25.04.2001

Tory divisions exposed

Millbank's strategy of observing a self-imposed silence during the awkward 'phoney war' period created by the postponement of the general election was politically astute. Given the post-recess, news-starved media, it did not take long for the Conservative Party to expose the bitterness of its internecine struggles over the succession to the leadership, with Michael Portillo emerging as the favoured candidate of its left wing. With every passing day, the Tories look more and more like the unelectable Labour Party of the early 1980s.

The quiet on the 'phoney war' front was, however, abruptly shattered last week by a brisk exchange of fire between the two main parties on the question of racism in politics. Hostilities began when the foreign secretary, Robin Cook, tossed a hand grenade over the parapet in the form of a waspish little speech about British national identity. His mandarins declared that it was a total coincidence that this speech was made less than 24 hours after mysterious leaks from the Commission for Racial Equality - leaks that sought to 'name and shame' Conservative Party MPs who had failed to sign up as individuals to the so-called 'Compact 2001', a CRE-inspired initiative in the form of a series of pledges, endorsed by leaders of all the mainstream political parties, to keep racism out of the general election campaign.

Cook's aim was clear: to denounce anyone who did not accept his own definition of a multi-ethnic, multicultural Britain as an actual or potential 'racist'. Tactically, the objective of his intervention was probably to limit the Conservative Party's room for manoeuvre in attacking Labour on the question of illegal immigrants and 'bogus' asylum-seekers, the only issue on which the party's focus groups reveal the Tories to have a clear advantage over the government.

Several days of offensive and counter-offensive followed, in which both contending parties attempted to prove that they were less racist than the other. For the metropolitan media, it was an enjoyable diversion; for William Hague, something of a nightmare - a case of 'heads you win, tails I lose'. On the one hand, any attempt to force his MPs to sign up to the compact would have met with a damaging show of resistance; on the other hand, to have repudiated the CRE's charges would have led to accusations that he was 'soft on racism'. The best he could do was hold his peace.

In the event, both sides were damaged, in so far as, contrary to the stated aims of Labour, the 'race card' was unmistakably thrown on the table, even before the election campaign proper has begun. That neither side emerged with any credit was in large part due to the fact that, under the political conditions created by bourgeois political correctness and the official bourgeois ideology of anti-racism - lamentably swallowed whole and uncritically by large swathes of the British left - it is increasingly difficult, if not impossible, for anybody to conduct a rational debate.

Let us take an example. As a Scot, Cook is one of a disproportionate number of his countrymen who make up the present UK Labour government; as a member for a Scottish constituency, he can still vote on English laws, while English members have no say in the running of Scotland; the Labour-Liberal Democrat Scottish administration has enhanced its popularity by introducing social programmes (long-term care for the elderly, the waiving of university tuition fees, etc) which benefit only those fortunate enough to live north of the border - programmes that are in part funded by billions of pounds of tax income derived from taxpayers in England (where the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of these islands live); had these taxpayers been democratically consulted on the question - which, of course, they never were - they may well have said, 'Fine. Let the Scots have as much devolution as they like. Give them their independence, if that is what they want, but let them pay for it themselves.'

Lest I sound like a dyspeptic English Tory, let me admit that I am bending the stick in order to make a point. According to the canons of the post-Macpherson corpus of bourgeois, establishment anti-racist ideology, whereby racism is defined as "that which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person", merely by citing the above facts, I could arguably be accused of adopting a 'racist' attitude to the Scots. Thus far, it has to be said, the nationalists of the SNP have not got around to proclaiming the existence of a Scottish race. But the equally preposterous concept of an oppressed Scottish nation - preposterous, that is, in terms of any Marxist reading of history - can serve just as well.

It should not come as a surprise, therefore, that the national question in Britain - including the 'English question' - is set to loom large in the next parliament. It is a question that needs asking, though sadly at present there is no sign of it being raised in the context of a movement from below - with workers in England to the fore - demanding genuine self-determination and equality for Wales and Scotland in the shape of a federal republic. More likely it will surface as a nationalistic peg on which the twice-defeated Conservative Party will seek to hang some of its plans for extra-parliamentary agitation.

The main objective of Robin Cook's speech, delivered to the Centre for an Open Society, was clearly to deliver a pre-emptive strike aimed at putting the Conservative Party on the defensive. Nothing could be easier than attacking the views of such lunatics as John Townend (Yorkshire East), who recently described immigrants as a threat to our "Anglo-Saxon culture"- endorsing Enoch Powell's "river of blood" speech in the process, Christopher Gill (Ludlow), who sees asylum-seekers as "rats in a bucket", and Sir Richard Body (Boston and Skegness), who has just published a book entitled England for the English. These gentlemen, not one of whom represents a constituency with less than a 99% white population, take their crackpot ignorance and bigotry almost to the level of self-parody.

Cook was quite correct to criticise their "pitiful misreading of history". He stated: "The British are not a race, but a gathering of countless different races, the vast majority of which were not indigenous to these islands. The idea that Britain was a 'pure' Anglo-Saxon society before the arrival of communities from the Caribbean, Asia and Africa is a fantasy." Let us not get involved in a diversion about what does or does not constitute a "race" - a purely subjective, socially derived form of classification.

In a subsequently much quoted passage, the foreign secretary went on to inform us not only that chicken tikka masala is now "Britain's true national dish", but that its very ingredients serve as the "perfect illustration of the way Britain absorbs and adapts external influences. Chicken tikka is an Indian dish. The masala sauce was added to satisfy the desire of the British people to have their meat served in gravy" (The Times April 19).

