Affective Polarisation: Social Inequality in the UK after Austerity, Brexit and COVID-19 9781529222289

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A F FECTIV E P O LA RISATIO N S OCI AL I NEQUA LIT Y IN THE U K AF T E R AUSTERIT Y, BREX IT AND COVID -19

ED ITE D BY

JAN A  G O HRISC H AND GE S A STEDM AN

AFFECTIVE POLARISATION Social Inequality in the UK after Austerity, Brexit and COVID-​19 Edited by Jana Gohrisch and Gesa Stedman

First published in Great Britain in 2023 by Bristol University Press University of Bristol 1–​9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK t: +​44 (0)117 374 6645 e: bup-​[email protected] Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at bristoluniversitypress.co.uk © Bristol University Press 2023 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-​1-​5292-​2226-​5 hardcover ISBN 978-​1-​5292-​2227-​2 ePub ISBN 978-​1-​5292-​2228-​9 ePdf The right of Jana Gohrisch and Gesa Stedman to be identified as editors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Bristol University Press. Every reasonable effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material. If, however, anyone knows of an oversight, please contact the publisher. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the editors and contributors and not of the University of Bristol or Bristol University Press. The University of Bristol and Bristol University Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Bristol University Press works to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design: Andy Ward Front cover image: iStock/​hachiware Bristol University Press uses environmentally responsible print partners. Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

Contents List of Figures, Tables and Boxes Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements

v vii ix

Introduction Gesa Stedman and Jana Gohrisch 1

2

3

4

5

6 7

8

1

The Divided Left in the UK: Partisanship, Ideology and Class after Brexit Paolo Chiocchetti Populism and the People: Elitism, Authoritarianism and Libertarianism Kirsten Forkert and Marius Guderjan ‘Coloring the Utterance with Some Kind of Perceivable Affect’: Constructing ‘Country’ and ‘People’ in Speeches by Theresa May and Boris Johnson –​A Linguistic Perspective Rainer Schulze The Challenges of Polarisation: Lessons for (Re-​)Politicising Inequality across Four English Towns Insa Koch, Mark Fransham, Sarah Cant, Jill Ebrey, Luna Glucksberg and Mike Savage “Go Away, But Don’t Leave Us”: Affective Polarisation and the Precarisation of Romanian Essential Workers in the UK Anisia Petcu Racialised Affective Polarisation in the UK Jana Gohrisch “Now You Have to Listen”: A Historical Analysis of Britain’s Left-​Behind Communities Harvey Butterfield Britain in a State of Emergency: Studying Ken Loach’s Films I, Daniel Blake (2016) and Sorry We Missed You (2019) Ellen Grünkemeier

iii

11

33

60

78

110

125 142

169

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9 10

11

Cloaking Class: Making the Working Class Visible Lisa Mckenzie Class, Poverty and Inequality in Scotland: Independence and the Creation of Affective Polarisations Carlo Morelli and Gerry Mooney Language and Identity: The Taliesin Tradition Ifor ap Glyn

185 199

212

Conclusion Gesa Stedman and Jana Gohrisch

233

Index

238

iv

List of Figures, Tables and Boxes Figures 1.1 1.2 1.3 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 10.1

Overall strength of the UK left, 2019 (percentage) Divisions among voters of left-​leaning parties, 2019 (percentage) Left–​r ight orientation of voters, 2014–​19 (percentage) Percentage voting Conservative 2019 versus voting Leave 2016, UK parliamentary constituencies Decile plot of household income distribution, tax year ending 2016 Occupational class of working age residents by sex, 2011 Census Index of Multiple Deprivation 2015 for ‘Lower Super Output Areas’ Number of ‘Lower Super Output Areas’ by national deprivation quintile, Index of Multiple Deprivation 2015 The Scottish independence referendum deprivation gap: percentage voting ‘YES’ by degree of neighbourhood deprivation (Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation)

13 17 25 84 87 89 90 91 205

Tables 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 3.1 3.2

Overall strength of the UK left, 2019 (percentage) Party shares among voters of left-​leaning parties, 1966–​2019 (percentage) Social grade of voters, 2019 (percentage) Ideological divisions among voters of left-​leaning parties, 2019 (percentage) National identities of voters, 2019 (percentage) Left–​r ight orientation of parties, 2014–​19 (percentage) Affective polarisation, total sample, 2015–​19 (percentage) Essential terms in lexical priming theory Discourse/​semantic prosody in action v

14 19 21 22 23 25 27 63 64

Affective Polarisation

3.3 3.4

Lexical frequencies in Theresa May’s speech Lexical frequencies in Boris Johnson’s speech

66 67

Collocations of ‘people’ in Theresa May’s and Boris Johnson’s speeches Collocations of ‘country’ in Theresa May’s and Boris Johnson’s speeches

68

Boxes 3.1 3.2

vi

71

Notes on Contributors Harvey Butterfield wrote his MA thesis in history on left-​behind communities in the north of England at the University of York. Sarah Cant is Principal Lecturer in Sociology and the Director of Academic Studies in the School of Law, Policing and Social Sciences, Canterbury Christ Church University. Paolo Chiocchetti is Lecturer in British Politics at the Centre for British Studies, Humboldt-​Universität zu Berlin. Jill Ebrey is Honorary Research Fellow at The CRESC ESRC Centre for Socio Cultural Change at the University of Manchester. Kirsten Forkert is Professor of Cultural Studies at the Birmingham School of Media, Birmingham City University. Mark Fransham is Senior Research Officer and Departmental Lecturer in the Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford. Luna Glucksberg is an urban anthropologist looking at issues of inequality and a librarian. Ifor ap Glyn is a writer, TV producer and former Bardd Cenedlaethol Cymru/​National Poet of Wales. Jana Gohrisch is Professor of British and Postcolonial Studies at Leibniz University Hannover. Ellen Grünkemeier is Professor of British Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Bielefeld. Marius Guderjan is Researcher in Politics at the Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science, Freie Universität Berlin. vii

Affective Polarisation

Insa Koch is Professor of British Cultures at the University of St Gallen and Visiting Professor in Law and Anthropology at the London School of Economics. Lisa Mckenzie is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Bedfordshire. Gerry Mooney is Professor of Scottish Society & Social Welfare at The Open University in Scotland. Carlo Morelli is Senior Lecturer in Economic and Business History at the University of Dundee. Anisia Petcu is a graduate of the MA British Studies, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, and works for the Falling Walls Foundation in Berlin. Mike Savage is Martin White Professor in the Department of Sociology at the London School of Economics. Rainer Schulze is Professor of English Linguistics at Leibniz Universität Hanover. Gesa Stedman is Professor of British Culture and Literature at the Centre for British Studies, Humboldt-​Universität zu Berlin.

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Acknowledgements Without the indefatigable, supportive presence of Corinna Radke, who oversaw the whole process of turning the manuscript into a book, the copy-​editing skills of Catherine Smith, David Bell and Mhairi Gador-​ Whyte –​and the patience of our editor Zoe Forbes from Bristol University Press –​this book would not have been possible. We are most grateful for their help as well as for the willingness of our authors to engage with –​in some cases –​unfamiliar conceptual territory, joining an interdisciplinary discussion, and writing and rewriting chapters to turn this cooperative venture into a coherent whole. We would also like to thank the peer reviewer whose constructive remarks made this a better book. Thanks to SAGE Publishing for allowing us to reprint an adapted version of Insa Koch et al (2020) ‘Social polarisation at the local level: A four-​town comparative study on the challenges of politicising inequality in Britain’, Sociology, 55(1): 3–​29.

ix

Introduction Gesa Stedman and Jana Gohrisch ‘We are all in this together’ was an often-​heard quote throughout the early stages of the pandemic, and was still used by world leaders in 2021, albeit with slightly greater awareness of the limits of this collective conceptualisation (see, for example, Guterres, 2020, 2021; HM Government, 2020; Sturgeon, 2020). While it is true that no country has been unaffected by COVID-​19, it is clear that the pandemic has hit particular people and communities much harder than others. The reasons for this are, first and foremost, social reasons: poverty, crowded or non-​existing housing, unemployment, poor health –​in that order, not forgetting ethnic inequalities in many cases, which are often related to all of these issues. It is a convenient myth, which turns attention away from the fundamental elements of late capitalism, namely social injustice and inequality, which have been exacerbated by the fallout from Brexit and ten years of Conservative and coalition governments’ austerity politics in Britain (see Ahmed et al, 2022). Ethnic minority Britons are more likely to have been hit by COVID-​19, as research such as that undertaken by the Runnymede Trust has shown. They attribute this not to existing co-​morbidities –​as these are also prevalent in the White population –​but rather to social inequality, which affects many ethnic minority Britons. Social scientists involved in longitudinal studies have shown that at the beginning of the pandemic, ethnic minority workers lost their jobs to a greater extent than their White counterparts who, in contrast, had a greater chance of being furloughed. Although this has levelled out again to some extent (Crossley et al, 2021: 18–​19), there is little doubt that the pandemic has further entrenched inequalities and made it more difficult for ethnic minority Britons on the lower income scale to recover from the economic fallout of the pandemic. In turn, this is likely to have knock-​on effects on health (Kapadia et al, 2022), education and housing, thus increasing the key elements of inequality. Since the advent of the most recent crisis –​ the cost-​of-​living crisis as a consequence of energy provision problems and high inflation –​one can imagine how these communities will be impacted for the fourth time since the financial crash of 2008 (Treloar, 2020). 1

Affective Polarisation

Unsurprisingly, there is also a stark north–​south divide in how COVID-​19 has affected the different parts of the UK, as research from the Northern Health Alliance has shown. Geography, in other words, plays a role in how the pandemic has affected Britons. And since geography was also a key factor in the unequal fallout of austerity politics –​in addition to people’s voting choice in the Brexit referendum, and the last general elections, as well as the impact of Britain leaving the EU on Britons –​this is another aspect which needs to be taken into account (see Munford et al, 2021). The COVID-​19 pandemic has thus shown the weaknesses of the welfare state in many countries, but perhaps nowhere more starkly than in austerity-​ ridden, class-​based Britain (see Chapters 4, 8, 9 and 10 in this volume). In other words, Britons who depend on what’s left of the welfare state are under particular stress in the wake of austerity politics, Brexit and the COVID-​19 pandemic (compare Gore, 2020; also Bear et al, 2020; Edmiston et al, 2020). This has been further exacerbated by the cost-​of-​living crisis and the UK government responses to crises for which it is itself responsible, as well as external crises, which lie beyond its immediate responsibility, such as the war in Ukraine. Research has shown that affective polarisation rises particularly in areas of high unemployment and severe social inequality (Gidron et al, 2019). However, it is necessary to complicate the narrative, as things are not as simple as they may seem. This holds true for concepts as well as sweeping characterisations of, for example, the so-​called former ‘red wall voters’ (see UK in a Changing Europe, 2022) as left-​behind communities, or the Leave and Remain camps. The concept of affective polarisation, which we have used to structure this book, needs to be expanded. In our book, we intend to follow the definition of affective polarisation as developed by Hobolt et al to include opinion-​based polarisation, not only political affiliation. While the original concept, developed in the context of American party politics (Iyengar et al, 2012, 2019), only took into account affiliation according to political parties and how this led to affective polarisation, we need to include race/​ethnicity and gender, as well as class divisions, in order to explain how increased social inequality in the UK in the wake of austerity, Brexit and COVID-​19 has had an impact on polarisation. As Hobolt et al state: [W]‌e directly compare the impact of these new opinion-​based Brexit identities to traditional partisan divisions. We find a similar degree of affective polarization for the new Brexit identities as for party identities in terms of identification, differentiation, and evaluative bias. Moreover, Brexit identities cut across traditional party lines meaning that affective polarization is neither restricted to partisanship, nor a mere proxy for partisan affect. We argue that these new identities 2

Introduction

reflect pre-​existing, but less-​politicized, social divisions, like age and education, which were mobilized in the context of the referendum and have consolidated into the newly salient identities: ‘Leave’ and ‘Remain’. (Hobolt et al, 2021: 2) Social scientists who work with the concept of affective polarisation, however, may have an unproblematic relationship with the ‘affective’ part of the compound noun. We would, in turn, like to expand this component of the term, as it relies on a too simplistic conceptualisation of emotion. Our own work on the cultural history of emotions discourse (Stedman, 2002; Gohrisch, 2005) has convinced us that emotions –​the term is often used interchangeably with affect in current emotions research –​are not anthropological givens immune to historical change, nor can they be read as biological phenomena without taking issues such as power imbalances, gender, race/​ethnicity and the impact of social convention into account. What one is allowed to feel, and how one expresses such feelings, is socially and historically conditioned, not least by literary and artistic representations. This is one further reason for including a cultural, linguistic and literary perspective in this book. With the help of paradigm scenarios (De Sousa, 1990; Stedman, 2002), we learn which feeling rules (Russel-​Hochschild, 1983; Lutz and Abu-​Lughod, 1990) apply in a given society and context, which explains why different people in different settings react differently to emotional or affective stimuli. These paradigm scenarios and feeling rules are learned at a young age, not least through literary, media or artistic discourse and language. In our own work, we have used Bourdieu’s concept of the habitus in connection with the feeling rules of a particular class and historical setting and have found this productive (see also Threadgold, 2020). In fact, we find this more productive than a different ubiquitous term, which is so widely used both by scholars and activists and in everyday usage that it may have lost its specific focus: identity. By expanding the psychological concept of individual, embodied identity to social collectives, and imagining these collectives as real and material, the boundaries of the concept have been extended so far that it has turned into a metaphor rather than a useful explanatory tool. If one reads it as a cultural and social construct which people ascribe to themselves according to their own subjectivity, this does not help much either, as the metaphorical nature of the extended concept may take cultural constructions into account but not social, embodied experience. Current usage is also in danger of falling into essentialist traps if it posits that splintered identities are based either on ethnicity or gender and nothing else. Similar to the individualistic focus of the term ‘affect’, the subjective focus of the term ‘identity’ occludes any social analysis and, therefore, political and social change. 3

Affective Polarisation

Affective polarisation is, however, a collective, social outcome of political developments, not based solely on individual experience. We find Bourdieu’s concept of the habitus more helpful here, as it allows for both an individual embodied experience and behaviour as well as a collective, social basis. Contrary to some criticism (for example, Born, 2010), the concept of the habitus allows for social change, although it does concentrate in particular on the transmission of acquired embodied norms and cognitions and as a predictor of social actions. When ethnicity enters the mix, it becomes more complicated, as ethnic affective polarisation seems to outdo other considerations such as class –​that is, class as conceived of in Bourdieu’s complex terms. The danger lies in the individualistic turn which concentrates on one ‘identity marker’ as key, to the detriment of what intersectionalism would demand –​namely, to include other factors such as class, age, gender, geography and so on, without discussing any one of these factors individually. And as Jana Gohrisch’s chapter explains (Chapter 6), the current antiracist discourse tends not to ask systemic questions but is confined to neoliberal notions of betterment, self-​improvement and participation, rather than fundamental political change as the prerequisite for ethnic and all other kinds of social equality (see Chapter 6 as well as Chapter 5 in this volume). As the chapters in our book demonstrate, affective polarisation also needs to take the four nations of Britain into account, which demonstrate a much greater heterogeneity than the label ‘British’ allows (see Chapters 4, 7, 9, 10 and 11 in this volume). A similar complication arises when one looks more closely at the term ‘populism’, as Chapters 2 and 3 show. And a further challenge lies in the somewhat presentist bias of much social sciences research. While it is understandable that the social sciences address the here and now, often arguing for a policy change which would affect present society directly, as cultural historians we find this approach insufficient to understand how people respond to a crisis. Historical precedent and prior developments or events may have had an impact which should not be overlooked, as Harvey Butterfield explains in his chapter (Chapter 7), which traces the current crisis in the north of England back to historical developments such as deindustrialisation and New Labour policies during the 20th century, and in turn to industrialisation of the north in the 19th century. How politicians as well as the general public respond to a crisis is also a matter of discourse, and discourse does not develop ad hoc –​it is steeped in history and no matter whether this is covert or overt, intended or unintended, an intertextual or even intermedial approach is needed to understand how this element of political response builds on prior models, and how certain feeling rules are acquired. Austerity politics are a case in point –​by cleverly drawing on a difficult period of British history and referring only to its positive connotations, the Conservative government 4

Introduction

was able to claim kudos, appeal to vague feelings of nostalgia and translate this into a stark programme of welfare cuts with little resemblance to post-​Second World War politics. Quite apart from the fact that austerity politics in the 21st century were a direct result of the self-​induced financial crash of 2008, not of war expenditure (compare Bramall, 2013; and also Woods, 2022). Matters, therefore, are more complicated than they seem at first, and this is true not just for conceptual or historical issues. A further complication is the fact that the UK consists of four official nations/​regions so far, three of which have devolved powers, while one –​England –​does not. The heterogeneity of these nations, and in fact of many other regions in Britain, and how they responded to austerity politics, the Brexit referendum and the COVID-​19 pandemic needs to be matched in a book with Britain as its focus. But that is easier said than done, as we found out when we first planned this volume. Ideally, the book should mirror the complexity and multifaceted nature of the issues at hand. This book brings together writers based in the UK and those outside it, writers with a historical focus and those who work mainly with the contemporary in mind, early-​career scholars and more established academics –​which at least in part matches the need for an interdisciplinary and broad approach to a complex issue. Geography, social inequality and ethnicity, as well as language, culture, representation and a historical lens are the guiding principles of the book, which tries to assess how Britain has responded to the three recent crises –​austerity, Brexit and COVID-​19. We begin our exploration of affective polarisation in the UK in the light of recent and ongoing crises with Paolo Chiocchetti’s empirical study of the British left as it presents itself in the British Election Study internet panel. It emerges that partisan divisions are one of the key reasons for the left’s relative weakness both in historical election records as well as in more recent ones. It is debatable whether polarisation is on the rise in the UK. Partisan and Brexit-​related hostility mutually reinforce one another and this predicts that divisions will continue as a key characteristic of the (British) left. We follow this with a chapter whose focus lies on the other side of the political spectrum, namely, on the Conservatives. Kirsten Forkert and Marius Guderjan analyse the rise of populist politics under the Johnson administration. And although Boris Johnson is no longer prime minister, his successor Liz Truss was set to continue with similar populist political measures and decisions which will further entrench inequalities in Britain, as her first so-​called ‘mini-​budget’ and tax policies in September 2022 show. How her successor Rishi Sunak and his chancellor Jeremy Hunt will operate is as yet unclear at the time of writing. However, right-​wing libertarian and authoritarian populism coincide in the Conservative government, and both forms have stoked up affective polarisation, as our authors argue. This is, in 5

