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| 1 |
ID:
135891
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| Summary/Abstract |
In June 2014, the think tank IPPR published a report, The Condition of Britain, widely seen as important source material for Labour as the party geared up for the 2015 General Election. This is an echo of another report—that of the Commission on Social Justice, published in 1994—which also made an important contribution to the thinking of Labour in opposition. A comparison between the two documents provides insights into the evolution of mainstream progressive thought over the past twenty years.
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| 2 |
ID:
135890
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| Summary/Abstract |
The British National Party and English Defence League forged new frontiers in British political spaces in relation to anti-Islam, anti-Muslim ideologies. Whereas the former sought to do so in formal political arenas, the latter did so as a street-level movement. With the subsequent waning of both, Britain First has emerged seemingly to fill the political void they left. In many ways, Britain First combines the strategies and actions of the parties that preceded it, at both the formal and street levels. This article considers what is known about Britain First, about its history, development and its ideology, and how this is manifested in terms of its political strategies and actions. This includes such activities as standing for European elections and also undertaking ‘Christian patrols’ and mosque ‘invasions’. The article considers how Britain First, while having some similarities with the BNP and EDL, is more confrontational and militaristic and is informed by apocalyptic Christianity.
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| 3 |
ID:
135880
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| Summary/Abstract |
Immigration politics in Britain have been transformed by high levels of immigration, the effects of EU free movement, strong anti-immigration sentiment and UKIP's rise. All are compounded by a more general discontent with politics and politicians. In face of claims that something must be done, politicians seek tougher controls on immigration and free movement, but these may be difficult to attain because of entanglement with EU rules, while failure to achieve stated objectives can further compound the disconnect that fuels support for UKIP.
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| 4 |
ID:
135885
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| Summary/Abstract |
Current debates around immigration are informed by hierarchies of belonging, with some groups seen to belong more, and therefore deserve more, than others. This link between belonging and entitlement has been predominantly analysed in relation to struggles over access to key material benefits, such as jobs, housing, healthcare and so on. This paper will argue that these struggles also point to the continuing relevance of nationhood to many people's sense of self, community and place and the value that comes from being positioned, and recognised, as part of a group that lies at the heart of national life and culture. In other words, the ‘politics of immigration’ is about the anxieties and concerns of those who no longer feel ‘at home’ in what they consider to be ‘their’ country.
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| 5 |
ID:
135892
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| Summary/Abstract |
The Electoral Reform Society has recently published two reports putting the case for electoral reform in local government. These suggest acceptance, in the wake of defeat in the 2011 Alternative Vote referendum, that the group's ultimate goal of change to the Westminster electoral system is unlikely to be fulfilled soon and that a more gradual strategy is therefore needed. This paper examines this shift by asking three questions. First, is Westminster electoral reform really a dead letter? Second, is local electoral reform more likely—and, if so, just how much more likely? Third, would local electoral reform matter in itself?
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| 6 |
ID:
135877
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| Summary/Abstract |
It is often forgotten that, regardless of time or place, periods of high immigration are almost always periods of high anti-immigration sentiment. When ethnic change is rapid, driven by immigration or differences in ethnic natural increase, the ethnic majority often responds with a politics of immigration. This was true, for instance, in Britain in the 1960s, in the US during 1890–1925 and in interwar Scotland. I show that White British people in locales experiencing rapid ethnic change are more likely to call for lower immigration and to vote BNP. On the other hand, where there is already a high level of ethnic minorities, white opinion is less hostile to immigration: UKIP does poorly among whites in diverse areas. Habituation to change, typically within a decade, and assimilation—especially of Europeans—over a generation reduces hostility to immigration. If the rate of ethnic change slows, we should therefore expect a reduction in the salience of immigration. Ironically, because the children of European migrants are more readily accepted into the ethnic majority than is the case for non-Europeans, a shift from EU free movement to non-European skilled migrants, as is advocated by UKIP, could run counter to the wishes of its own supporters.
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| 7 |
ID:
135887
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| Summary/Abstract |
The article critically evaluates liberal nationalist perspectives on immigration by drawing on findings from a qualitative research project undertaken in 2014 among White British interviewees in England. From one perspective the study's participants' attitudes seem to support arguments made by David Goodhart and other liberal nationalists regarding immigration, social trust and integration. However, further analysis suggests that these attitudes are to a very significant extent drawn first from partially imagined ideas surrounding immigration and second from potentially unreliable sources. These findings thus provoke the question of whether social trust and notions of a national community are actually being disrupted by immigration, or whether they are being disrupted by prejudiced nationalist and xenophobic perceptions about immigration and immigrants. The article will conclude by arguing for more nuanced research into attitudes towards immigration and in favour of a sceptical approach to nationalist frameworks for interpreting society and politics in Britain today.
