday Cameron showed that he is happy to invoke the rhetoric of Enoch Powell when it suits him, railing against the threat to society posed by the “largest influx” of immigrants in British history. In his speech, delivered to Conservative party members in Hampshire, Cameron declares he wants to “cut through the extremes” of the debate on immigration. He makes a ritualistic sop to the benefits of immigration (tasty food, nice clothes, good music), but the focus of his argument is that immigrants don’t make enough effort to integrate and to learn English; something that has “created a kind of discomfort and disjointedness” in neighbourhoods across the country.
This is an utterly hypocritical position to take when the government is about to make harsh cuts to teaching of English for speakers of other languages. In 2007, Labour restricted free English lessons to people on benefits; now, these will only be available to those on “active benefits” such as jobseeker’s allowance. Low-paid workers on income support, asylum seekers and spouses – the very people Cameron devotes his attention to in his speech – will no longer be eligible. The hypocrisy is compounded when one considers Britain’s appalling track record where learning other languages is concerned. Of the 900,000 Britons who live in Spain, how many speak reasonable Spanish? Do all of the 500,000 British people living in France speak French?
A shared language is vital to good social relations, but lacking one is a threat to the migrants themselves, not surrounding society.”