Affective Polarisation

part, down to the impact of social media and the tendency of both forms of populism to strengthen each other. In Chapter 3, Rainer Schulze focuses on the micro level, analysing populist discourse and how its use of emotions furthers affective polarisation and is thus used for political purposes. In his close-​up of Theresa May’s and Boris Johnson’s use of keywords such as ‘the people’ and ‘the country’, Schulze shows how these lexical concepts and their affective connotations support populist aims. Insa Koch et al’s contribution in Chapter 4 continues the analysis below the national level. They argue that existing social divisions, including those of class, are further entrenched by the lack of intermediary actors and institutions that are needed to (re)politicise questions of inequality in Britain. In Chapter 5, Anisia Petcu explores a particular group of migrants to the UK: Romanian workers. These workers have been the focus of much populist and right-​wing and divisive rhetoric, while at the same time their work has been essential in upholding the British economy. Affective polarisation lies at the heart of this paradoxical political project, which rejects a group of people while at the same time subliminally demanding and allowing their exploitation. The blame for social inequality is shifted from those actually responsible and matters become more complicated as the discourse is heavily racialised, which lead to an increase in affective polarisation and a deepening of underlying social divisions. Continuing with the topic of racialisation in Chapter 6, Jana Gohrisch discusses affective polarisation from the point of view of postcolonial studies, Black activism, and the presence of Black authors in the British literary field. Based on a large corpus of film essays and documentary films, literary fiction and non-​fiction, she provides a historicising overview of the controversial debate in the UK and across the Atlantic. On the one hand, writers and filmmakers call for community building and solidarity to fight structural racism and neoliberal fragmentation. On the other hand, there are also films and texts that individualise antiracism and request White people to expose and renounce their racial privileges as a precondition for equal opportunities and individual participation. In Chapter 7, Harvey Butterfield takes a look at a set of communities which have often been called ‘left behind’ in order to explain the feelings of betrayal and disillusionment in northern English towns such as Scarborough, King’s Lynn and Stoke-​on-​Trent. Butterfield shows how entrenched affective polarisation has become in these deindustrialised areas over successive governments and decades. He thus adds a much-​needed historical perspective, also present in previous chapters but less pronounced, to show that recent developments and responses to crises in fact fall on the fertile ground of already frustrated communities with little political agency.

6

Introduction

Representations of the people from such ‘left-​behind’ communities in Ken Loach’s films are the subject of Chapter 8, written by Ellen Grünkemeier. She contextualises these films, which actually pre-​date the COVID-​19 pandemic, in the light of the fallout of continuous welfare cuts from the financial crisis, through COVID-​19 and the current cost-​of-​living crisis which is now increasing social inequality in Britain. Affective polarisation is used to explain how filmic representation shows the working and construction of in-​and out-​groups and how these constructions are perpetuated. Lisa Mckenzie (Chapter 9) also focuses on the working classes but her work rests on the analysis of ethnographic material derived from working-​ class people themselves, rather than being based on representations. She is thus able to reveal the lived experience of being working class during the current crises. But because class is cloaked in Britain, the working classes and the middle classes are considered to be threatened in similar terms, and the discussion is led by middle-​class writers and journalists, affective polarisation and social inequality are actually increased, rather than reduced, as the categories applied to these ‘cases’ were all developed by middle-​class thinkers and writers, and the measures taken to overcome inequality actually benefit the middle classes. In Chapter 10, Carlo Morelli and Gerry Mooney open up the debate in another direction: while class is certainly a relevant category in their chapter on Scotland, nationalism also comes into the mix and complicates the concept of affective polarisation. Rather than using it in the singular, they suggest speaking of polarisations in the plural. They take historical transformations in Scotland into account to explain how the support of the Labour Party in Scotland came about, as well as the relative electoral success of the Tories in focusing on their debate of Scottish independence. Chapter 11 tells a slightly different story in several respects. Written by the broadcaster and former national poet of Wales, Ifor ap Glyn, it explores the role of language and bilingualism in Wales with regard to affective polarisation. It is an essay rather than strictly speaking an academic piece, and by way of a historical tour of the Welsh language in relation to English, and of Welsh forms of identities, it advocates the role of language and culture to bridge forms of divisions. In the Conclusion, we draw the main strands of the book together, cast a glance at the most recent developments, which are happening faster than academics normally write books –​both in real political terms of events such as the Russian war in Ukraine and the subsequent energy crises in Europe, as well as UK-​specific developments concerning the successive Conservative governments and their almost daily policy reversals –​and try to tease out the underlying longue durée perspective which shows how the British response to crises has changed in the second half of the 20th century.

7

Affective Polarisation

References Ahmed, N., Marriott, A., Dabi, N., Lowthers, M., Lawson, M. and Mugehera, L. (2022) ‘Inequality kills: The unparalleled action needed to combat unprecedented inequality in the wake of COVID-​19’, Oxfam Briefing Paper, [online] January, Available from: https://​oxfami​libr​ary. ope​nrep​osit​ory.com/​bitstr​eam/​han​dle/​10546/​621​341/​bp-​ine​qual​ity-​kills-​ 170​122-​en.pdf [Accessed 6 October 2022]. Bear, L., James, D., Simpson, N., Alexander, E., Bhogal, J.K., Bowers, R.E., Cannell, F., Lohiya, A.G., Koch, I., Laws, M., Lenhard, J.F., Long, N.J., Pearson, A., Samanani, F., Vicol, O., Vieira, J., Watt, C., Wuerth, M., Whittle, C. and Zidaru-​Bărbulescu, T. (2020) ‘A right to care: The social foundations of recovery from Covid-​19’, LSE, [online] 22 October, Available from: https://​www.lse.ac.uk/​anthr​opol​ogy/​ass​ets/​docume​nts/​ resea​rch/​Covid-​and-​Care/​ARigh​ttoC​are-​Covid​andC​are-​Final-​2310.pdf [Accessed 23 October 2022]. Born, G. (2010) ‘The social and the aesthetic: For a post-​Bourdieuian theory of cultural production’, Cultural Sociology, 4(2): 171–​208. Bramall, R. (2013) The Cultural Politics of Austerity: Past and Present in Austere Times, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Crossley, T.F., Fisher, P., Levell, P. and Low, H. (2021) ‘A year of COVID: The evolution of labour market and financial inequalities through the crisis’, Institute for Fiscal Studies Working Paper 21/​39: 1–​37 [online] 10 November, Available from: https://​ifs.org.uk/​sites/​defa​ult/​files/​ outpu​t_​ur​l_​fi​les/​WP202​139-​A-​year-​of-​COVID-​the-​evolut​ion-​of-​lab​ our-​mar​ket-​and-​financ​ial-​inequ​alit​ies-​thro​ugh-t​ he-c​ ris​ is-3​ .pdf [Accessed 1 November 2022]. De Sousa, R. (1990) ‘Emotions, education, and time’, Metaphilosophy, 21(4): 434–​46. Edmiston, D., Baumberg Geiger, B., de Vries, R., Scullion, L., Summers, K., Ingold, J., Robertshaw, D., Gibbons, A. and Karagiannaki, E. (2020) ‘Who are the new COVID-​19 cohort of benefit claimants?’, Economic and Social Research Council, [online] 2 September, Available from: https://​ hub.salfo ​ rd.ac.uk/​welf​are-​at-​a-​soc​ial-​dista​nce/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​sites/​ 120/​2020/​09/​WaSD-​Rapid-​Rep​ort-​2-​New-​COVID-​19-​claima​nts.pdf [Accessed 23 October 2022]. Gidron, H., Adams, J. and Horne, W. (2019) ‘How ideology, economics and institutions shape affective polarization in democratic polities’, Centre for European Studies Harvard, [online], Available from: https://​ces.fas. harv​ a rd.edu/ ​ u plo ​ a ds/ ​ f iles/ ​ eve ​ n ts/ ​ G AH-​ A ffect​ ive-​ Polar​ i zat​ i on-​ i n​Dem​ocra​tic-​Polit​ies.pdf [Accessed 6 October 2022]. Gohrisch, J. (2005) Bürgerliche Gefühlsdispositionen in der englischen Prosa des 19. Jahrhunderts, Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter.

8

Introduction

Gore, E. (2020) ‘COVID-​19 and racial capitalism in the UK: Why race and class matter for understanding the coronavirus pandemic’, SPERI, [online] 1 May, Available from: http://​speri.dept.shef.ac.uk/​2020/​05/​01/​ covid-​19-​and-r​ aci​ al-c​ api​ tali​ sm-i​ n-t​ he-u ​ k-w ​ hy-​race-​and-​class-​mat​ter-​for-​ unders​tand​ing-​the-​coro​navi​rus-​pande​mic/​ [Accessed 23 October 2022]. Guterres, A. (2020) ‘We are all in this together: Human rights and COVID-​ 19 response and recovery’, United Nations, [online] 23 April, Available from: https://​www.un.org/​en/​un-​coro​navi​r us-​com​muni​cati​ons-​team/​ we-​are-​all-​toget​her-​human-​r ig​hts-​and-​covid-​19-​respo​nse-​and [Accessed 6 October 2022]. Guterres, A. (2021) ‘Only together can we end this pandemic and recover’, United Nations, [online] 11 March, Available from: https://​www.un.org/​en/​ coron ​ avir​ us/o ​ nly-​toget​her-​can-​we-​end-​pande​mic-​and-​reco​ver [Accessed 6 October 2022]. HM Government (2020) ‘PM: It’s humanity against the virus’, Gov.uk, [online] 4 May, Available from: https://​www.gov.uk/​gov​ernm​ent/​news/​ pm-​its-​human​ity-​agai​nst-​the-​virus [Accessed 6 October 2022]. Hobolt, S., Leeper, T.J. and Tilley, J. (2021) ‘Divided by the vote: Affective polarization in the wake of the Brexit referendum’, British Journal of Political Science, 51(4): 1476–​93. Iyengar, S., Sood, G. and Lelkes, Y. (2012) ‘Affect, not ideology: A social identity perspective on polarization’, The Public Opinion Quarterly, 76(3): 405–​31. Iyengar, S., Lelkes, Y., Levendusky, M., Malhotra, N. and Westwood, S.J. (2019) ‘The origins and consequences of affective polarization in the United States’, Annual Review of Political Science, 22(1): 129–​46. Kapadia, D., Zhang, J., Salway, S., Nazroo, J., Booth, A., Villarroel-​Williams, N., Bécares, L. and Esmail, A. (2022) ‘Ethnic inequalities in healthcare: A rapid evidence review’, NHS Race and Health Observatory, [online] February, Available from: https://​www.nhs​rho.org/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​2022/​02/​ RHO-​Rapid-​Rev​iew-​Final-​Repor​t_​v.7.pdf [Accessed 6 October 2022]. Lutz, C. and Abu-​Lughod, L. (eds) (1990) Language and the Politics of Emotion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Munford, L., Khavandi, S., Bambra, C., Barr, B., Davies, H., Doran, T., Kontopantelis, E., Norman, P., Pickett, K., Sutton, M., Taylor-​Robinson, D. and Wickham, S. (2021) ‘A year of COVID-​19 in the north: Regional inequalities in health and economic outcomes’, Northern Health Science Alliance, [online], Available from: https://​www.then​hsa.co.uk/​app/​ uplo​ads/​2021/​09/​A-​Year-​of-​COVID-​in-​the-​North-​rep​ort-​2021.pdf [Accessed 17 February 2022]. Russel-​Hochschild, A. (1983) The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling, Berkeley: University of California Press.

9

Affective Polarisation

Stedman, G. (2002) Stemming the Torrent: Expression and Control in the Victorian Discourses of Emotion, 1830–​1872, London: Routledge. Sturgeon, N. (2020) ‘Coronavirus (COVID-​19) update: First Minister’s speech 18 September 2020’, Gov.scot, [online] 18 September, Available from: https://​www.gov.scot/​publi​cati​ons/​coro​navi​rus-​covid-​19-​upd​ate-​ first-​minist​ers-​spe​ech-​18-​septem​ber-​2020/​ [Accessed 6 October 2022]. Threadgold, S. (2020) Bourdieu and Affect: Towards a Theory of Affective Affinities, Bristol: Bristol University Press. Treloar, N. (2020) ‘Ethnic inequalities in Covid-​19 are playing out again –​ how can we stop them?’, Runnymede Trust, [online] 19 October, Available from: https://​www.run​nyme​detr​ust.org/​blog/​eth​nic-​inequ​alit​ies-​in-​ covid-​19-​are-​play​ing-​out-​again-​how-​can-​we-​stop-​them [Accessed 17 February 2022]. UK in a Changing Europe (2022) Understanding the Red Wall: Politics and Identity in the New Electoral Battlegrounds, [online], Available from: https://​ ukan​deu.ac.uk/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​2022/​02/​Unders​tand​ing-​the-​Red-​ Wall-​1.pdf [Accessed 19 October 2022]. Woods, H.R. (2022) Rule, Nostalgia: A Backwards History of Britain, London: Ebury Publishing.

10

1

The Divided Left in the UK: Partisanship, Ideology and Class after Brexit Paolo Chiocchetti

Introduction In recent years, the British social and political landscape has been shaken by a series of major upheavals: the 2007–​9 Great Recession and the resultant prolonged austerity and social polarisation, the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, the 2016 Brexit referendum and the COVID-​19 pandemic. These events have had a great impact on the political system, leading to the long-​term dominance of the Conservative Party (Bale, 2017, 2023; Cutts et al, 2020), increased political volatility and participation (Sloam and Henn, 2019; Fieldhouse et al, 2021), the takeover of the Scottish National Party (SNP) in Scotland (Johns and Mitchell, 2016), the realignment of voters and parties along Brexit-​related identities (Clarke et al, 2017; Sobolewska and Ford, 2020), a temporary surge of Eurosceptic forces (Ford and Goodwin, 2014; Tournier-​Sol, 2021), the rise and fall of Corbynism (Seymour, 2017; Batrouni, 2020; Pogrund and Maguire, 2020; Burton-​Cartledge, 2021; Eagleton, 2022), and the withdrawal from the European Union (Fabbrini, 2017, 2020, 2021). Despite some important local successes, particularly in Scotland and Northern Ireland, the UK left has generally failed to benefit from these developments, ending up marginalised in Westminster, politically divided and weaker than ever among working-​class communities. This chapter surveys the current state of the left in the UK through a quantitative analysis of the results of the 2019 general election (Uberoi et al, 2020), the survey data of the British Election Study (BES; Fieldhouse et al, 2020) and other sources. Relying on descriptive statistical methods, it pinpoints its key electoral weaknesses, internal divisions and strategic 11

Affective Polarisation

problems. The first section delimits the boundaries of the UK left and quantifies its present weight within the British electorate according to six indicators. The second section explores its partisan, sociological, ideological and national divisions. The third section analyses the role played by the left in broader trends of ideological and affective polarisation among British voters from 2014 to 2019. The concluding section summarises the main findings and briefly discusses possible avenues for renewal.

