The unease
about “multiculturalism” that has been festering in many Europeans for the past
two decades seems to have exploded into full open view - as a result, first, of
the sight of hundreds of thousands of refugees on the move from the slow
train-wreck that Syria has become and now, this month, of the Paris massacre.
This post
may seem to wander – but please bear with me as I try to clear my head from the
obfuscated language used nowadays to talk about issues of “identity”…..
An
article by Nick Cohen attacking what he called “progressive liberalism” struck
a nerve with me this week – although I realized from reading his What’s
Left? – how the left lost its way. How Liberals lost their way (2007) some
years back that you do not get from him a balanced treatment….. But the book did make me aware of just how
different my Scottish experience was. We may have had some ripples of
immigration from India, Italy and Pakistan but their entrepreneurial skills
gave them a certain status. Somehow the rain and cold have conspired to
keep most immigrants away from Scotland - it is telling that the most significant immigration to Scotland
came a century ago - across the narrow stretch of water which separates the country
from Northern Ireland… These were not
only poor - but Roman Catholic and therefore marginalized in the labour and
housing markets.
As a
youngster I was attracted to the language of “equality” used by people such as RH Tawney, Aneurin Bevan and Richard Titmuss
and therefore became active in my town’s Labour Party in the late 1950s. As a “son
of the manse” I was a bit of an oddity in the predominantly Catholic local party who aroused the strong prejudices in the protestants who
were the mainstay of the town’s professional class. Their disapproval of my
activities was strongly conveyed to my poor father (who never remonstrated with
me). In 1968 I found myself a councillor representing a (religiously) “mixed”
area but with my sympathies strongly for those “disadvantaged” – not least by
the fickleness of the hiring habits of the shipbuilding owners.
That’s when
I first saw the downside of democracy and the need for some “positive
discrimination” – a concept just beginning to trickle across from the States……I
spent the subsequent 20 years of my life on this “mission”. So I have “form” as
an active “leftist” pushing such an agenda.
But I have
never felt comfortable with the language of “human rights” - nor those using
it…I well remember the impatience I had in the 1980s with the new language of “equal
opportunities” which came largely from middle-class women with an
understandable agenda of getting better jobs – when we were trying in
Strathclyde to create better conditions for 300,000 people affected by
long-terms unemployment, addiction and mental health.
And don’t
even talk to me about my attitude toward the young international professionals
I began to encounter in the 2000s using the language and holy scriptures of “human
rights”. To me rights are something you have to struggle for
– not text you bow down to because it’s enshrined in the documents of
international bodies…..
It was at
this point I started to question the motives and integrity of the people
associated with what was becoming a
huge industry…….and felt that my record gave me the right to challenge what
I have seen as excessive “political correctness…” which has now reached the
level of utter stupidity..
Francis Fox Piven is
one of the American left’s most distinguished activists and had this to say in
1995 about the
rise of identity politics. Robin Blackburn is an independent-minded British
Marxist who brought an eagle eye to human rights a few years back in this
article - Reclaiming
Human Rights
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