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| 8 |
ID:
135893
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article is a critique of two reports of parliamentary inquiries, into intervention and soft power, respectively. Neither report includes any discussion of Britain's involvement in and culpability for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite a more radical approach taken by the report on soft power, the article argues that the failure to address recent wars is symptomatic of a deeper and more dangerous inability to face up to profound and dangerous changes taking place in the world.
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| 9 |
ID:
135883
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines the similarities and differences between multiculturalism and interculturalism, with particular reference to the impact of globalisation and changing patterns of diversity. It reflects briefly on the origins of multiculturalism—largely from a European perspective—with its focus on ‘race’ and the socio-economic analysis that accompanied it. The article suggests that while multiculturalism was right to continue to focus on inequalities, it failed to adapt to super-diversity and the multifaceted aspects of difference and ‘otherness’, including those based on disability, age and gender. Further, while multiculturalism became rooted in intra-national differences, between minority and majority populations, an intercultural approach is now necessary to support the changing patterns of national identity and respond to the recent challenge posed by the growth of far-right and popular extremist parties (PEPs).
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| 10 |
ID:
135884
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| Summary/Abstract |
A persistent theme in the British and international debates about immigration and diversity is the controversial claim that living in diverse areas has negative consequences for intergroup attitudes and community relations. In the present paper we test this claim by investigating the impact of neighbourhood diversity and self-reported intergroup contact on orientations (outgroup attitudes and social distance) toward one religious outgroup: Muslims. Respondents were both White British majority (N=867) and non-Muslim ethnic minority (N=567) residents of neighbourhoods in England which varied in their proportion of ethnic minority residents. We tested both direct and indirect (via intergroup contact) effects of diversity on outgroup orientations toward Muslims. Results show that individuals living in more ethnically diverse areas—regardless of whether they are White British members of the majority or non-Muslim members of ethnic minorities—have more positive contact with Muslims, with positive consequences for intergroup relations with Muslims.
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| 11 |
ID:
135876
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| Summary/Abstract |
Immigration is one of the most frequently covered issues in opinion surveys—but the volume and type of questions asked has actually obscured many of the key facts about our attitudes. This article summarises a year-long project to draw together as much of the published polling as possible in one place, in as neutral a way as possible. The overall picture is one of genuine concern about immigration among a large proportion of the population—but more nuance on specific aspects, and a number of important gaps between perceptions and reality. Also highlighted are the increasingly polarised views on immigration between generations and different class and education groupings. The lower level of concern among younger generations and the growing graduate class suggests that immigration may be less of a concern in the future—but that the electoral weight of the more concerned older generations means that restrictive rhetoric and policy on immigration will be a key feature of the 2015 general election.
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| 12 |
ID:
135881
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| Summary/Abstract |
Under pressure from voters, and from other parties, Europe's centre-left has had to re-evaluate its position on migration. The UK Labour party is no exception. Public concern about large-scale immigration clearly contributed to its heavy defeat at the 2010 general election. Since then it has been slowly but surely hardening its stance on the issue, although this is by no means unprecedented: while the rise of UKIP may have upped the ante in recent months, Labour has a long history of adjusting policy in this area so as to remain competitive with its main rival, the Conservative party. Labour is now asking itself whether it will be possible to do this without challenging one of the fundamental precepts of EU membership—the right of free movement of people. Whatever the result of this internal debate between the party's ‘beer drinkers’ and its ‘wine drinkers’, Labour may still have difficulty in neutralising immigration as an issue since, for the most part, it continues to insist on giving an essentially economic answer to what for many voters is actually a cultural question.
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| 13 |
ID:
135875
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| Summary/Abstract |
Racism has been in sharp decline in recent decades yet the word, as accusation, is used more than ever. The word/idea needs to be more restrictively defined and kept for when it is really needed. When almost everyone is a racist, no one is. To this end we need to distinguish more clearly between the greater comfort people often feel among familiar people and places and active hostility towards outsider ethnic groups. We also need a more discriminating language to describe the spectrum of discrimination. Prejudice, clannishness—even in some instances discrimination itself—should be regarded as sentiments and behaviours that are distinct from proper racism.