What is ‘the left’ in the UK? The left–​right criterion is undisputedly the most popular way to classify the political ideas of thinkers, parties and citizens along a one-​dimensional continuum. Originating in the seating arrangement of deputies during the French revolution, this distinction has dominated academic and popular discourse ever since (Fuchs and Klingemann, 1990; Bobbio, 1996; Bakker and Hobolt, 2013). Nevertheless, its precise definition, substantive content and measurement remain controversial. First, the meaning of the term varies over time and space, incorporating disparate political, socioeconomic and cultural contents. Second, its measurement at any given time tends to be relative to the current understanding of the scale and to the present position of the average voter, hampering absolute historical comparisons against a fixed benchmark. Third, a variety of empirical sources, indicators and classification choices are available, each providing a different picture of the distribution along the left–​r ight continuum. For the purpose of this chapter, ‘the left’ is defined as an abstract spatial position on the left–​r ight scale, with a ‘left-​leaning’ category encompassing positions on the left half of the scale and a ‘far left’ category encompassing positions on its leftmost quarter. The definition may seem shallow and devoid of substantive content (for example, attitudes towards capitalism, state intervention, redistribution and the working class), but it actually provides an excellent objective basis to map the relative distribution and movement of parties and voters and carry out more specific empirical or normative distinctions. It must nevertheless be emphasised that, whenever parties and voters are situated on or close to the cut-​off points, small empirical or definitional variations can cause substantial shifts in the overall picture. Electoral and survey data on the 2019 UK general election allow us to quantify the present strength of the left within the British electorate across a variety of indicators, six of which have been selected here: party ideology, (average) party voters’ ideology, voters’ self-​positioning, voters’ socioeconomic values, voters’ cultural values and voters’ redistribution attitudes (Figure 1.1 and Table 1.1). All indicators range from 0 (left) to 10 (right). The analysis is conducted on the data of the BES internet panel (wave 1–​19), a huge and ongoing dataset encompassing 96,529 individuals across 12

The divided left in the UK

Figure 1.1: Overall strength of the UK left, 2019 (percentage) 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

Party ideology Party voters’ Voters’ self- Voters’ socio Voters’ cultural Voters’ ideology positioning economic values values redistributive attitudes Far left

Moderate left

19 waves from March 2014 to December 2019 (Fieldhouse et al, 2020). In most cases, I have focused on the respondents of the wave 19 of the survey, held right after the 2019 election and including 32,177 individuals. Raw values have been weighted with the standard wave weight (wt_​new_​W19_​ result), which improves their fit with key sociodemographic variables but is unsatisfactory from an electoral point of view, as it strongly underrepresents abstentions (20.2 per cent against a real value of 32.7 per cent), excludes Northern Ireland (around 2.7 per cent of real registered voters) and does not accurately reflect the relative strength of each party. Results have therefore been weighted a second time according to the actual results of the 2019 general election including abstentions and Northern Ireland; invalid answers have been ignored. These manipulations cannot entirely avoid manifest or hidden distortions of the sample, particularly in relation to the characteristics of abstentionists, small parties and respondents in the past, but they lead to results highly consistent with what we know from administrative and other sources about the British electorate in 2019. The first indicator, party ideology, measures the distribution of electoral support for parties according to their generic left–​r ight position as estimated by the variable lrgen of the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES; Bakker et al, 2020). After excluding abstentions and other parties, for which no classification is possible, the overall distribution is slightly tilted to the left (average position: 4.7) and follows a bimodal distribution concentrated on 13

newgenrtpdf

Table 1.1: Overall strength of the UK left, 2019 (percentage) Far left

Mod. left

Centre

Mod. right

Far right

Other

Sources

1 Party ideology

34.8

15.9

0.0

43.6

2.0

3.7

GE, CHES lrgen

2 Party voters’ ideology

0.0

50.7

0.0

45.6

0.0

3.7

GE, BES leftRightW19

3 Voters’ self-​positioning

13.7

22.1

24.2

26.3

13.8

0.0

BES leftRightW19

4 Voters’ socioeconomic values

32.6

46.9

7.0

11.7

1.7

0.0

BES lr_​scaleW17

5 Voters’ cultural values

5.0

15.3

6.7

42.4

30.7

0.0

BES al_​scaleW17

6 Voters’ redistributive attitudes

30.1

19.7

16.2

17.0

16.9

0.0

BES redistSelfW19

Indicators

Left-​leaning

Centre

Right-​leaning

Other

Sources

1 Party ideology

50.7

0.0

45.6

3.7

GE, CHES lrgen

2 Party voters’ ideology

50.7

0.0

45.6

3.7

GE, BES leftRightW19

3 Voters’ self-​positioning

35.8

24.2

40.0

0.0

BES leftRightW19

4 Voters’ socioeconomic values

79.6

7.0

13.4

0.0

BES lr_​scaleW17

5 Voters’ cultural values

20.3

6.7

73.1

0.0

BES al_​scaleW17

6 Voters’ redistributive attitudes

49.8

16.2

33.9

0.0

BES redistSelfW19

Notes: the figures exclude invalid responses (‘don’t know’) and, in the case of indicators 1 and 2, abstentions Source: General Election (GE): Uberoi et al (2020); Chapel Hill Election Survey (CHES): Bakker et al (2020); British Election Study (BES): Fieldhouse et al (2020). Own elaboration.

Affective Polarisation

14

Indicators

The divided left in the UK

the far left (Labour Party: 1.9) and on the moderate right (Conservative Party: 7.1). According to this measure, left-​leaning parties (Labour Party, Liberal Democrats, SNP, Green Party of England and Wales, and Plaid Cymru) encompass 50.7 per cent and far-​left parties (Labour and Green) 34.8 per cent of valid votes. The Lib Dems are ideologically very close to the centre (4.2): were they to be excluded, left-​leaning parties would drop to 39.1 per cent of valid votes. The second indicator, party voters’ ideology, follows the same logic but classifies parties according to the average left–​r ight self-​positioning of their voters as estimated by the variable leftRightW19 of the BES. The overall distribution of support is similar but perfectly centred (average position: 5.0) and less polarised, with positions concentrated on the moderate left (Labour Party: 3.2) and moderate right (Conservative Party: 6.6). According to this measure, left-​leaning parties (same as above) encompass 50.7 per cent and far-​left parties (none) 0.0 per cent of valid votes. Lib Dem voters are again very close to the centre (4.5): were they to be excluded, left-​leaning parties would drop to 39.1 per cent of valid votes. The average position of abstentionists (5.0) and voters of other parties (5.1) can also be measured and is very close to the centre. The third indicator, voters’ self-​positioning, measures the distribution of voters according to their own left–​r ight self-​positioning as estimated by the variable leftRightW19 of the BES. The overall distribution is perfectly centred (average position: 5.0) and unimodal, with positions concentrated at or near the centre of the scale. According to this measure, left-​leaning voters encompass 35.8 per cent and far-​left voters 13.7 per cent of the sample. The fourth indicator, voters’ socioeconomic values, measures the distribution of voters according to their left–​r ight socioeconomic preferences as estimated by the variable lr_​scaleW17 of the BES. Five statements are presented (‘Government should redistribute income from the better off to those who are less well off’; ‘Big business takes advantage of ordinary people’; ‘Ordinary working people do not get their fair share of the nation’s wealth’; ‘There is one law for the rich and one for the poor’; ‘Management will always try to get the better of employees if it gets the chance’), responses elicited on a five-​point Likert scale (strongly disagree to strongly agree), and results added and normalised on a scale ranging from 0 (socialist) to 10 (liberal). Contrary to the previous two indicators, the overall distribution is strongly tilted to the left (average position: 3.1) and unimodal, with positions concentrated between 0 and 5 with a peak at 2.5. According to this measure, left-​leaning voters encompass 79.6 per cent and far-​left voters 32.6 per cent of the sample. The fifth indicator, voters’ cultural values, measures the distribution of voters according to their left–​r ight cultural preferences (libertarian versus authoritarian) as estimated by the variable al_​scaleW17 of the BES. As in 15

Affective Polarisation

the previous indicator, five statements are presented (‘Young people today don’t have enough respect for traditional British values’; ‘For some crimes, the death penalty is the most appropriate sentence’; ‘Schools should teach children to obey authority’; ‘Censorship of films and magazines is necessary to uphold moral standards’; ‘People who break the law should be given stiffer sentences’) and then combined on a scale ranging from 0 (libertarian) to 10 (authoritarian). The overall distribution is strongly tilted to the right (average position: 6.4) and unimodal, with a peak at 7.5. According to this measure, left-​leaning voters encompass only 20.3 per cent and far-​left voters 5.0 per cent of the sample. The two economic and cultural scales have good theoretical and empirical foundations (Evans et al, 1996) and are similar, but not identical, to those used by other transnational surveys, such as the Comparative Manifesto Project, the CHES or the Comparative National Elections Project (Klingemann et al, 2006; Bakker et al, 2015; Gunther et al, 2015). The sixth indicator, voters’ redistributive attitudes, measures the distribution of UK citizens according to their attitudes towards redistribution as estimated by the variable redistSelfW19 of the BES. The scale ranges from 0 (‘Government should make much greater efforts to make people’s incomes more equal’) to 10 (‘Government should be much less concerned about how equal people’s incomes are’). The overall distribution is slightly tilted to the left (average position: 4.4) and multimodal, with peaks at various points of the scale (0, 3, 5, 7, 10). According to this measure, left-​leaning voters encompass 49.8 per cent and far-​left voters 30.1 per cent of the sample. Altogether, the six measures paint a relatively coherent picture. Left-​wing preferences on socioeconomic issues are offset by right-​wing preferences on cultural ones, leading to a fairly even balance in terms of self-​positioning and voting behaviour. However, the mismatch between redistributive attitudes and party choices raises an interesting question. Why does the preference of a clear plurality of potential voters for more redistribution (49.8 per cent of the sample) fail to translate to a stronger vote for the parties consistently campaigning for it, that is Labour, Greens, Plaid Cymru and SNP (39.1 per cent of valid votes, 28.2 per cent of registered voters)? Five alternative hypotheses can be formulated to explain this phenomenon. First, the impact of redistributive attitudes may be counterbalanced by other kinds of considerations: for instance, ‘cultural’ values (for example, traditionalism, authoritarianism, national identity), opinions on key policy issues (for example, economic growth, foreign policy, Brexit), perceptions of party competence, traditional partisan attachments and tactical voting in the context of the existing party offer and first-​past-​the-​post electoral system. Second, voters may favour more redistribution but believe that it is already sufficiently embodied in the status quo of the British welfare state and judge Conservative policies as altogether fair and Labour ones as too extreme. This 16

The divided left in the UK

does not seem to be the case, as the ‘policy mood’ and attitudes towards redistribution, public spending and welfare have been steadily moving leftward since 2011 (Bartle, 2018). Third, the public may abstractly favour a more equal society but deem it unfeasible in practice, subscribing to the expectations of ‘capitalist realism’ and of neoliberal There Is No Alternative (TINA) ideology (Fisher, 2009; Séville, 2017). Fourth, the relative electoral weakness of the left may be caused by differential levels of abstention, which is substantially higher among working-​class and deprived strata. Finally, actual redistributive attitudes may be imperfectly captured by the BES indicator due to slanted questions, response biases, sample errors and other technical problems. A cursory analysis of the evidence suggests that all mechanisms are likely to play a role, but a clear identification of their relative weight is extremely difficult and lies beyond the scope of the present chapter.

A divided left The indicators presented in the previous section can be further mobilised to shed light on the partisan, sociological, ideological and national divisions traversing the left in the UK. An overview of the results for the 2019 voters of left-​leaning parties –​Labour, Liberal Democrats, SNP, Green Party of England and Wales, and Plaid Cymru –​accounting for 50.7 per cent of valid votes, is presented in Figure 1.2. Partisan divisions are one of the main immediate causes of the institutional weakness of the left in terms of parliamentary strength and government formation. While the Conservative Party completely dominates among right-​leaning voters, rarely facing a serious threat from right-​w ing

Figure 1.2: Divisions among voters of left-​leaning parties, 2019 (percentage) 100% 90% 80% 70%

Other, 14.9% Lib Dem, 22.5%

Leave, 18.3% Centre and right, 31.6% Not English, 43.7% Abstain, 12.6% Middle class, 64.7%

60% 50%

Moderate left, 40.8%

40% 30% 20% 10%

Remain, 69.1%

Labour, 62.6%

English, 56.3% Lower class, 35.3% Far left, 27.6%

0%

17

Affective Polarisation

challengers (UK Independence Party [UKIP] in 2015) and remaining free to compete for the allegiance of centrist voters, left-​leaning voters are instead increasingly divided between several distinct organisations. This trend can be accurately depicted by studying the historical evolution of general election results from 1966 to 2019 among voters of left-​leaning parties (Table 1.2). The Labour Party won 83.5 per cent of the total in 1966 but only 62.6 per cent in 2019, with very low troughs in 1983 (50.2 per cent) and 2010 (51.8 per cent). Competition came from many sides. The centrist Liberal Democrats had excellent results from 1974 to 2010 (on average 34.0 per cent) and often attracted substantial sections of traditional Labour voters, particularly in 1983 (after the alliance with the Social Democratic Party, a group of prominent Europhile Labour defectors) and in 2005–​10 (when they challenged Labour from the left on several issues, such as the Iraq war and university tuition fees). The weight of left-​nationalist parties in Scotland (SNP), Wales (Plaid Cymru) and Northern Ireland (Sinn Féin) rose from 1.2 per cent in 1966 to 12.2 per cent in 2015 and put an end to the traditional dominance of Labour among Scottish voters. The Green Party of England and Wales was marginal for most of the period but rose to more substantial levels in the late 2010s, with a peak of 7.8 per cent in 2015. Finally, radical left organisations remained quantitatively insignificant, but short-​lived localised breakthroughs (the Scottish Socialist Party in Scotland in the period 1999–​2004; RESPECT in urban constituencies with a heavy Muslim population in the 2000s) showed that not all was quiet even on this front. As a consequence, since 1974 the Labour Party has rarely been able to hegemonise the left-​leaning side of the political spectrum, partly due to the impact of structural trends such as socioeconomic diversification, the decline of trade unions and working-​class culture, and the individualisation of identities and preferences (Heath et al, 2009; Evans and Tilley, 2017; Stedman and Gohrisch, 2023). Sociological divisions are pronounced among the voters of left-​leaning parties. The fundamental division in modern capitalist societies, that between capitalists and wage workers (Lipset and Rokkan, 1967; Marx, 1977), is relatively inoperative at the electoral level, as the upper classes make up less than 2 per cent of the electorate and the self-​employed can be estimated at around 15.3 per cent of the labour force. Therefore, class differences in the voter profiles of each party are largely found within the universe of active workers and between active workers and inactive social groups. A simple and popular operationalisation of socio-​professional status in the UK is the National Readership Survey (NSR) social grade scheme, which is somewhat archaic and theoretically problematic but readily available in the BES as a self-​ reported item. The use of more relevant and sophisticated measures proposed in the sociological literature (Duke and Edgell, 1987; Wright, 1997; Savage, 2015) is either impossible within the survey or requires extremely complex 18

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Table 1.2: Party shares among voters of left-​leaning parties, 1966–​2019 (percentage) 1966

1970

1974-​Feb

1974-​Oct

1979

1983

1987

1992

83.5

81.7

62.6

64.2

69.8

50.2

55.6

62.1

Liberal Democrats

14.8

14.6

32.6

29.9

26.1

46.2

40.7

32.2

Scottish National Party

0.8

2.1

3.4

4.7

3.1

2.0

2.3

3.4

Plaid Cymru

0.4

1.2

0.9

0.9

0.8

0.7

0.7

0.8

Green Party

0.0

0.0

0.0

0.0

0.0

0.0

0.0

0.9

Radical left groups

0.4

0.5

0.5

0.2

0.3

0.3

0.2

0.2

Sinn Féin 19

Total

0.0

0.0

0.0

0.0

0.0

0.6

0.5

0.4

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

1997

2001

2005

2010

2015

2017

2019

AVG.

Labour Party

68.2

64.1

57.0

51.8

63.2

75.0

62.6

64.8

Liberal Democrats

26.5

28.8

35.7

41.1

16.3

13.8

22.5

28.1

Scottish National Party

3.1

2.8

2.5

3.0

9.8

5.7

7.6

3.7

Plaid Cymru

0.8

1.2

1.0

1.0

1.2

1.0

0.9

0.9

Green Party

0.3

1.0

1.7

1.7

7.8

3.1

5.3

1.5

Radical left groups

0.4

1.2

1.0

0.4

0.4

0.0

0.0

0.4

Sinn Féin

0.6

1.1

1.0

1.0

1.2

1.4

1.1

0.6

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

100.0

Total

Source: own elaboration from Döring and Manow (2021)

The divided left in the UK

Labour Party

Affective Polarisation

calculations, imputations and weightings. The social grade scheme divides the population in six categories based on the type and status of the occupation of the head of the household: upper middle class (A), intermediate middle class (B), lower middle class (C1), skilled working class (C2), unskilled working class (D) and not working (E). Results for parties in the 2019 general elections are presented in Table 1.3 and suggest two basic findings. First, all parties draw their support from the whole spectrum of social grades, with relatively small deviations from the composition of the electorate. This means that electorally, far from compactly representing specific social groups such as the working class, left-​leaning parties are social coalitions traversed by major class divisions. Second, left-​leaning parties tend to have a higher social profile than right-​leaning ones. The share of the traditionally defined middle class of non-​manual occupations (ABC1) is 55.2 per cent for the total electorate but 64.7 per cent for left-​leaning parties, 63.2 per cent for Labour and 72.3 per cent for the Lib Dems, but only 58.7 per cent for the Conservatives, 54.0 per cent for the SNP, 43.8 per cent for the Brexit Party and 42.4 per cent for abstentions. The share of a more narrowly defined upper-​middle class including higher and intermediate intellectual professions (AB) provides similar results, with a figure of 26.0 per cent for the total sample, 29.2 per cent for the Conservatives, 29.9 per cent for Labour and 39.3 per cent for the Lib Dems. These figures suggest a remarkable reversal of the traditional link between class and voting behaviour consistent with observed transnational trends (Crouch, 2004; Kriesi et al, 2006; Ford and Jennings, 2020; Piketty, 2020; Gethin et al, 2022), which see educationally and socially advantaged strata increasingly supporting left-​leaning parties while the ‘losers of globalisation’ drift towards abstention or right-​wing populist forces. Ideological disagreements split the voters of left-​leaning parties into a variety of opinion groups as well as into radical and moderate factions. Table 1.4 shows the positions of voters of left-​leaning parties and of the Labour Party on five key issues. As the two sets of responses are quite similar, a discussion of the former is sufficient. In terms of self-​positioning, moderate left voters (40.8 per cent) form a plurality over far-​left (27.6 per cent) and non-​left (31.6 per cent) minorities. In terms of socioeconomic values, far-​left (44.9 per cent) and moderate left (44.6 per cent) opinions are evenly split. In terms of cultural values, authoritarian voters (51.6 per cent) prevail over libertarian ones (41.0 per cent). In terms of redistributive attitudes, far-​left opinions (40.0 per cent) are larger than moderate left (29.4 per cent) and non-​left (30.6 per cent) ones. Left-​leaning voters are relatively compact only on the issue of Brexit, with 69.1 per cent having voted Remain and only 18.3 per cent Leave. This outcome, however, is the product of a recent realignment and one of the main causes of the left’s election defeat in 2019, when the higher partisan cohesion of Leavers (54.6 per cent voted Conservative) compared to Remainers (only 41.3 per cent 20

newgenrtpdf

Table 1.3: Social grade of voters, 2019 (percentage) B

C1

C2

D

E

Middle class (ABC1)