Leaving aside the dubious politics of gastronomy, what we find in Cook's position is that combination of authoritarianism and liberalism which characterises the so-called 'third way': authoritarian, in so far as it demands our acceptance of the prescriptive orthodoxies of bourgeois political correctness, which dictate the parameters of an 'acceptable' consensus, to step outside of which means that in some sense one must be 'racist'; liberal, in so far as it seeks to pretend that if only we could all bury our differences over a nice plate of chicken tikka masala, if only we could create more 'fair' and 'equal' conditions for ethnic minorities, then all would be well in the world.

It was, of course, the need on the part of the bourgeoisie to redefine Britishness along anti-racist, national chauvinist lines that led to the creation of the CRE itself. The role of this supposedly apolitical 'quango' (budget: £20 million; staff: 230) in the recent fracas raises some serious questions. The idea of asking the leaders of the major political parties to put their names to a declaration abjuring the use of racial issues in political campaigning is not new. It emerged in the early 1990s in order to isolate fascist organisations like the British National Party from the political mainstream. A concordat of this type was signed in the run-up to the 1997 election, without incident.

When, on March 14 this year, the leaders of the three main parties, together with John Swinney of the SNP and Ieuan Wyn-Jones of Plaid Cymru, signed Compact 2001, it was on the understanding, clearly stated by CRE boss Gurbux Singh (salary £106,000), that MPs and parliamentary candidates would be "urged" or "encouraged" to sign up as individuals. Clearly William Hague believed that that would be that. Failure to do so would, he hoped, not be used to cast 'racist' aspersions on the Conservative Party.

Yet this is what happened. Why? The facts are as yet unclear, but, rightly or wrongly, the finger has been pointed at CRE member Shahid Malik, a Blairite loyalist, who was appointed to the commission by Jack Straw in 1998, and elected to the Labour Party's NEC last year. It is suggested that Malik persuaded Singh to 'out' Tory non-signatories. When the resulting furore began, only some 30% of Tories had signed up, but then again Labour signatories constituted only 40% of the parliamentary party. That situation has, of course, changed, with the vast majority of Labour MPs dutifully queuing up to sign in answer to Millbank's fiat.

In the aftermath, Singh now bemoans the fact that, "The debate has shifted to something that is not particularly helpful. I want to see a positive discussion about race relations, as opposed to political parties throwing mud at each other" (The Times April 23). Some hope.

The Tories cried 'foul play' and talked of an elephant trap and a stitch-up. Michael Ancram, their appointed link-man with the CRE, has taken most of the flak. They deserve no sympathy whatever. Was it not Hague himself, eager to extract as much political capital as possible out of the issue of illegal immigration and 'bogus' asylum-seekers, who warned us a while back of the danger that we could wake up and find ourselves "living in a foreign country"? Was it not Hague, whose approach to foreign policy is characterised by the crudest kind of tub-thumping xenophobia, who merely 'distanced himself' from the genuinely racist and loony diatribes disseminated by the likes of Townend and Gill? Hague's predicament is that, while he personally fully supports the bourgeois anti-racist consensus, and thinks it prudent to make gestures towards the CRE, the same cannot be said of his rabidly reactionary, unreconstructed wing.

The text of the Compact itself is worth reading, if for no other reason than it presents us with a comprehensive restatement of the current neo-liberal orthodoxy on questions of race and politics.

"No individual and no issue can, or should be, immune from political debate. Yet, while the right to freedom of speech and public debate is essential, it should not be viewed as an absolute right without any limits. Equally fundamental is our human right to live in a just society, where racial, national or cultural differences exist, in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance and respect. We must create a more inclusive Britain, where every individual is treated equally and fairly, regardless of race, colour or religion.

"The right to free political expression must not be abused in the competition for popular votes by causing or exploiting prejudice and discrimination on grounds of race or nationality. There can be no place in our democratic process for those who seek to incite or encourage, blatantly or covertly, racial hatred, prejudice and discrimination between others. Elected politicians must represent everyone, not pitch one group against another for short-term political or personal gain."

The document goes on to set out some "principles for good practice and conduct by all those involved in political campaigns in national, local and European elections", which, if adhered to, will "ensure that all political campaigns are conducted fairly and free from racial hatred and prejudice". The principles which each signatory undertakes to uphold are as follows:

l to represent the interests of all my constituents, regardless of race, sex, colour, religion or any other discriminating factor, and promote good race relations;

l to reject all forms of racial violence, racial harassment and unlawful racial discrimination;

l not to publish, or seek to have published by others, or in any way endorse any material, including pamphlets, leaflets and posters, likely to generate hostility or division between people of different racial, national or religious groups, or which might reasonably be expected to do so;

l to ensure that in any dealings with the public, including door-to-door and telephone canvassing, no words or actions are used which may (a) encourage, instruct or put pressure on others to discriminate; or (b) stir up racial or religious hatred or lead to prejudice on grounds of race, nationality or religion;

l to make sure everyone involved in my (my party's) campaign for election pledges to abide by these principles, and call on all those involved in promoting or reporting political debate, especially the media, to do the same.

Obviously, communists are vigorously opposed to racism, nationalism, sexism and every other form of divisive prejudice that serves to obstruct the unity of our common working class struggle. But we are not prepared to fall meekly behind the bourgeois consensus. Establishment bodies like the CRE have no right to dictate to us what we can or cannot say. They could equally well, under different circumstances, proscribe the stirring up of 'class hatred'. We do not look to the bourgeoisie to ban ideas.

The only way reactionary ideas can be defeated is through having them out in the open. We have confidence in the strength of our own programme and are not afraid of the pathetic nonsense parroted by the BNP, National Front and the likes of John Townend. Equally we are prepared to take on the vile anti-working class nationalism of the mainstream. Our anti-racism is genuinely internationalist and proletarian.

Michael Malkin