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| 14 |
ID:
135889
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| Summary/Abstract |
Before his untimely death in 2011, Peter Mair took up the idea of ‘representative and responsible government’ from Anthony Birch’s 1964 book.1 Mair argued that the contemporary political malaise of Western democracies arose from the gap between the demands of representation and the constraints of prudence, consistency and conformity to external commitments which face a responsible government. This tension is evident in immigration policy. In responding to public opinion, the government has been drawn into making promises that it cannot honour without radically rewriting the UK’s external commitments. To fend off the threat from UKIP, the government is taking the country to the brink of leaving the European Union. Yet the promise to limit immigration apparently had to be made: it was ‘demanded’ by a section of the public that would otherwise defect to the political fringe—to a party entirely occupied with representation and unimpaired by the constraints of responsibility
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| 15 |
ID:
135882
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| Summary/Abstract |
Superdiversity across Europe has focused attention on the increasing significance of ethnic minorities to electoral outcomes. We use unique Origins software to analyse a sample of minority voters in the May 2014 European elections; drawing on the work of the Ethnic Minority British Election Study (EMBES), we show that the growth of non-White minorities will combine with a persistent preference for Labour to produce some unexpected consequences. We also compute the different ethnic penalties suffered by minority Labour and Conservative supporters, and demonstrate their likely trend between now and mid-century. The analysis shows the increased importance of social and cultural factors in determining political preferences, and illustrates the way in which Big Data-derived tools such as Origins can be used to produce fresh insights.
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| 16 |
ID:
135879
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| Summary/Abstract |
The May 2014 European Parliament (EP) elections were characterised by the success of far-right Eurosceptic parties, including the French Front National, UKIP, the Danish People's Party, the Hungarian Jobbik, the Austrian FPÖ, the True Finns and the Greek Golden Dawn. However, a closer look at the results across Europe indicates that the success of far-right parties in the EP elections is neither a linear nor a clear-cut phenomenon: (1) the far right actually declined in many European countries compared to the 2009 results; (2) some of the countries that have experienced the worst of the economic crisis, including Spain, Portugal and Ireland, did not experience a significant rise in far-right party support; and (3) ‘far right’ is too broad an umbrella term, covering parties that are too different from each other to be grouped in one single party family.
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| 17 |
ID:
135888
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| Summary/Abstract |
Immigration policy has repeatedly failed to fulfil the ambitions of its advocates. Successive governments have neither willed the means nor been open about the obstacles in their way to restricting immigration. Disappointing results have contributed to disillusionment with the political system and help to create the ground on which UKIP has prospered.
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| 18 |
ID:
135894
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| Summary/Abstract |
In recent years, the BBC World Service has undergone the most radical overhaul of its governance, finance and working practices since the Second World War. In examining these changes, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee report on The Future of the BBC World Service articulates ‘clear differences’ between it and the BBC about how the World Service should be governed, and ‘serious reservations’ about the transfer of funding in April this year from government grant-in-aid to the licence fee. With a new BBC Charter due in 2017, will the distinct ethos and culture of the World Service survive this major reorganisation?
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| 19 |
ID:
135878
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| Summary/Abstract |
In this article we explore the structural shifts which help explain the emergence of UKIP as a major radical-right political force in Britain. There are two distinct, but related, aspects to this story. The first is the changes to Britain's economic and social structure that have pushed to the margins a class of voters who we describe as the ‘left behind’: older, working-class, white voters with few educational qualifications. The second is long-term generational changes in the values that guide British society and shape the outlook of voters. These value shifts have also left older white working-class voters behind, as a worldview which was once seen as mainstream has become regarded as parochial and intolerant by the younger, university-educated, more socially liberal elites who define the political consensus of twenty-first-century Britain. We then move to consider the political changes that have further marginalised these voters, as first Labour and then the Conservatives focused their energies on recruiting and retaining support from middle-class, moderate swing voters. Finally, we show how UKIP has developed into an effective electoral machine which looks to win and retain the loyalties of these voters. Finally, we discuss the longer-term implications of the radical-right revolt, which has the potential to change the nature of party competition in Britain in the 2015 election and beyond.
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| 20 |
ID:
135886
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| Summary/Abstract |
This paper suggests that the definition of the white working class, as an ethnic majority, is fluid and shifting, in contrast to its conventional portrayal as a fixed and static group. They are more than simply voiceless and ‘left behind’, especially with regard to views of multiculturalism, immigration and social change. Using data from two recent studies, we see a range of views expressed by white working class communities, which underlines the need for care to be taken when attempting to describe common-sense views on these polemical subjects.
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