Lower class (C2DE)

Total electorate

10.5

15.5

29.2

21.6

11.0

12.2

55.2

44.8

Left-​leaning parties

12.4

19.2

33.1

16.9

Labour Party

11.1

18.8

33.2

17.2

8.5

9.8

64.7

35.3

9.1

10.6

63.2

36.8

Liberal Democrats

16.8

22.5

33.0

14.8

6.4

6.6

72.3

27.7

9.6

13.4

31.0

21.1

11.4

13.5

54.0

46.0

Plaid Cymru

10.3

Green Party

13.3

17.5

37.3

13.5

5.6

15.9

65.1

34.9

18.2

34.7

17.9

7.3

8.7

66.1

33.9

Right-​leaning parties

12.5

16.2

29.3

22.7

8.7

10.6

58.0

42.0

Conservative Party

12.7

16.4

29.5

22.5

8.5

10.3

58.7

41.3

Brexit Party

7.7

10.9

25.2

27.6

11.3

17.3

43.8

56.3

Other parties

13.5

13.5

31.7

21.6

8.5

11.3

58.6

41.4

6.4

11.0

24.9

25.3

15.9

16.4

42.4

57.6

Scottish National Party

Abstention

Source: own elaboration from Fieldhouse et al (2020)

The divided left in the UK

21

A

newgenrtpdf

Table 1.4: Ideological divisions among voters of left-​leaning parties, 2019 (percentage) Far left

Mod. left

Centre

Left-​leaning parties

27.6

40.8

19.7

9.6

2.3

Labour Party

34.9

42.2

15.7

5.4

1.9

Socioeconomic values

Far left

Mod. left

Centre

Left-​leaning parties

44.9

44.6

4.3

5.4

0.8

Labour Party

50.8

42.7

3.2

2.9

0.3

Cultural values

Far left

Mod. left

Left-​leaning parties

11.8

29.2

Labour Party

12.9

29.5

Redistributive attitudes

Far left

Mod. left

Left-​leaning parties

40.0

Labour Party Brexit referendum

Mod. right

Far right

Far right

Mod. right

Far right

7.4

35.3

16.3

7.2

34.3

16.1

Centre

Mod. right

Far right

29.4

13.2

11.2

6.1

46.9

29.4

11.5

8.1

4.1

Remain

Abstained

Leave

Left-​leaning parties, 2019

69.1

12.6

18.3

Labour Party, 2019

67.1

13.5

19.4

Left-​leaning parties, 2017

64.8

7.5

27.7

Labour Party, 2017

63.2

7.9

29.0

Source: own elaboration from Fieldhouse et al (2020)

Centre

Mod. right

Affective Polarisation

22

Self-​positioning

The divided left in the UK

Table 1.5: National identities of voters, 2019 (percentage) European

British

English

37.3

75.7

67.2

6.5

Left-​leaning parties 60.3

72.9

56.3

10.4

Labour Party

75.4

59.4

3.7

Total sample

58.9

Scottish

Source: own elaboration from Fieldhouse et al (2020)

voted Labour) was crucial in securing the victory of Boris Johnson. The weight of Leavers among Labour voters was as high as 43.5 per cent in 2005, gradually declining to 38.8 per cent in 2010, 30.9 per cent in 2015, 29.0 per cent in 2017 and 19.4 per cent in 2019; a similar trend can be detected among left-​nationalist, Lib Dem and Green voters. Finally, national issues also lead to divided loyalties and internal conflicts. Table 1.5 presents the weight of four distinct national identities within the BES sample. While the voters of left-​leaning parties overwhelmingly declare an attachment to Britishness (72.9 per cent), only 56.3 per cent do the same for Englishness, with 15.7 per cent neutral and 28.0 per cent hostile responses. In turn, the same voters identify as European (60.3 per cent), much more frequently than the general public (37.3 per cent). Scottishness is overrepresented among left-​leaning voters but not among Labour ones: within Scotland, it is held by 90.6 per cent of SNP voters, 77.0 per cent of total voters, but only 73.8 per cent of Labour ones. Welshness has been omitted from the table due to its small size (2.7 per cent) and unclear reliability (almost half of Plaid Cymru voters were not asked the question). It seems somewhat weak among Welsh voters (62.3 per cent) and stronger among conservative (70.9 per cent) than among Plaid Cymru (68.0 per cent) and left-​leaning voters (64.9 per cent). Finally, the distinctive national identities of Northern Irish voters (Coakley, 2007; Hayward and McManus, 2019) are not surveyed in the sample but play an important political role in this contested border area, leading to a completely separate party system. Radical left parties are here unusually strong at the electoral level but have virtually no influence in Westminster: Sinn Féin won 1.1 per cent of valid votes and seven seats in the 2019 election, but refused to take them up, due to its long-​standing abstentionism policy.

Ideological and affective polarisation in the UK A strand of the political science literature has recently raised the spectre of an increased polarisation of Western democracies, exemplified by major divisive events such as the 2016 victories of Donald Trump in the US presidential election and of the Leave vote in the Brexit referendum (Norris 23

Affective Polarisation

and Inglehart, 2019; Hobolt et al, 2021). This trend affects both ideological polarisation, the distance between citizens in terms of political, cultural and social opinions and identities, and affective polarisation, their emotional distance in terms of reciprocal trust, attitudes and behaviour (Fiorina and Abrams, 2008; Iyengar et al, 2019). Ideological and affective polarisation are perceived as threats which weaken social bonds and undermine liberal democratic institutions (McCoy et al, 2018). Social polarisation (the unequal distribution of goods such as income, wealth, status, power) and social closure (the formation of separate and impermeable social groups such as classes, castes, ethnicities, nations) are rarely mentioned in this context, but continue to represent a major interest of the broader sociological literature (Murphy, 1988; Woodward, 1995; Esteban and Schneider, 2008). Bramson et al (2017) convincingly show that the term ‘polarisation’ expresses a multiplicity of very different meanings, of which at least nine can be clearly defined and operationalised: spread, dispersion, coverage, regionalisation, community fracturing, distinctness, group divergence, group consensus and size parity. Their calculation presents additional methodological problems related to the coverage of two or multiple groups, the use of weighted or unweighted measures, the treatment of ordinal and nominal variables, and the measurement of indicators of affective polarisation. For our purposes, rather than trying to devise a single homogeneous measure of polarisation, it seems more appropriate to use in each context the most useful among a range of different indicators. The resulting loss of coherence is justified by a superior empirical and political relevance. Looking at the left–​r ight orientation of parties, the evidence indeed shows a clear increase in ideological polarisation. Table 1.6 provides the average position of UK parties according to the assessment of voters (BES) and of experts (CHES survey). Both sets of figures indicate a strong leftward movement of the Labour Party under Corbyn, a smaller leftward movement of the Lib Dems and rightward movement of the Conservative Party, and a broadly stable position of most other parties. As a result, the unweighted standard deviation of party positions, which suggests polarisation, markedly increases in the BES data (from 2.1 in 2015 to 2.5 in 2019) and remains stable in the CHES data (from 2.3 in 2014 to 2.3 in 2019). However, the calculation of a weighted standard deviation, taking into account the electoral strength of each party, would show a substantial rise of both measures. Looking at the left–​r ight orientation of voters themselves, however, no rise in ideological polarisation can be detected. Figure 1.3 depicts the full distribution of UK voters from 2014 to 2019, according to the BES, in terms of both self-​positioning and redistributive attitudes. The former shows a strong concentration of voters towards the centre of the scale while the latter is more widely distributed. Both measures indicate a slightly declining polarisation over time, with the weighted standard deviation falling from 24

The divided left in the UK

Table 1.6: Left–​r ight orientation of parties, 2014–​19 (percentage) 2015 BES

2017 BES

2019 BES

2014 CHES

2019 CHES

Labour

3.3

2.2

1.7

3.6

1.9

Green

2.7

2.8

2.9

1.9

2.0

Plaid Cymru

3.1

3.3

3.2

3.3

3.1

Scottish National Party 3.3

3.5

3.3

3.0

3.5

Liberal Democrat

4.9

4.2

4.2

4.9

4.2

Conservative

7.8

8.0

8.2

7.0

7.1

UKIP/​Brexit

8.0

8.3

8.5

9.1

8.2

Average

4.7

4.6

4.6

4.7

4.3

Standard deviation

2.1

2.3

2.5

2.3

2.3

Sources: own elaboration from Fieldhouse et al (2020) and Bakker et al (2020)

Figure 1.3: Left–​r ight orientation of voters, 2014–​19 (percentage) Self-positioning 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%

0 Left

1

2

3

4

5 Centre

2015

2017

6

7

8

9

10 Right

7

8

9

10 Right

2019

Redistributive attitudes

25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%

0 Left

1

2

3

4 2014

5 Centre 2017

Source: own elaboration from Fieldhouse et al (2020)

25

6 2019

Affective Polarisation

2.5 in 2015 to 2.3 in 2019 for self-​positioning and from 3.1 in 2014 to 3.0 in 2019 for redistributive attitudes. The latter point is at odds with the findings of Cohen and Cohen (2021) who, using different sources, detect instead a consistent trend towards repolarisation on redistributive issues over the period 2007–​16. The discrepancy is probably due to their focus on the voters of the two main parties (Conservative and Labour) rather than on the total electorate. Finally, an analysis of the affective polarisation of voters yields inconclusive results which vary according to the specific measurement choices taken. The BES provides items measuring the social distance between voters in the 2015 and 2019 general elections, that is their attitudes towards voters of the two main parties (Conservative and Labour) and the two main Brexit referendum options (Leave and Remain). Respondents are asked to rate their feelings to the question ‘How would you feel if you had a son or daughter who married someone who votes for …’ on a scale from 0 (very unhappy) to 4 (very happy), with 2 indicating a neutral stance. On this basis, it is common practice (Iyengar et al, 2019) to calculate average values for in-​group positivity (positive feelings for one’s group), out-​group negativity (negative feelings for other groups) and affective polarisation (the difference between the two): these values also range from 0 to 4. Most scholars count only the reciprocal attitudes between two groups but, in our case, this would exclude a substantial portion of the sample; therefore, I include in the out-​ group all respondents not belonging to the in-​group, such as voters of other parties and non-voters. In addition, this measure does not account for the different size of the various groups: therefore, I provide a second measure of affective polarisation indicating the average share of people expressing negative feelings for either group within the whole sample (‘total negativity’), which can vary from 0 (no negativity) to 100 (total negativity) per cent. The results are presented in Table 1.7 and, as anticipated, are inconclusive. Partisan polarisation towards the Conservative and Labour parties clearly rose according to the first method (due to a strong increase in in-​group positivity) but slightly declined according to the second. Brexit-​related polarisation towards the Leave and the Remain options either slightly declined or remained stable. Affective polarisation was either stronger at the partisan level or at the Brexit-​related one, depending on the measure used. Altogether, we may conclude that affective polarisation over partisan and political divisions is fairly strong but does not follow a clear trend over time. At a more detailed level, affective polarisation is markedly asymmetric: consistently larger among Labour and Remain voters than among Conservative and Leave ones. Finally, the two kinds of affective polarisation became increasingly aligned over time, as party switching and attitude changes gradually turned Conservative voters into Leavers and opposition voters into Remainers. This may help explain the widespread perception of a rise of affective polarisation 26

The divided left in the UK

Table 1.7: Affective polarisation, total sample, 2015–​19 (percentage) Partisan (Conservative and Labour)

2015

2019

In-​group positivity

2.47

2.76

Out-​group negativity

1.76

1.76

Affective polarisation I: difference

0.72

1.01

Affective polarisation II: total negativity

20.3%

20.0%

Brexit-related (Leave and Remain)

2015

2019

In-​group positivity

2.73

2.72

Out-​group negativity

1.74

1.80

Affective polarisation I: difference

0.98

0.91

Affective polarisation II: total negativity

16.8%

16.8%

Source: own elaboration from Fieldhouse et al (2020)

in the UK, as partisan and Brexit-​related hostility now overlap and tend to reinforce one another.

Conclusion The 2019 general election was disastrous for the Labour Party, which could not prevent a landslide for Boris Johnson’s Conservatives, declined from 40.0 to 32.2 per cent of valid votes (from 27.5 to 21.6 per cent of registered voters), saw the crumbling of its ‘red wall’ (Mattinson, 2020) of safe seats in central and northern England, and swiftly proceeded to oust and marginalise its former Corbynist leading coalition. The analysis carried out in this chapter shows that this historic defeat has its roots in long-​standing weaknesses, divisions and strategic dilemmas. First, Labour fights on an asymmetric partisan field, as it must compete with a variety of left-​leaning (Scottish, Welsh and Irish nationalists; the Greens) and centrist (the Liberal Democrats) parties while the Conservatives have successfully reabsorbed the challenge of Eurosceptic forces and enjoy an undisputed dominance among right-​leaning voters. In addition, the loss of its former Scottish heartlands to the SNP all but rules out the chance of an autonomous Labour parliamentary majority in Westminster (Niendorf, 2021). Second, the two dominant policy issues of the past decade have led to a medium-​term electoral realignment towards the Conservatives and away from Labour, which was blamed for the Great Recession and deserted by Leavers. Third, the efforts of the Corbyn leadership to turn the party to the left and win support with an ambitious and radical socioeconomic programme produced major gains in terms of members and voters and a near victory in the 2017 general election (Allen and Bartle, 2018; Cowley 27

Affective Polarisation

and Kavanagh, 2018; Mellon et al, 2018; Whiteley et al, 2019) but led to a disastrous electoral defeat two years later (Allen and Bartle, 2021; Ford et al, 2021). The exact identification and relative weight of the causes of these diverging outcomes are highly controversial, with leader images, party stances on Brexit and other issues, Labour’s divisions, the effectiveness of election campaigns, media coverage, differential turnout and other factors being touted as likely culprits. It is, however, clear that Brexit played a major role in undermining Corbyn’s strategy and image, alienating Leavers potentially quite receptive to its socioeconomic proposals (blue-​collar and lower white-​collar workers, the unemployed, abstentionists, Farage supporters) and forcing it to compete for urban middle-​class Remainers in a crowded political space. Fourth, the British public opinion seems to be strongly left-​leaning on socioeconomic issues, right-​leaning on cultural ones, hostile to the social and political establishment, and split over Brexit, posing adaptation problems to all parties but particularly strong ones to Labour and its rival internal factions. Finally, the British political system is structurally unfavourable to alternation, normally leading to long periods of dominance of either of the two main parties (Conservative from 1979 to 1997, Labour from 1997 to 2010, and Conservative from 2010 to present; occasionally with junior partners or external supports) ended only by major economic crises. Several opposing strategies have been proposed to remedy this weakness, ranging from a ‘progressive alliance’ with other centre-​left parties, their squeeze through the monopolisation of Remain voters, a continuation of Corbyn’s socialist and anti-​establishment approach bolstered by the adoption of a credible ‘Lexit’ stance, a bottom-​up focus on strengthening trade unions, intermediate organisations, local communities, and workplace and social mobilisations, or a neo-​Blairite reconquest of centrist and moderate right voters by way of ideological moderation and triangulation. Starmer’s adoption of the latter after his election as Labour leader in April 2020 seems to be currently paying off, but secured a clear lead in the opinion polls only after a series of dramatic Conservative failures (the ‘Partygate’ scandal in December 2021, Johnson’s replacement in September 2022, and the financial crisis induced by Kwarteng’s mini-​budget in the same month) and did little to clarify Labour’s positions on the crucial issues of growth, redistribution, cultural liberalism, Brexit and unionism. Whatever its short-​term merits and chances of success, partisan, ideological and class divisions will continue to mark the internal life and electoral success of the left in the UK. References Allen, N. and Bartle, J. (eds) (2018) None Past the Post: Britain at the Polls 2017, Manchester: Manchester University Press. 28

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Allen, N. and Bartle, J. (eds) (2021) Breaking the Deadlock: Britain at the Polls 2019, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Bakker, R. and Hobolt, S. (2013) ‘Measuring party positions’, in G. Evans and N.D. De Graaf (eds) Political Choice Matters: Explaining the Strength of Class and Religious Cleavages in Cross-​National Perspective, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp 27–​45. Bakker, R., De Vries, C., Edwards, E., Hooghe, L., Jolly, S., Marks, G., Polk, J., Rovny, J., Steenbergen, M. and Vachudova, M.-​A. (2015) ‘Measuring party positions in Europe: The Chapel Hill expert survey trend file, 1999–​ 2010’, Party Politics, 21(1): 143–​52. Bakker, R., Jolly, S., Hooghe, L., Marks, G., Polk, J., Rovny, J., Steenbergen, M. and Vachudova, M.-​A. (2020) ‘1999−2019 Chapel Hill expert survey trend file: Version 1.2.’, [online], Available from: https://​chesd​ata.eu/​ [Accessed 15 February 2022]. Bale, T. (2017) The Conservative Party: From Thatcher to Cameron, London: John Wiley & Sons. Bale, T. (2023) The Conservative Party after Brexit, Cambridge: Polity Press. Bartle, J. (2018) ‘Why the Conservatives lost their majority –​but still won’, in N. Allen and J. Bartle (eds) None Past the Post: Britain at the Polls 2017, Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp 160–​89. Batrouni, D. (2020) The Battle of Ideas in the Labour Party: From Attlee to Corbyn and Brexit, Bristol: Policy Press. Bobbio, N. (1996) Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bramson, A., Grim, P., Singer, D.J., Berger, W.J., Sack, G., Fischer, S., Flocken, C. and Homan, B. (2017) ‘Understanding polarisation: Meanings, measures, and model evaluation’, Philosophy of Science, 84(1): 115–​59. Burton-​Cartledge, P. (2021) ‘The problems of Starmerism’, The Political Quarterly, 92(2): 193–​201. Clarke, H.D., Goodwin, M.J. and Whiteley, P. (2017) Brexit, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coakley, J. (2007) ‘National identity in Northern Ireland: Stability or change?’, Nations and Nationalism, 13(4): 573–​97. Cohen, G. and Cohen, S. (2021) ‘Depolarisation, repolarisation and redistributive ideological change in Britain, 1983–​2016’, British Journal of Political Science, 51(3): 1181–​202. Cowley, P. and Kavanagh, D. (2018) The British General Election of 2017, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Crouch, C. (2004) Post-​Democracy, Cambridge: Polity. Cutts, D., Goodwin, M., Heath, O. and Surridge, P. (2020) ‘Brexit, the 2019 general election and the realignment of British politics’, The Political Quarterly, 91(1): 7–​23.

