April 29, 2010

The True Conspiracy of Silence

Posted in Labour, Politics at 3:09 pm by Paul Sagar

The Mail today screams of “censorship” of “any debate” on immigration and “contempt” for “millions of voters”. But if anything, “Bigotgate” is proof that the right-wing media holds all the cards – which our politicians have consistently handed over.

Rather than confronting Mrs Duffy on the question of immigration, Gordon Brown dodged her queries and ran away. This is instructive as he did not even need to stake an argument for the many benefits of inward economic migration to the UK: he could have simply pandered to anti-immigration sentiment. His Government has 13 years’ experience, after all. Why not point to 5 restrictive immigration acts, the prevention of asylum seekers from working thus enforcing poverty upon them, and the creation of detention centres for children?

Yet immigration is such a politically sensitive issue that Brown just wanted to get away from the question: any discussion risked handing the Daily Mail et. al. a stick with which to beat him. There is a conspiracy of silence on immigration alright – it centres on the fact that right-wing media hysteria has helped make any sensible balanced discussion impossible. Accordingly, politicians refuse to be drawn if they can help it and offer tough-sounding incoherence if they can’t. The perverse result is that the same right-wing media making sensible discussion of immigration impossible points to the situation of muffled silence they have helped create as proof of a conspiracy that doesn’t exist, but belief in which reinforces the anti-immigration narrative.

So what might a sensible discussion on immigration look like? Those who defend, in particular, Eastern European migrant workers should take the lead of Chris Dillow:

“Such immigrants are contributing to the public finances and have helped the economy grow whilst keeping inflation down. And east European migration is not new; Poles have lived in England for decades with no ill-effects. Far from it; they made a significant contribution in the Battle of Britain.”

One might also add that free movement of labour within the EU allowing Eastern Europeans to work in the UK also allows 2 million Britons to live and work abroad, as well as hundreds of thousands to retire to the coasts of Spain.

On the other hand, a balanced debate needs to recognise the anxieties of people like Mrs Duffy. Many working class communities have experienced rapid change since the 2004 expansion of the EU. Large influxes of foreign European workers have arrived, often forming their own communities and not always “integrating” with the locals. For people who have been born and bred in an area, the sight of their safe-and-known way of life being apparently pushed out by foreign newcomers can be alarming and troubling. In a time of high unemployment, this can also lead to frictions as native people perceive scarce jobs as being monopolised by foreigners undercutting wages.

Of course, justified and understandable concerns about loss of identity and changed community have to be tempered with facts. When people are interviewed on Newsnight (17.45 mins) declaring that foreigners automatically come first on housing waiting lists and are given free beds and TVs, it should be morally (if not legally) incumbent upon every local council to immediately deny these claims and provide the evidence that they are untrue. Likewise national newspapers should ideally stop perpetrating such myths (though the profitability of peddling hate and fear admittedly makes this highly unlikely). When people complain that “foreigners are taking all the jobs”, it should be pointed out that migrant workers are legally paid the same wages as Brits, but that employers may simply be employing harder workers.

That’s what aspects of a sensible debate about immigration might look like. Yet no mainstream politician even attempts to make the detailed case in favour – let alone explain that preventing Eastern European migrant workers coming here is in fact impossible under the terms of the EU.

The conspiracy of silence is partly foisted upon us by a hysterical tabloid press demonising immigration and immigrants. Yet this silence has been happily colluded in by mainstream politicians, who for years have preferred to pander to the press whilst promising – and in New Labour’s case, actually delivering – “tough” immigration measures, albeit only for those unlucky enough to come from outside of the EU.

This, however, reflects more than just fear of the press. It also reveals a fundamental mistrust of voters, and a working assumption that the electorate is too stupid to follow reasoned arguments or come to balanced opinions on immigration. People’s legitimate anxieties about community fragmentation and employment restriction are left to fester rather than being discussed in the open, and set against the benefits that migration brings. Voters are assumed to be nothing more than idiots and bigots. Indeed the most revealing thing about Brown’s gaffe was that “bigot” was his view of an ordinary Labour voter expressing very common views.

Unsurprisingly, bigoted rhetoric and legislation was what aloof politicians presumed allegedly bigoted and stupid voters needed to be placated. Manifestly, it hasn’t worked.

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