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Döring, H. and Manow, P. (2021) ‘Parliaments and governments database (ParlGov): Information on parties, elections and cabinets in modern democracies’, [online], Available from: http://​www.parl​gov.org/​ [Accessed 15 February 2022]. Duke, V. and Edgell, S. (1987) ‘The operationalisation of class in British sociology: Theoretical and empirical considerations’, British Journal of Sociology, 38(4): 445–​63. Eagleton, O. (2022) The Starmer Project: A Journey to the Right, London: Verso. Esteban, J. and Schneider, G. (2008) ‘Polarisation and conflict: Theoretical and empirical issues’, Journal of Peace Research, 45(2): 131–​41. Evans, G. and Tilley, J. (2017) The New Politics of Class: The Political Exclusion of the British Working Class, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Evans, G., Heath, A. and Lalljee, M. (1996) ‘Measuring left-​right and libertarian-​authoritarian values in the British electorate’, British Journal of Sociology, 47(1): 93–​112. Fabbrini, F. (ed) (2017) The Law & Politics of Brexit, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fabbrini, F. (ed) (2020) The Law & Politics of Brexit II: The Withdrawal Agreement, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fabbrini, F. (ed) (2021) The Law & Politics of Brexit III: The Framework of New EU-UK Relations, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fieldhouse, E., Fieldhouse, E., Green, J., Evans, G., Mellon, J. and Prosser, C. (2020) ‘British Election Study combined wave 1–​19 internet panel’, [online], Available from: https://w ​ ww.britis​ hel​ecti​onst​udy.com/​ [Accessed 15 February 2022]. Fieldhouse, E., Green, J., Evans, G., Mellon, J., Prosser, C., Schmitt, H. and Van der Eijk, C. (2021) Electoral Shocks: The Volatile Voter in a Turbulent World, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fiorina, M.P. and Abrams, S.J. (2008) ‘Political polarisation in the American public’, Annual Review of Political Science, 11(1): 563–​88. Fisher, M. (2009) Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, Ropley: John Hunt Publishing. Ford, R. and Goodwin, M. (2014) Revolt on the Right: Explaining Support for the Radical Right in Britain, Abingdon: Routledge. Ford, R. and Jennings, W. (2020) ‘The changing cleavage politics of western Europe’, Annual Review of Political Science, 23(1): 295–​314. Ford, R., Bale, T., Jennings, W. and Surridge, P. (2021) The British General Election of 2019, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Fuchs, D. and Klingemann, H.-​D. (1990) ‘The left-​r ight schema’, in M. Kent Jennings and J.W. Van Deth (eds) Continuities in Political Action, Berlin: de Gruyter, pp 203–​34.

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Gethin, A., Martínez-Toledano, C. and Piketty, T. (2022) ‘Brahmin left versus merchant right: Changing political cleavages in 21 western democracies, 1948–2020’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 137(1): 1–48. Gunther, R., Beck, P.A., Magalhães, P.C. and Moreno, A. (2015) Voting in Old and New Democracies, Abingdon: Routledge. Hayward, K. and McManus, C. (2019) ‘Neither/​nor: The rejection of unionist and nationalist identities in post-​agreement Northern Ireland’, Capital & Class, 43(1): 139–​55. Heath, A., Curtice, J. and Elgenius, G. (2009) ‘Individualization and the decline of class identity’, in M. Wetherell (ed) Identity in the 21st Century: New Trends in Changing Times, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 21–​40. Hobolt, S.B., Leeper, T.J. and Tilley, J. (2021) ‘Divided by the vote: Affective polarisation in the wake of the Brexit referendum’, British Journal of Political Science, 51(4): 1476–​93. Iyengar, S., Lelkes, Y., Levendusky, M., Malhotra, N. and Westwood, S.J. (2019) ‘The origins and consequences of affective polarisation in the United States’, Annual Review of Political Science, 22(1): 129–​46. Johns, R. and Mitchell, J. (2016) Takeover: Explaining the Extraordinary Rise of the SNP, London: Biteback Publishing. Klingemann, H.-​D., Volkens, A., Bara, J., Budge, I. and McDonald, M.D. (2006) Mapping Policy Preferences II: Estimates for Parties, Electors, and Governments in Eastern Europe, European Union, and OECD 1990–​2003, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kriesi, H., Grande, E., Lachat, R., Dolezal, M., Bornschier, S. and Frey, T. (2006) ‘Globalization and the transformation of the national political space: Six European countries compared’, European Journal of Political Research, 45(6): 921–​56. Lipset, S.M. and Rokkan, S. (1967) Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-​ National Perspectives, New York: Free Press. Marx, K. (1977) Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Volume I, Moscow: Progress Publishers, [online], Available from: https://​www. marxi​sts.org/​arch​ive/​marx/​works/​downl​oad/​pdf/​Capi​tal-​Vol​ume-​I.pdf [Accessed 15 February 2022]. Mattinson, D. (2020) Beyond the Red Wall: Why Labour Lost, How the Conservatives Won and What Will Happen Next?, London: Biteback Publishing. McCoy, J., Rahman, T. and Somer, M. (2018) ‘Polarisation and the global crisis of democracy: Common patterns, dynamics, and pernicious consequences for democratic polities’, American Behavioral Scientist, 62(1): 16–​42. Mellon, J., Evans, G., Fieldhouse, E., Green, J. and Prosser, C. (2018) ‘Brexit or Corbyn? Campaign and inter-​election vote switching in the 2017 UK general election’, Parliamentary Affairs, 71(4): 719–​37.

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Murphy, R. (1988) Social Closure: The Theory of Monopolization and Exclusion, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Niendorf, T. (2021) ‘Unequal chances: Party competition in the era of territorialisation’, in The Devolution Gambit, Cham: Springer, pp 127–​58. Norris, P. and Inglehart, R. (2019) Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Piketty, T. (2020) Capital and Ideology, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pogrund, G. and Maguire, P. (2020) Left Out: The Inside Story of Labour Under Corbyn, London: Vintage. Savage, M. (2015) Social Class in the 21st Century, London: Penguin. Séville, A. (2017) ‘From “one right way” to “one ruinous way”? Discursive shifts in “there is no alternative”’, European Political Science Review, 9(3): 449–​70. Seymour, R. (2017) Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics, London: Verso Books. Sloam, J. and Henn, M. (2019) Youthquake 2017: The Rise of Young Cosmopolitans in Britain, London: Palgrave. Sobolewska, M. and Ford, R. (2020) Brexitland: Identity, Diversity and the Reshaping of British Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stedman, G. and Gohrisch, J. (eds) (2023) ‘Introduction’ in Affective Polarisation: Social Inequality in the UK after Austerity, Brexit, and COVID19, Bristol: Bristol University Press, pp 1–10. Tournier-​Sol, K. (2021) ‘From UKIP to the Brexit Party: The politicization of European integration and disruptive impact on national and European arenas’, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 29(3): 380–​90. Uberoi, E., Baker, C., Cracknell, R., Allen, G., Roberts, N., Barton, C. et al (2020) General Election 2019: Results and Analysis, London: House of Commons Library, Briefing Paper. Whiteley, P., Poletti, M., Webb, P. and Bale, T. (2019) ‘Oh Jeremy Corbyn! Why did Labour Party membership soar after the 2015 general election?’, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 21(1): 80–​98. Woodward, R. (1995) ‘Approaches towards the study of social polarisation in the UK’, Progress in Human Geography, 19(1): 75–​89. Wright, E.O. (1997) Class Counts: Comparative Studies in Class Analysis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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2

Populism and the People: Elitism, Authoritarianism and Libertarianism Kirsten Forkert and Marius Guderjan

Introduction In recent years, political messaging in the UK has taken a worrying manipulative turn, spreading ‘fake news’, manufacturing threats and claiming to break ‘politically correct’ taboos. Within this ‘post-​truth’ political climate, trust in political institutions, the judiciary, experts and journalists has dramatically declined, while intolerance and violence have grown (Forkert et al, 2020). Such developments raise questions about the state of liberal democracy in the UK. In their book How Democracies Die, Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018, pp 5–​7) investigate the takeover of states not by violent rebellions but by ‘would-​be authoritarian’ and autocratic leaders ‘at the ballot box’, who, in the course of democratic elections, ‘subvert the very process that brought them to power’ (Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2018, p 3). Elsewhere, we have argued that ‘Britain in a time of Brexit is an arena of populist politics’ (Guderjan and Wilding, 2020). Although various authors (Taggart, 2004, p 276; Decker, 2006, p 18; Leach, 2015, p 200; Judis, 2016; Freeden, 2017, p 9) have conceived of populist movements as short-​lived and as struggling once in office, populists in power do not necessarily ‘self-​ destruct’ but ‘seek to establish a new populist constitution’ (Müller, 2016, p 52). So what happens if populists in government foster distrust in the state and political institutions? The case of the UK government and especially the former prime minister, Boris Johnson, is especially illustrative of the fortunes of populists in government. Based on polling data, in April 2020 Boris Johnson’s approval rates were at a high. In May 2021, when we started writing this chapter, views of his performance as prime minister were balanced (48 per cent 33

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approved and 47 per cent disapproved). By the end of 2021, however, less than a quarter of respondents thought of him as doing well, while over 70 per cent rated him badly (YouGov, 2022). Aside from an initial success story about vaccination rates during the COVID-​19 pandemic, the government’s track record was characterised by failures, scandals, misinformation and U-​ turns in policy direction. In this chapter, we will therefore examine how populist politics have played out since Boris Johnson’s coming to power. We want to explain the initial appeal of his administration and gain a better understanding of the nature of populism in the UK. We will also argue that, instead of living up to the ideals of people-​centrism, anti-​elitism and popular sovereignty, the behaviour of key members of government represents an elitism thriving on an affective polarisation within British society, which brings together both libertarian and authoritarian ideologies and policies. We do not intend to scare potential readers of this chapter off by condemning the UK as an authoritarian state or the UK government as autocratic. Yet, as the following will demonstrate, in the course of Brexit, both authoritarian and libertarian practices and ideas have become ‘normalised’ at the very heart of the Westminster parliament and continue to shape policies even after Johnson’s resignation in July 2022.

Defining populism Populism comes in many shapes and forms, and is therefore difficult to define. Considering the great variety of populist politics and the absence of a single philosophy or theory, defining populism is not an easy undertaking. At the heart of populist movements lies the claim to stand in for ‘the people’ and enable popular sovereignty –​for instance through their direct participation in referendums –​which per se is not a dismissible claim when it develops out of a grassroots mobilisation (see Canovan, 2004, p 252; Jagers and Walgrave, 2007, p 323; March, 2017, pp 287ff; Müller, 2016, pp 3–​4). Anti-​elitism is also inherent in populism and when genuinely pursued can lead to an empowerment of less privileged and marginal groups, drawing a division between the ‘people’ and the ‘oligarchy’ (Mouffe, 2018). Yet, as this chapter will demonstrate, populist politicians are typically and paradoxically recruited from the very elite they claim to fight against. Despite these commonalities, many scholars (Jagers and Walgrave, 2007, p 322; Mudde, 2007; Stanley, 2008; Freeden, 2017; Mouffe, 2018) agree that populism on its own is at best a ‘thin-​centred’ ideology that lacks core values. Indeed, populists tend to be pragmatic and chameleon-​like, changing their aims and ideas to mobilise ‘the people’ –​typically against the political ‘establishment’ and corrupt ‘elites’ (Canovan, 1999, p 3; Taggart, 2004, p 274). Understanding populism in the UK context as a communication and mobilisation strategy has certainly been useful, as our previous works 34

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have shown (Guderjan and Wilding, 2020). Apart from positioning as against the establishment, experts and mainstream media, common characteristics of the populist method include the self-​ascription of outsider status, the dramatisation of politics and the fabricated perception of crisis. Populists present themselves as a force of change, supposedly taking long-​needed actions and tackling fundamental problems. Their performative strength relies on an over-​simplifying, black-​and-​white rhetoric attracting ongoing attention on both conventional and social media. Through public appearances in casual dress and everyday settings (for example, far-​r ight politician and commentator Nigel Farage being photographed with a pint at the pub), populists distance themselves from elites and present themselves as close to ‘ordinary people’ (see Canovan, 1999, pp 2–​5; Taggart, 2004, pp 273–​5; Laclau, 2005, p 157; Jun, 2006, pp 233–​40; Meyer, 2006, pp 81ff; ; Moffit and Tormey, 2014, pp 381–​93; Müller, 2016; Freeden, 2017, pp 6–​10). This is illustrated by Rainer Schulze’s contribution to this book (Chapter 3), in which he has analysed one of Boris Johnson’s speeches from a cultural linguistics perspective, focusing on the terms ‘people’ and ‘country’. Both terms occur quite frequently, often within strong underlying populist narratives around ‘British people’ having been victims, and being able to then become agents. At the same time, particular groups are framed as threats to national unity, when in reality the idea of uniting the nation against these threats has stoked social divisions. The tactics used by populists can be interpreted as political performance: whereby publics are treated primarily as audiences in front of which dominant narratives are consolidated or challenged. In her theorisation of performance politics, Shirin Rai (2014, p 16) has noted how the meaning-​making of political performances often takes place on the level of affect. Symbols, metaphors and gestures are mobilised in ways that appear emotionally though often not ideologically consistent; if harnessed in a particular way, coherence develops through repetition. Divisive political messaging and policies follow a similar logic of performance and emotionalisation (Forkert, 2017). Yet, the success of a policy or political communication as performance is different from its effectiveness in solving a social problem. The examples we will discuss bring xenophobic and nationalist sentiments to the fore. They appeal to strategic groups of voters while undermining public debate, instead of providing concrete solutions for political problems. This chapter will not only focus on the communication strategy and style of the Conservative Party under Johnson’s leadership, but also on the ideological bases that complement their populism. Populists often emerge and thrive on what seem like narrowly defined issues, such as immigration or hostility towards the EU, whereas their wider frames of reference are typically related to or borrowed from existing ideologies (Jagers and Walgrave, 2007, p 323; Mudde, 2007; March, 2017, p 298). The distinction between ‘inclusive’ 35

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and ‘exclusive’ populism allows us to locate populist politics on a left–​r ight spectrum. Left-​and right-​wing populists both claim to stand up against an elite. Whereas the former are concerned with social and economic issues and inclusive of marginalised groups, as their view of the people is essentially pluralist (Müller, 2016, p 74), right-​wing populists believe that ‘the people’ are an ethnically or culturally homogeneous group and that their identity is threatened by ethnic or religious minorities and immigrants. This form of populism seeks to exclude minorities and mobilise ‘downwards’ (Filc, 2011, p 223; Judis, 2016; March, 2017, pp 285–​6). In doing so, right-​wing populists frequently stoke a sense of grievance and resentment, whereby majoritarian groups (for example, White men) can position themselves as victims or oppressed minorities (Ware, 2008). Dominant forces within the Conservative Party have nurtured ethnic and cultural exclusivity based on a White English identity. As we will discuss later, people from ethnic minorities in prominent Conservative Party positions also push hard-​line views on immigration and publicly dismiss institutional racism, while pre-​empting concerns about the lack of representation. However, the party’s right-​wing ideology needs to be further differentiated between economic and social values. We will therefore seek to distinguish between ‘libertarian populism’ and ‘authoritarian populism’ to capture the interplay of socioeconomic views and ideas. The term ‘authoritarian populism’ was introduced by Stuart Hall (1979) to describe a coercive law-​and-​order politics under Margaret Thatcher. Hall developed the concept in relation to the Thatcher government’s attempts to eliminate the means of holding power to account while creating categories of outsiders (striking miners, immigrants, LGBT+​people, and so on) who then became targeted by punitive policies and rhetoric. These scapegoats served to deflect public anger away from government and towards outsider groups, which resonates with more recent ‘culture war’ tactics discussed later. Authoritarian populism had lost most of its appeal by the early 1990s when New Labour’s Third Way discourse started to become popular (Byrne, 2019, p 145) –​although Hall (2005) also argued that aspects of it continued under New Labour. Are authoritarian populists in fact autocrats? The litmus test developed by Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018, pp 21–​4) identifies how autocrats in the making rewrite the rules of politics in their favour. It includes four warning signs: first, they reject or potentially violate the constitution or take anti-​ democratic measures by cancelling elections or restricting basic civil and political rights; second, they deny the democratic legitimacy of political opponents; third, they tolerate or encourage violence by their supporters; fourth, they restrict civil liberties, protest rights, political organisations or the media. Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018, p 22) further suggest that once they win elections, populists often undermine the democratic institutions that brought 36

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them to power. All four criteria present a threat to democratic systems and will help to examine the continued intensification of authoritarian populism and its current resurgence under the Johnson government. If authoritarian populism is one tendency within conservative politics, then right-​wing libertarianism is another with which it coexists, despite the apparent contradictions between the two. ‘Right-​libertarianism’ seeks to maximise economic and individual freedom with minimal state intervention, seemingly in stark contrast with a conservative ideology: ‘Conservatives traditionally have opposed libertarianism … because libertarian ideas often are associated exclusively with the promotion of market capitalism. Conservatives (and socialists for that matter) make serious arguments that something more than free markets is required for human flourishing’ (Macey, 1998, pp 372–​3). Right-​wing libertarians pursue neoliberal economic policies. However, unlike key neoliberal thinkers, who believe in traditional values, social structures and authorities, such as the family and the nation state, libertarians are not interested in social solidarity and cooperation and view any form of public authority as a threat to individual liberty (European Centre for Populism Studies, nd). Thatcher, for instance, was not strictly speaking libertarian, as she pursued both neoliberal market policies and neo-​ conservative law and order agendas under the firm control of the state (see Hall, 1990a, pp 85–​6; Leach, 2015, pp 70–​1). Although neoliberalism and authoritarianism stem from very different ideas and principles and may not easily coexist, in practice they are often not mutually exclusive but rather supportive. For radical neoliberals, social and political demands stand in stark contrast to free market principles, which is why they oppose effective political participation and power-​sharing (Brown, 2019, pp 61–​3). According to Brown: Neoliberal thinkers regarded the political with wariness, and … were openly hostile to both its sovereign and democratic variant. Neoliberalism thus aims at limiting and containing the political, detaching it from sovereignty, eliminating its democratic form, and starving its democratic energies. From its ‘postideological’ aspirations and affirmation of technocracy to its economization and privatization of government activities, from its unbridled opposition to egalitarian ‘statism’ to its attempted delegitimation and containment of democratic claims, from its aim to restrict the franchise to its aim to limit sharply certain kinds of statism, neoliberalism seeks to both constrict and dedemocratize the political. (Brown, 2019, p 57) Attacks on democratic and deliberative practices and values, together with growing inequality, have led to ‘angry right-​wing populism and political 37

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demagogues in power’ (Brown, 2019, p 58). While this has undermined political reasoning and public support for politics, it has promoted a ‘plutocratic authoritarian liberalism’ (Brown, 2019, pp 58–​9), which seems to be the nexus where neoliberal economic policies turn to a more far-​reaching individualism advocated by libertarian ideology. Removing the constraints on people’s private lives (except to protect the nominal liberty of others) to allow them to do as they please (compare Macey, 1998, p 372). However, in reality only a plutocratic elite has the resource and privilege to make use of their unconstrained freedom. By looking at political performance and ideology, we seek to comprehend the causes and contradictions of the libertarian yet authoritarian populism governing the UK, which has exacerbated social inequalities over the course of austerity, Brexit and the COVID-​19 pandemic.

Populist performance: elitism in disguise It is crucial to explain the appeal of people-​centrism, anti-​elitism and popular sovereignty, and the paradox therein. Existing studies (for example, Carey, 2002; McLaren, 2006; de Vries and Hoffmann, 2016) suggest that those who feel that globalisation and immigration threatens their ‘identity’ are likely to support populist, Eurosceptic and nationalist politics. Their ‘sense of loss’ relates not merely to material wellbeing but to the symbolic status and the ‘psychic privilege’ associated with White, patriarchal authority (Clarke and Newman, 2017, p 109) and ‘postcolonial melancholia’ (Gilroy, 2004). Complicating dominant narratives about the Leave vote being a predominantly working-​class phenomenon, not all citizens who voted to leave the EU were economically deprived; at least some of them were living comfortably. Age was also significant, as the majority of those born before 1965 supported the authoritarian values and traditional gender hierarchies characterising the Brexit vote (Davies, 2020, p 3). In the aftermath of the EU referendum, researchers have therefore increasingly highlighted the role of social values to explain how liberal and authoritarian views determined the vote to either remain or leave (Surridge, 2021, pp 7–​8). The common motivation of Brexit supporters was a sense of restoring a nostalgic past (Goodwin and Heath, 2016, p 325; Jennings and Stoker, 2017, p 4) and pride in their national identity, public services and industry (Surridge, 2021). The affective polarisation along Brexit lines has produced and subsequently manifested the new and divided political identities of Leavers and Remainers (Hobolt and Tilley, 2021, p 3). But why do people who reject the political elite vote for a government recruited largely from an elite background? In their ethnographic study of the political mood in a post-​industrial city during the 2019 general election, Coleman and Brodgen (2020, pp 102–​3) found people feeling 38

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disassociated from, disappointed in and misunderstood by the political class. In the general election in December 2019, Johnson’s populism was successful because his political performance responded to the social frustrations among voters. According to Flinders, ‘[b]‌eneath the veneer of “Boris” and his “whiff-​whaff” theatrics there is a deeper statecraft strategy, key to which is an explicit focus on fuelling and funnelling frustration amongst those sections of the public most disaffected with “conventional” politics’ (2020, p 229). The fatigue and affective polarisation of the UK’s seemingly endless withdrawal from the EU was a welcome window of opportunity for a distinctively unconventional politician to aggressively attack his opponents and break conventions and rules to ‘get Brexit done’ (Flinders, 2020, pp 226–​9). Paradoxically, Johnson represents what Flinders (2020, p 236) calls ‘upper crust populism’, being part of the very elite that he claims to fight against. Educated at Eton and Oxford University, his upbringing could hardly be more elite. His clown-​like behaviour and disregard for due process, and his eccentric use of language represent what Fintan O’Toole (2018, p 80) calls ‘Brexit camp’: a political application of Oscar Wilde’s famous dictum ‘[t]‌hat we should treat all trivial things very seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality’. O’Toole notes that camp as politics is ‘to make this very disengagement a form of engagement, to make depoliticization a political cause’ (2018, p 81). Much of Johnson’s rhetoric around Brexit focused on the ‘petty annoyances of regulation’; as a journalist, he wrote a series of columns (based on fabricated misinformation) in the Telegraph about the EU trying to ban prawn cocktail flavoured crisps. More important matters such as jobs, communities or lives are treated as trivial matters (O’Toole, 2018, p 80). This approach continued in Johnson’s political career as prime minister, until he resigned in 2022. Since coming to power in July 2019, Johnson has cleverly drawn attention to himself and distracted from critical issues, while trolling and misinformation have become a new standard in government communication. For his camp followers, keeping promises and upholding democratic norms seem to be less important than disrupting progressive, liberal elites (Davies, 2020, p 21), as Davies has observed: Not only does the liberal come to appear humourless, puritanical and conservative in their commitment to public procedure and conservative in their commitment to public procedure and facts; they also appear slow. While the demagogic leader-​entertainer is constantly changing the subject and shaping the mood, the liberal is still talking about something that happened yesterday or last year. The resentment aimed towards the ‘mainstream media’ and ‘liberal elites’ rests on the idea that their commitment to rules and facts is a cultural quirk (a symptom of 39

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over-​education), and that society no longer relies on such things to cohere. (Davies, 2020, pp 21–​2) Resentment at so-​called progressive cosmopolitans has spurred support for authoritarian populists, who oppose ‘those they hold responsible for their suffering’ (Brown, 2019, pp 175–​9). To conceal their own elitism, the new government sacrificed liberal values and degraded them from a fundamental pillar of British democracy to ‘an ethical persuasion or a cultural identity’ (Davies, 2020, pp 3–​7). Simultaneously, the public support for Johnson’s uncompromising actions in regard to Brexit and other issues has legitimised the elite in power to break political conventions and claim liberties for themselves that the vast majority of the British people do not enjoy. As a consequence, Leave voters have regained some of their political trust, while at the same time Remainers have lost their faith in Westminster (Jennings, 2021, p 10). The government’s handling of the COVID-​19 pandemic reveals the elitism at the heart of their populist politics. At first, there was overall support for the government’s lockdown measures and the public was broadly united in the conviction to fight the virus. Then fractures appeared as it became evident that the self-​isolation and social distancing rules did not apply to everyone. Dominic Cummings’ breach of the lockdown rules in March 2020 was controversial, as he did not have to resign and barely any consequences followed (BBC, 2020). Johnson defended Cummings, saying he acted ‘responsibly, legally and with integrity’ and that he ‘followed the instinct of every father and parent’ (Sayal et al, 2020). The term ‘follow the instinct’ is key –​it suggests that those in positions such as Cummings’ have the authority to measure risks and exercise independent judgements about whether or not to follow lockdown rules, regardless of the obligations for the rest of the population. Strict or even draconian rules can be legislated to demonstrate ‘toughness’, but the architects of these rules are exempt because they supposedly know better. As Brown (2019, pp 173–​4) argued, such rule-​breaking affirms the supremacy of a powerful, male and White elite, which is why the political right is more immune to the criticism of severe immoral, illegal and scandalous behaviour that would have led to the immediate resignation of left-​wing, female or non-​White politicians. Brown’s comments might be nuanced in the light of Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak’s leaderships, as well as Suella Braverman’s tenure as Home Secretary; nonetheless, the unequal entitlement to break rules generally still holds. More recently, there have been even more striking examples of Johnson’s exceptionalism which have begun to damage his popularity. Following a 2019 report by the Guardian newspaper (Stewart et al, 2021), an investigation by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner Kathryn Stone found MP Owen Paterson repeatedly approached ministers and individuals on behalf of 40

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companies that were paying him annually more than £100,000 (£500,000 in total) (Lawrence et al, 2021). In order to protect his fellow party member, Johnson, along with Andrea Leadsom and Jacob Rees-​Mogg, attempted to intervene by turning the Parliamentary Standards Committee responsible for the investigation into a body chaired and dominated by their own party (the proposed head Chris Whittingdale MP was a former employer of Johnson’s wife) (Yorke, 2021). The opposition parties consequently announced they would not participate in this body. After a public outcry about corruption, the government withdrew its proposal for the replacement of the Parliamentary Standards Committee, and Paterson resigned. This incident was followed by the revelation that a Christmas party was held in 10 Downing Street on 18 December 2020, when the government officially recommended against such events and gatherings of more than two people were banned in London (BBC, 2021a). Although the government claimed this was a business meeting and Johnson stated that ‘guidance was followed completely in Number 10’, subsequently leaked stories and videos to the contrary may have led to a decline in trust and support in Whitehall even among people who had voted for him. Shortly after the Christmas party revelations, pictures of the former prime minister, his wife and about 17 members of staff with wine, other alcoholic beverages, cheese and pizza in the Downing Street garden during the lockdown in May 2020 were published. More recently, a leaked email emerged (following a post on Cummings’ blog) from one of 10 Downing Street’s most senior aides sent on 20 May 2020 to over 100 employees inviting them to a ‘bring your own booze’ party with ‘social distanced’ drinks. On the very same day, a Cabinet minister announced that people could only meet with one other person outside their household, meeting at least two metres apart (Mason et al, 2022). After several days, Johnson admitted he was at the party and produced a carefully worded statement, which some speculated was drafted with the help of a lawyer, apologising but claiming he thought it was a work event (Hopkins and Syal, 2022). Nevertheless, in spring 2022 the then prime minister and other members of government were found guilty of breaching the lockdown by a police investigation, and Justice Minister David Wolfson consequently resigned (Allegretti, 2022). These examples all further contributed to the perception that ‘it’s one rule for us and another rule for them’ (Rentoul, 2021). There are signs that this has caused lasting damage to the party’s popularity. In December 2021, the Conservative Party lost the by-​election for North Shropshire, which had been triggered by Paterson’s resignation. This was a constituency that they held for almost 200 years and that had clearly voted Leave in 2016, but fell to the Liberal Democrats due to the combination of these allegations of misconduct; the Liberal Democrats’ social media campaign included the slogan ‘party’s over’ (Drury, 2021). 41

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At the same time, voices within the government and the media which opposed lockdown restrictions as an attack on civil liberties became louder (Duffy, 2021, p 12; Hobolt and Tilley, 2021, p 3). There are good reasons to question the intentions behind such calls and to not mistake them for social liberalism but rather for an individualistic libertarianism, as Caroline Weaver put it: Those who shout the loudest about freedom in the US, and increasingly in the UK (for example against lockdown), are often not part of the liberal left which cares about human rights and fighting against enslavement, but are right-​wing libertarians wanting the kind of individual freedom to make money regardless of how they do it, the freedom to sign documents then tear them up, and often the freedom to own guns. Wild West anyone? (Weaver, 2020) In order to cover up the mishandling of the COVID-​19 pandemic, Johnson has undermined statistical fact and research for political gains, and deflected blame elsewhere. Instead of addressing policy failures, which were later reported by Cummings at length, the opposition was branded as uncooperative and pessimistic. Overall, these populists can hardly be said to be part of an inclusive grassroots movement of and for the people, who, as Schulze (Chapter 3, this volume) shows, are continually referred to in speeches. Instead, British populism constitutes ‘a continuation of elitism by other means’ (Guderjan and Wilding, 2020), which is why ‘libertarian populism’ presents an oxymoron of two contradictory principles. The prominence of elites in the Conservative Party has not ended with Johnson’s leadership. Even though Sunak does not come from the same degree of privilege as Johnson, he is privately educated, worked for Goldman Sachs, married to Akshata Murthy, the daughter of the tech mogul N.R. Narayana Murthy, and Sunak is currently one of the richest MPs in parliament (Sommerlad, 2022).

Populist ideology: authoritarianism and libertarianism We have witnessed worrying examples of authoritarian measures from Johnson’s administration. Shortly after coming to power, he sought to violate constitutional principles and restrict the power of parliament, and subsequently to restrict basic civil and political rights, as well as to undermine independent media outlets. On 28 August 2019, the then prime minister asked the Queen to suspend parliament for five weeks and allow only 17 days for parliament to meet before the UK’s scheduled departure from the EU. This was highly controversial as it would shut down opportunities for debate and scrutiny during the final stage of the EU Withdrawal Agreement 42

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negotiations. The extended prorogation of parliament in September 2019 was declared unlawful by the Supreme Court (2019). In their 2019 manifesto, the Conservative Party (2019) then pledged to review the relationship between the government, parliament and the courts. Socialists, feminists, ethnic and cultural minorities, as well as other critics, were branded as the liberal enemies of ‘the people’; this is again consistent with the populist narrative identified by Schulze which frames particular categories of people as threats to national unity (Chapter 3, this volume). Twenty-​one critical Conservative MPs were removed from the party and opportunists like Matt Hancock and Nicky Morgan were awarded with key positions in the Cabinet. Johnson also rewarded friendly journalists with exclusive access to government meetings and press conferences. More critical reports were excluded and the resources and autonomy of public service broadcasters, namely the BBC and Channel 4, as well as universities came under attack (Davies, 2020, pp 2–​7, 235–​41). Whether the UK government’s attitude towards the devolved legislatures in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is strictly undemocratic is debatable. However, it does reflect an authoritarian tendency towards centralising control and hostility towards political opponents. For Johnson to deny the Scottish government the opportunity for a second independence referendum despite their electoral success in 2019 and in the May 2021 Scottish elections is to ignore the Scottish National Party’s democratic mandate and prevent Scottish people from having a vote about their future in the UK. At the same time, Brexit-​related legislation, in particular the UK Internal Market Act, and new UK-​wide funding programmes, such as the Shared Prosperity Fund, has undermined the territorial autonomy and constitutional arrangements under the devolution settlement. More recently, the Sunak government overruled the Scottish Gender Reform Act, which would create a self-​ registration system for people who want to change gender, and to do so at a younger age. He did so through Section 35, which enables the Westminster government to block legislation from the devolved parliaments (Walker and Brooks, 2023). This was interpreted as both an assertion of Westminster’s power, but also as an attempt to stoke divisions through attacking trans rights (Fischer, 2023). Since the 2015 general election, repressive integration (or assimilation) policies –​particularly on immigration –​have featured in the Conservatives’ agenda and normalised xenophobic and discriminatory sentiments in England, as part of an overall divisive politics pitting insiders against outsiders (Forkert, 2017; Forkert et al, 2020). Since then, the so-​called ‘culture war’ has been used by Conservatives to play off the political right against the ‘woke’ left. As Nesrine Malik (2021) put it: ‘Culture war is an aggressive political act with the purpose of creating new dividing lines and therefore new and bigger electoral majorities’ (Malik, 2021). Daniel Trilling (2021a) also characterises the culture war ‘as a political technique for gathering a 43

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disparate group of people with conflicting, even contradictory, interests into your camp’. This technique is employed by choosing ‘a divisive social issue, make your position on it a badge of identity, and try to make other people do so too’ (Trilling, 2021a). The Common Sense Group, comprising about 50 Conservative MPs, is an outspoken advocate of the culture war, according to which: With opportunities provided by Brexit, the time for a refreshed national conversation on the defining issues of our time –​nationhood, community, migration, the rule of law and public order –​is now. The battle of ideas has been drawn into sharp focus with the emergence of extreme cultural and political groups, Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion, Kill the Bill et al. –​subversives fuelled by ignorance and an arrogant determination to erase the past and dictate the future. (Ramsey, 2021) In addition to Johnson, one politician who has proved particularly skillful at stoking the culture war and representing authoritarian tendencies within the Conservative Party is the former Home Secretary Priti Patel. She played a prominent role in the Vote Leave campaign and, as Home Secretary under Boris Johnson, she has become known for both authoritarian policies and inflammatory right-​wing rhetoric. Patel publicly condemned the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests and the actions associated with it. This included the toppling of the statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol (which she called ‘utterly disgraceful’) (Sky News, 2020), as well as the England football team taking the knee at the Euro 2020 football match, deriding this as ‘gesture politics’ and stating that fans had the right to boo the team (Zeffman, 2021). She also made inflammatory comments about the legal profession, claiming that ‘activist lawyers’ were frustrating the removal of immigrants (Townsend, 2020). In addition to creating division, Patel’s use of culture war tactics produces a continual outrage and distraction for those with progressive views, and a chilling atmosphere for BLM activists and others who campaign against inequality and injustice. Both Patel and the current Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, represent an increasingly common tendency within right-​wing politics: a member of an ethnic minority in a prominent political role who espouses openly racist and xenophobic views. Patel was born to a Ugandan Asian family and Braverman to Asian parents of Kenyan and Mauritian origin. Their ethnicity and prominent roles, like Sunak’s, have the effect of deflecting criticism about the Conservative Party as being unrepresentative of the diversity of British society. While although only 6 per cent of Conservative MPs are from are from Black British, British Asian and other ethnic minority backgrounds (BBC, 2019), as compared to 15 per cent of the British population, Patel, 44

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like Rishi Sunak, Kemi Badenoch, Kwasi Kwarteng, Sajid Javid, Suella Braverman and others have become highly visible figureheads, serving what Shirin Rai calls ‘authentic representation’ as a form of performance politics (Rai, 2014, p 7). When Patel or other Conservative politicians with ethnic minority backgrounds make racist or xenophobic comments, it becomes more difficult to critique them specifically as racist or xenophobic, therefore insulating the government against criticism. This is what enables the current Conservative government to be the most diverse in British history but also the cruellest in recent memory. The espousing of xenophobic views (whereby those from immigrant backgrounds call for measures to restrict immigration) may perversely be a way of performing one’s belongingness to British society (Forkert et al, 2020, pp 164–​5) within a climate in which patriotism and race are becoming increasingly linked (Malik, 2021). To illustrate this, Patel even admitted that her immigration plans would have led to her parents being deported (Woodcock, 2020). Within the terms of such a logic, one cannot be patriotic and criticise institutional racism or the legacies of British colonialism –​conversely, to support BLM or decolonising movements is to be, by definition, unpatriotic. Crucially, these authoritarian views have resulted in legislative initiatives –​ led by Patel –​to curtail the rights of political protesters and immigrants. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (BBC, 2022) overhauled the criminal justice system, placing severe restrictions on the right to protest and the right of assembly. In response to Extinction Rebellion and BLM protests, Patel came very close to claiming that she did not support protest in principle (Parveen, 2021). The bill includes creating a new offence of ‘intentionally or recklessly causing a public nuisance’ rather than ‘serious public disorder, serious damage to property or serious disruption to the life of the community’, which had previously been the case. It also gives greater power to the police to impose start and end times and noise limits, and the ability to apply these measures to one individual. Protestors can now be prosecuted for failing to abide by police restrictions, even if such restrictions are not announced (for example, over a loudspeaker and/​or on social media) because they ‘ought to have known about them’. Given the chaotic nature of many protests, many people could fall foul of these restrictions, particularly if they are new to such activism, limiting participation to a narrow subculture of those already in the know (Dunt, 2021). Importantly, the bill contains measures that specifically criminalise groups targeted by the Conservatives. In response to the toppling of the Colston statue in Bristol during the BLM-​related protests in June 2020 and campaigns around the removal of statues of slave traders and others responsible for colonial atrocities, the bill extends the penalty for defacing a public memorial from three months to ten years –​a sentence more severe than that for committing rape (Thomas-​ Symonds, 2021). Another measure criminalises ‘trespass with the intention 45

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to reside’ affecting Roma and other Traveller communities as well as rough sleepers (Traveller’s Times, 2021) who live a nomadic lifestyle. These groups have long been scapegoated by the Conservatives, and this legislation will make their existence much more difficult. After elements of this legislation were defeated in the House of Lords, the Public Order Bill will enable the police to shut down protests –​in particular climate protests –​before they cause disruption by attaching themselves to objects or interfering with infrastructure (Wright, 2023). More recently, the anti-​strike bill was drafted in response to widespread public sector and transport strikes, seriously threatening the right of workers to withdraw their labour. The bill sets out ‘minimum service levels’ in a range of employment sectors by enabling employers to set a ‘work notice’ and sacking those who defy this by striking (Elgot, 2023). It has been critiqued for being fast-​tracked without proper checks and balances, and for using imprecise language which could give ministers sweeping powers to intervene in industrial disputes (Kettle, 2023). The bill also follows on partisan rhetoric that pitted striking workers against ordinary members of the public (Beckett, 2023). The Nationality and Borders Bill further reflects an authoritarian populism within the government. Although the stated objectives were to break up smuggling gangs involved in transporting asylum seekers to the UK, while ‘creating safe and legal routes’ for claiming refugee status, in practice it makes it practically impossible to claim asylum in the UK. Those who travel to the UK from another country (such as a country in Europe, rather than the country they have fled) will no longer be eligible to claim asylum but will be treated as inadmissible; they will also be under threat of a four-​year prison sentence for ‘entering illegally’. This runs contrary to the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees, which states that the status of an asylum claim should not be dependent on the place of the claim. If they cannot be removed, they will be granted a limited degree of refugee status, with no access to welfare, only limited rights to family reunification, and no right to settlement in the UK (Refugee Council, 2021). Even if a successful claim is made, their refugee status will be temporary and subject to review, with deportation a possible outcome at any review date. Given the history of deportations, in which countries such as Afghanistan were considered to be safe (McClenaghan, 2016), this will leave refugees in continual fear of return to persecution, torture or death. The offence of ‘facilitating’ illegal immigration is worded in such vague language that legal experts have pointed out it would be likely to criminalise the Royal National Lifeboat Institution for saving lives at sea (Trilling, 2021b). The bill also includes proposals to house refugees in large group accommodation, following on the controversial decision of the Home Office to house asylum seekers in military barracks, which put them at risk of COVID-​19 infection (leading to an outbreak in which 200 people were infected) and was ruled unlawful (BBC, 2021b). 46

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Furthermore, an amendment was proposed to give the government the power to strip the citizenship of those who have become British citizens through naturalisation, without their notice (Siddique, 2021). As Home Secretary, Suella Braverman has gone even further, through attempting to push through plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, a policy criticised as potentially illegal and practically unworkable (Deardon, 2022). As Trilling (2021b) and others have pointed out, such policy measures are not particularly effective in solving social problems. Instead, these can be understood as creating a moral panic (Hall et al, 1978; Cohen, 2011), which requires a tough policy, enabling politicians to win over voters with socially conservative views: for example, those who feel that something needs to be done about immigration or crime, or believe that the questions about colonial legacies and institutional racism provoked by BLM are fundamentally unpatriotic and un-​British. This evokes the tactics employed by the Thatcher administration, in which particular groups in society (specifically young people, Black people, immigrants, LGBT+​people and striking miners) were castigated as ‘the enemy within’ (Hall et al, 1978; Hall, 1990b) and their presence was used to justify calls for social discipline and authority. This reflects longer continuities within Conservative governments of the use of divisive politics and affective polarisation. Since the 2008 financial crisis, the rise of nationalist movements and ongoing deregulation of the business sector have been part of an increasingly undemocratic alliance of economic and political elites. It is telling that Johnson’s election campaign was funded by the donations of powerful hedge funds and businessmen (Davies, 2020, pp 13, 229). This libertarian tendency within the Conservative Party is not only exemplified by Johnson’s lackadaisical attitude towards the EU withdrawal negotiations and the moves towards free-​market deregulation, but also by his reluctance to impose lockdown measures in response to the COVID-​19 pandemic and the rhetoric around ‘Freedom Day’. While the UK government’s rhetoric and policies described earlier would be conventionally understood as authoritarian, prominent members of Johnson’s administration are champions of neoliberal economics and libertarian ideology. Notably, Patel’s background reveals that in addition to the authoritarian tendencies described, she has espoused right-​wing libertarian views. Patel, along with Kwarteng and Truss, was one of the authors of Britannia Unchained (Eardley, 2022), a free-​market manifesto by Conservative MPs which claimed that the British economy was unproductive, that British workers were lazy and idle, and which called for deregulation, weakening workplace rights and protections, and cutting back the welfare state to spur further productivity (Beckett, 2012). Dominic Raab, who became the Justice Secretary after the Cabinet reshuffle in September 2021, claimed during the Convention on Modern Liberty in 2009 that he didn’t believe in economic and social 47

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rights. During his new appointment, Raab may seek to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 and curtail the power of the courts in this area (Syal and Siddique, 2021). This represents both a libertarian deregulatory tendency, and simultaneously an authoritarian move to limit the right of citizens to hold those in power to account. Dominic Cummings also has a long history of Eurosceptic lobbying and represents both authoritarian and libertarian tendencies within the Conservative Party. From 1999 to 2002, he was campaigns director at Business for Sterling, a campaign against the UK joining the euro (Gimson, 2014). Business for Sterling became the New Frontiers Foundation, a free-​ market, Eurosceptic think tank. It called for, among other measures, the abolishing of the BBC as a public broadcaster and the establishment of an agency for high risk research (Mason, 2020). As chief advisor to the then prime minister (2019–​2020), Cummings had a largely adversarial relationship with the media during which he further attacked the BBC, Channel 4 and other broadcasters for representing the ‘metropolitan elite’ (Waterson, 2020). On his blog, Cummings (2020) notoriously called for ‘weirdos, misfits’ and ‘people with odd skills’, particularly those in roles such as ‘data scientists and software developers’ and ‘communications experts’ to occupy key government roles. He disparaged ‘Oxbridge English graduates who chat about Lacan at dinner parties with TV producers’, meaning those who had studied humanities subjects in universities, who Cummings perceived as forming the media establishment. Finlayson (2020) examined this rhetoric as representing a belief that those involved with the tech industry and in particular ‘big data’ were the heroes of the current political moment: ‘the super-​forecasters’ and the engineers able to divine meaning in the data. Notably, those from tech industry backgrounds are seen as better placed to run the country than those from the humanities and social sciences, those ‘innumerate fools in parliament, the press and academia [who] have nothing of value to add’. Cummings’ idealisation of the tech industry again reveals the interplay between authoritarian and libertarian populism with the Conservative Party. While we do not have space to discuss this in detail, we wanted to flag up social media platforms as not only sites for propaganda and deceitful information, but also in relation to the risk that they become unregulated monopolies with minimal responsibility for the content they promote through their algorithms (Noble, 2018; Zuboff, 2019). By circulating rage and hateful messages at the cost of political sensitivities and informed debate, such ‘platform capitalism’ has profited immensely and become increasingly powerful, while destabilising social and political trust (Davies, 2020, pp 11–​ 12). The new virtual reality is a much more individualised space in which users can act largely unconstrained by social sanctions, or at least find their niches where this is possible. This has eroded social solidarities in a real 48

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sense, effectively promoting a climate of uncertainty in which authoritarian populism can thrive on affective polarisation.

Conclusion We have demonstrated how libertarian and authoritarian populism reinforce each other through differential relationships to freedom and the law in ways that intensify social hierarchies and affective polarisation. We end by reiterating that libertarian-​authoritarian populism is not an inclusive grassroots movement but rather is nurtured and exploited by elitist politicians. The Conservatives have little interest in, and in some cases are hostile to, certain collective freedoms. Continual restrictions and increasing degrees of criminalisation lead to a ‘discriminatory legalism’ whereby some people may enjoy protection by the law, but ‘those who do not belong to the people or, for that matter, who might be suspected of actively working against the people, should be treated harshly’ (Müller, 2016, p 41). Many of the freedoms promoted by libertarian populists are fundamentally individualist in nature and seem to apply only to certain people, in particular to those elites who are seen as above the rules and can ‘follow their instincts’. They do not exist for the rest of the population, and especially do not exist for minorities and socially marginalised groups. Lifting the COVID-​19 restrictions on 19 July 2021, celebrated as ‘Freedom Day’ (despite surging COVID-​19 infections), and the lifting of all restrictions at the end of January 2022 has led to greater constraints for those with medical conditions which, even if they are fully vaccinated, will put them at risk of severe illness or death if infected. This situation provoked some commentators to call it ‘Freedom for Some Day’ (Burton-​Cartledge, 2021). Most recently, this disregard for collective freedoms has been exemplified by the punitive tone of calls by various Conservative politicians (BBC, 2021c) and commentators (Rayner et al, 2020) for workers to return to the office rather than working from home during the COVID-​19 pandemic, or else risk career stagnation or even redundancy. The freedom championed by free-​market libertarian ideology is therefore premised on coercion into potentially unsafe workplaces. Both the individualist and the differential nature of populist freedoms should serve as a caution to not confuse them with democratic or universal freedoms, and thereby ceding the concept or rhetoric of freedom to authoritarian populists. Populists may sell nostalgic illusions of a time before neoliberalism with strong social institutions, communities and economic security, as well as hegemonic cultural homogeneity. However, in reality they promote libertarian politics which increase polarisation and undermine social solidarity. This symbiosis of right-​wing populism and neoliberal capitalism continues to dismantle the UK’s liberal democracy and disempower the 49

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public. Without trust in public institutions people turn to nationalism and even fascism, and discard diverse views and in some cases diverse populations in order to feel part of a homogeneous people (Davies, 2020, pp 16–​23, 239). Such a conclusion may seem exaggerated for the UK, but in a speech on 10 February 2022, the former prime minister John Major fiercely criticised the ‘denial of civil rights’ for public protests and free speech, the ‘public denunciation of judges and lawyers’, and was particularly outspoken about the breaking of the lockdown rules: Brazen excuses were dreamed up. Day after day the public was asked to believe the unbelievable. Ministers were sent out to defend the indefensible, making themselves look gullible or foolish, as they did so. Collectively this has made the government look distinctly shifty, which has consequences that go far beyond political popularity. No government can function properly if its every word is treated with suspicion. (Batty, 2022) Looking at the US shows how fast the unthinkable can become reality (compare Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2018; Brown, 2019). Illiberal politics do not have to be imposed by a violent coup d’état but can be induced through democratic elections. Hall (1979, p 15) described authoritarian populism as ‘an exceptional form of the capitalist state –​which, unlike classical fascism, has retained most (though not all) of the formal representative institutions in place, and which at the same time has been able to construct around itself an active popular consent’. A number of authors (compare Taggart, 2004, p 276; Decker, 2006, p 18; Leach, 2015, p 200; Judis, 2016; Freeden, 2017, p 9) suggested that populism is often a short-​lived phenomenon that would lack key credentials for competent governance and therefore collapse in office. Despite the growing loss of political support, Johnson attempted to cling to power. He eventually resigned, giving an unapologetic resignation speech in which he refused to acknowledge the reasons why he was asked to resign and which commentators characterised as ‘shot through with resentment against those in his own party who have moved against him in recent days’ (Stewart, 2022). It seems hard to imagine, yet it is possible that despite being found guilty and fined for breaching the COVID-​19-​lockdown measures Johnson will recover when the next general election approaches. If (at the time of writing) the May 2023 local elections turn out poorly for the Conservatives, then Johnson may in fact stage a comeback. Looking at his successors, Truss and Sunak, the UK’s democratic culture continues to suffer from populist tactics and libertarian and authoritarian policies of the government, which have not helped to restore trust and overcome affective polarisation among people. 50

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Mudde, C. (2007) Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Müller, J.W. (2016) What is Populism?, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Noble, S.U. (2018) Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism, New York: New York University Press. O’Toole, F. (2018) Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain, New York: Apollo Press. Parveen, N. (2021) ‘Priti Patel describes Black Lives Matter protests as “dreadful” ’, The Guardian, [online] 12 February, Available from: https://​ www.theg​uard​ian.com/​polit​ics/​2021/​feb/​12/​priti-​patel-​hits-​out-​at-​ dread​ful-​black-​lives-​matt​ers-​prote​sts [Accessed 16 February 2023]. Rai, S. (2014) ‘Political performance: A framework for analysing democratic politics’, Political Studies, 63(5): 1179–​97. Ramsey, A. (2021) ‘Culture wars aren’t a distraction, they’re a battle over everything’, openDemocracy, [online] 11 September, Available from: https://​ www.opende​ m ocr​ a cy.net/​ e n/​ o pen​ d emo​ c rac​ y uk/​ c ult​ u re-​ wars-​ t hebrit​ish-​r ight-​is-​pick​ing-​a-​fight-​it-​wont-​win/​ [Accessed 16 February 2023] Rayner, G., Tominey, C. and Hymas, C. (2020) ‘“Go back to work or risk losing your job”: Major drive launched to get people returning to the office’, The Telegraph, [online] 27 August, Available from: https://​www. telegra​ ph.co.uk/n ​ ews/2​ 020/0​ 8/2​ 7/g​ o-b​ ack-​work-​r isk-​los​ing-​job-​major-​ drive-​launc​hed-​get-​peo​ple/​ [Accessed 16 February 2023]. Refugee Council (2021) ‘The Nationality and Borders Bill: A devastating day for refugee protection’, [online] 6 July, Available from: https://​www. ref​ugee​coun​cil.org.uk/​lat​est/​news/​the-​nati​onal​ity-​and-​bord​ers-​bill-​a-​ deva​stat​ing-​day-​for-​refu​gee-​pro​tect​ion/​ [Accessed 16 February 2023]. Rentoul, J. (2021) ‘Once again, it’s one rule for us and another rule for them’, Independent, [online] 16 December, Available from: https://​www. inde​pend​ent.co.uk/​voi​ces/​boris-​john​son-​lockd​own-​party-​down​ing-​ str​eet-​b1977​490.html [Accessed 16 February 2023]. Sayal, R., Weaver, M. and Walker, P. (2020) ‘Johnson’s defence of Cummings sparks anger from allies and opponents alike’, The Guardian, [online] 24 May, Available from: https://​www.theg​uard​ian.com/​polit​ics/​2020/​may/​ 24/​boris-​john​son-​defe​nce-​domi​nic-​cummi​ngs-​anger-​from-​all​ies-​and-​ oppone​nts-​alike [Accessed 16 February 2023]. Siddique, H. (2021) ‘New bill quietly gives powers to remove British citizenship without notice’, The Guardian, [online] 18 November, Available from: https://​www.theg​uard​ian.com/​polit​ics/​2021/​nov/​17/​new-​bill-​ quie​tly-​g ives-​pow​ers-​to-​rem​ove-​brit​ish-​citi​zens​hip-​with​out-​not​ice [Accessed 16 February 2023].

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Sky News (2020) ‘Priti Patel: Toppling Edward Colston statue “utterly disgraceful”’, [online] 7 June, Available from: https://​news.sky.com/​video/​ priti-​patel-​toppl​ing-​edw​ard-​cols​ton-​sta​tue-​utte​rly-​disg​race​ful-​12002​452 [Accessed 16 February 2023]. Sommerlad, J. (2022) ‘Rishi Sunak to become UK’s first Hindu prime minister’, Independent, [online] 24 October, Available from: https://​www. inde​pend​ent.co.uk/​news/​uk/​polit​ics/​r ishi-​sunak-​bac​kgro​und-​herit​age-​ b2209​128.html [Accessed 16 February 2023]. Stanley, B. (2008) ‘The thin ideology of populism’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 13(1), 95–​110. Stewart, H. (2022) ‘Boris Johnson’s resignation speech: what he said, and what he meant’, The Guardian, [online] 8 July, Available from: https://​ www.thegu ​ ard​ian.com/​polit​ics/​2022/​jul/​07/​boris-​johns​ons-​resi​gnat​ion-​ spe​ech-​what-​he-​said-​and-​what-​he-​meant [Accessed 16 February 2023]. Stewart, H., Booth, R. and Allegretti, A. (2021) ‘Tories engulfed in sleaze crisis after U-​turn and Owen Paterson resignation’, The Guardian, [online] 5 November, Available from: https://​www.thegu ​ ardi​ an.com/p​ oliti​ cs/2​ 021/​ nov/​04/​tor​ies-e​ ngulf​ ed-i​ n-s​ lea​ ze-c​ ris​ is-a​ fter-​u-​turn-​and-​owen-​pater​son-​ resi​gnat​ion [Accessed 16 February 2023]. Supreme Court (2019) ‘R (Miller) v The Prime Minister’, Judgement Summary UKSC 2019/​0192, [online] 24 September, Available from: https://​www. supre​meco​urt.uk/​watch/​uksc-​2019-​0192/​judgm​ent.html [Accessed 16 February 2023]. Surridge, P. (2021) ‘Social values’, in UK in a Changing Europe (ed) Brexit and Beyond: Public Opinion, pp 7–​9, [online] 27 May, Available from: https://​ ukan​deu.ac.uk/​resea​rch-​pap​ers/​bre​xit-​and-​bey​ond-​pub​lic-​opin​ion/​ [Accessed 13 April 2022]. Syal, R. and Siddique, H. (2021) ‘Labour fears Dominic Raab will target rights act in new justice post’, The Guardian, [online] 17 September, Available from: https://​www.theg​uard​ian.com/​law/​2021/​sep/​16/​lab​our-​ fears-​domi​nic-​raab-​will-​tar​get-​r ig​hts-​act-​in-​new-​just​ice-​post [Accessed 16 February 2023]. Taggart, P. (2004) ‘Populism and representative politics in contemporary Europe’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 9(3): 269–​88. Thomas-​Symonds, N. (2021) ‘Putting statues before women, the Tories could end up on the wrong side of history’, The Guardian, [online] 15 March, Available from: https://​www.theg​uard​ian.com/​commen​tisf​ree/​ 2021/m ​ ar/1​ 5/t​ or i​ es-s​ tatu ​ es-s​ afe​ ty-w ​ omen-p​ oli​ ce-c​ rime-s​ ent​ enci​ ng-a​ nd-​ cou​rts-​bill-​gov​ernm​ent [Accessed 16 February 2023].

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Townsend, M. (2020) ‘Top ministers urged Priti Patel to stop attacks on “activist lawyers” ’, The Guardian, [online] 18 October, Available from: https://​www.theg​uard​ian.com/​polit​ics/​2020/​oct/​18/​top-​mi nist​ers-​urged-​priti-​patel-​to-​stop-​atta​cks-​on-​activ​ist-​lawy​ers [Accessed 16 February 2023]. Traveller’s Times (2021) ‘The Traveller’s Times condemns hostile new anti-​Traveller laws’, [online] 21 January, Available from: https://w ​ ww. trav​elle​rsti​mes.org.uk/​featu​res/​tra​vell​ers-​times-​conde​mns-​host​ile-​new-​ anti-​travel​ler-​laws [Accessed 16 February 2023]. Trilling, D. (2021a) ‘Attacking lifeboats may seem like a new low, but the right craves a “migrant crisis” ’, The Guardian, [online] 3 August, Available from: https://​www.theg​uard​ian.com/​commen​tisf​ree/​2021/​aug/​03/​ lifebo​ats-​r ight-​migr​ant-​cri​sis-​r nli-​donati​ons-​asy​lum-​seek​ers [Accessed 16 February 2023]. Trilling, D. (2021b) ‘Priti Patel’s borders bill is designed to look tough, not solve any real problems’, The Guardian, [online] 14 July, Available from: https://​www.theg​uard​ian.com/​commen​tisf​ree/​2021/​jul/​14/​uk-​ bord​ers-​bill-​asy​lum-​priti-​patel [Accessed 16 February 2023]. Walker, P. and Brooks, L. (2023) ‘Court battle looms as UK ministers block Scottish gender recognition law’, The Guardian, [online] 18 January, Available from: https://​www.theg​uard​ian.com/​uk-​news/​2023/​jan/​17/​ uk-g​ ove​ rnme​ nt-​forma​lly-​blo​cks-​scotla​nds-​gend​ er-r​ ecog​ niti​ on-l​ egis​ lati​ on [Accessed 16 February 2023]. Ware, V. (2008) ‘Towards a sociology of resentment: A debate on class and whiteness’, Sociological Research Online, 13(5): 117–​26. Waterson, J. (2020) ‘Dominic Cummings’ media approach often more bark than bite’, The Guardian, [online] 16 November, Available from: https://​ www.thegu ​ ard​ian.com/​polit​ics/​2020/​nov/​16/​domi​nic-​cummi​ngs-​media-​ appro​ach-​often-​more-​bark-​than-​bite [Accessed 16 February 2023]. Weaver, C. (2020) ‘Populists, libertarians, kleptocrats … and where to find them’, Central Bylines, [online] 21 September, Available from: https://​ cent​ ralb​ ylin ​ es.co.uk/p​ opulis​ ts-l​ ibert​ aria​ ns-k​ lep​tocr​ats-​and-​where-​to-​find-​ them/​[Accessed 13 April 2022]. Woodcock, A. (2020) ‘Home Secretary Priti Patel admits own parents might not have been allowed into UK under her new immigration laws’, Independent, [online] 19 February, Available from: https://​www.inde​pend​ ent.co.uk/n ​ ews/​uk/​polit​ics/​priti-​patel-​immi​grat​ion-​laws-​pare​nts-​home-​ off​i ce-​bre​xit-​a9343​571.html [Accessed 16 February 2023]. Wright, O. (2023) ‘Public Order Bill would give police power to close down climate protests’, The Times, [online] 16 January, Available from: https://​ www.thetim ​ es.co.uk/​arti​cle/​pub​lic-​order-​bill-w ​ ould-g​ ive-p​ oli​ ce-p​ ower-​ to-c​ lose-d​ own-​clim​ate-​prote​sts-​zsmzh5​2hv [Accessed 16 February 2023].

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59

3

‘Coloring the Utterance with Some Kind of Perceivable Affect’: Constructing ‘Country’ and ‘People’ in Speeches by Theresa May and Boris Johnson –​A Linguistic Perspective Rainer Schulze

Introduction Goffman’s (1978, p 813) famous dictum that provides the chapter’s title followed by Sacks (1992 [1972], p 572), who pointed out that ‘we won’t find that strong sorrow and joy are just distributed over the course of the conversation but instead, there are real places for them to occur’, and Jefferson (1988), who among other things, studied the ways in which talk about troubles makes relevant affiliative responses, pave the way for a research avenue that considers emotion as a relevant aspect of the organisation and structure of discourse. The aim of this chapter is to analyse the conceptualisation of selected key terms of the referendum debate in the UK by identifying accessible patterns of language use. Available evidence suggests that displays of emotion in the language of top agents seem to be crucial in institutional and formal settings and in various modalities of expression (spoken and written), including grammar but to the exclusion of prosodic features, facial expressions or body gestures. Provided that language can be viewed as a collective repository of memory chunks linked to units of conceptual knowledge such as schemas, categories and conceptual metaphors, and metonymies or blends, lexical concepts 60

‘Country’ and ‘people’: a linguistic perspective

used in two selected speeches will be seen as exponents of discursively constructed ideas and values. Different constructions of British interests currently centre around concepts such as sovereignty, identity, immigration and economics, and it does not come as a surprise that in the context of Brexit, some top agents in politics and the media in particular view Britain as the victim at the hands of the EU, appealing to ‘the people’ to take back (power) control from the government and the elite or encouraging ‘our great country’ to rely on its strength and determination. The construction of ‘the people’ versus ‘the government’ or ‘the elite’ is an ordinary ‘us’ or ‘self ’ versus ‘them’ or ‘other’ construction where common unity (or disunity) and consensus (or dissent) is invoked through populist discourse (see section Theoretical orientations: discourse, meaning, language use on polarity-​indicating and polarity-​evoking devices and section Conclusion on populism). Similarly, the top agents’ construction of ‘country’ deserves further proper recognition, since it is another lexical concept that is deemed to function as an attempt to boost people’s morale or to reconfirm the meaning of their lives in spite of their alleged troubles; in short, an attempt to redefine and reconceptualise a contested concept for further (manipulative) use. This type of populist discourse, mainly concerned with the deliberate drawing of social distinctions and antagonisms in modern societies, is affective through its arousal of emotions, affecting those who believe that those denoted by ‘them’ or ‘other’ jeopardise Britain’s national interests and those who anticipate the economic and ideological problems that a breakaway from mainland Europe poses. This chapter will highlight how the use of lexical concepts can be a powerful conceptual and discursive strategy to frame economic, political and social issues, and to serve emotional and ideological purposes. Through the use of select lexical concepts, the strongly mediatised political, economic and ideological debates over sovereignty, identity, immigration or economics become particularly persuasive and manipulative. The analysis will show that (some) politicians tend to resort to particular (propositional, image, event) schemas in order to construct particular ‘narratives’. It is a particular feature of these narratives that they incorporate some very special protagonists, ranging from people and elite (that is government, media), from people and outsiders (that is immigrants) and, depending on the perspective, from people (Leavers) and non-​people (Remainers) and their actions on stage. ‘The people’ and ‘country’ as lexical concepts, and the linguistic material surrounding them, will be distilled into schemas. These function as conceptual structures that will be viewed as contextual and discursive mechanisms. The lexical concepts of ‘the people’ and ‘country’ will reflect some of the affective and subliminal connections created in the ‘narratives’, produced and perpetuated by the top agents in politics and the media.

61

Affective Polarisation

Theoretical orientations: discourse, meaning, language use One of the objectives of this chapter relates to the interdisciplinary nature of this study since it involves the integration of a cognitive linguistic and corpus linguistic approach into the analysis of political language. This approach is intended to provide a micro-​linguistic and a more fine-​grained analysis of language patterns. Cognitive linguistics, as a usage-​based account of meaning, views meaning not as a system-​inherent value closely associated with a linguistic form; instead, meaning is assumed to emerge from the rich conceptual structure of our encyclopaedic knowledge as well as from our embodied, attitudinal, contextual and other experiences that are constitutive of any usage event (Evans, 2009). Based on these complex conceptual and situational resources, not all meaning elements are activated with equal prominence in every communicative event. Communicators are joined together in their commonly shared focus on the conceptual entity being designated by a linguistic expression which is referred to as the expression’s profile. Thus, meaning resides in the tension between what is verbalised as the profile (that is, the meaning in focus) and the so-​called base (that is, additional meaning elements not in focus) which represents the profile’s background where all sorts of conceptual elements are stored with different degrees of prominence (Langacker, 2001, 2013). One of the fundamental achievements of corpus linguistic methods has been to demonstrate how single words or strings of words in their immediate linguistic co-​texts carry with them strong preferences about which words or strings of words they will occur with (Sinclair, 1991; Stubbs, 1996, 2001). In the theory of lexical priming (Hoey, 2005), the different types of association of particular words and phrases with certain other words or phrases has been captured by terms such as ‘collocation’ (=​habitual co-​ occurrences of linguistic units), ‘colligation’ (=​g rammatical statuses and values of linguistic units), ‘semantic preference’ (=​concomitant occurrences of linguistic units and others that share some more schematic meaning) and ‘discourse/​semantic prosody’ (=​evaluative polarity of linguistic units), analytical dimensions which interact or ‘nest’ in complex ways (see Table 3.1; see also Stubbs, 1996, 2001). Here, ‘semantic association’ represents a further analytical development of the notion ‘semantic preference’ and ‘discourse/​semantic prosody’. Although the ideas of connotation or affective polarisation cover something similar, ‘semantic association’ highlights the fact that a large number of words-​in-​ use, and contested concepts in particular, have an underlying subconscious prosody that becomes visible and transparent when large-​scale keyword-​in-​ context programs are applied to electronically stored repositories of spoken 62

‘Country’ and ‘people’: a linguistic perspective

Collocation

Focus on syntax/​ concatenation

Tokens

Co-​occurring word forms

Colligation

Focus on grammar (form and function)

Grammatical categories

Grammatical status and value

Focus on semantics

Topics/​ concepts/​ schemas

Lexical field and similarity of meaning

Semantic association

Different types of association

Table 3.1: Essential terms in lexical priming theory

Semantic preference

Discourse/​ Focus on Motivation/​ semantic socio-​pragmatics intention prosody

Evaluation and attitude

and written language. On the basis of this assumption, it is sensible to draw a distinction between affective polarity-​indicating devices that make the political agents’ intentions and preferences explicit (that is, through the choice of particular pronouns, mental verbs or nouns such as we or they, like or dislike, or doomsters and gloomsters, and so on) and affective polarity-​evoking devices in patterns such as ‘X+​lexical concept+​Y’. Here, X and Y stand for lexical and grammatical exponents either preceding or following the lexical concept in question, focusing on the sequential syntactic relationship between the place-​holders in a pattern (=​the horizontal axis); alternatively, my analysis will also be concerned with how X or Y in a pattern reflect a choice from a number of possible linguistic exponents that can be expected to fit the pattern (=​the vertical axis). Thus, lexical concepts in isolation have little or no meanings and readings at all. In association with others, however, positive (that is favourable) or neutral or negative (that is unfavourable) meanings are communicated, readings that cannot directly be inferred from the meanings of lexical concepts in isolation. Thus, the focus in this study is on selected linguistic patterns which express meanings that are beyond the threshold of notice for anyone who accepts the discourse as ‘natural’. Although some criticism of this concept should not be ignored (Whitsitt, 2005), the idea of ‘discourse/​semantic prosody’ as a continuum represents a sensible alternative to a simplistic positive-​negative dichotomy, as exemplified in Table 3.2.

‘People’ and ‘country’ in Theresa May’s and Boris Johnson’s speeches In communication about political issues, country or people and their preferred collocates are key expressions (Gallie, 1964, as quoted in Chilton, 2017; 63

Affective Polarisation

Table 3.2: Discourse/​semantic prosody in action Negative prosody Examples: ‘X commit Y’ X: person, offender, defendant, forces, soldiers, etc. Y: crime, murder, offence, atrocities, sins, adultery, fraud, abuse, etc.

Neutral prosody

Positive prosody

(in scientific and technical English) Examples: Examples: ‘X provide Y’ ‘X undergo Y’ X: law, program, company, X: cell, building, society, system, government, etc. subjects, etc. Y: service, information, Y: surgery, change, support, access, evidence, transformation, test, etc. protection, etc.

Wenzl, 2021). Clues from various genres suggest that they are also contested. Trawling the internet and the British National Corpus, including the News on the Web-​corpus in particular, one also finds their contested nature emerging in different genres and/​or text types. In the following, I will examine Theresa May’s words (henceforth referred to as TM) in her resignation speech as prime minister (May, 2019; Table 3.3) and compare them, whenever possible, with Boris Johnson’s first speech (henceforth referred to as BJ) as prime minister (Johnson, 2019; Table 3.4). The change at the parliamentary top was both a national as well as an international event. To recap briefly (Chang and Gregor, 2021, pp 67–​8): On 11 July 2016, former Home Secretary TM was elected Conservative Party leader; two days later, she became the UK’s second female prime minister after Margaret Thatcher. During her leadership, she started the formal process of withdrawing from the EU by invoking Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union/​Maastricht Treaty in March 2017, a process that gave the UK a period of up to two years to negotiate its withdrawal. Parliamentary deadlock, however, repeatedly impeded the ratification of a withdrawal agreement and thus delayed the UK’s exit from the EU for more than two years. In June 2017, TM called a snap election. The results of the election, however, weakened her endeavours and the Conservative Party. Following this, the Conservative Party formed a minority government with support from the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland. In November 2018, the UK parliament voted against ratifying the agreement three times. Opposition came from both the Labour Party as well as members of the Conservative Party; the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party even proposed a second referendum. Having failed to gain parliamentary approval for the withdrawal agreement, TM resigned as prime minister in July 2019, to be succeeded by BJ. The following two extracts reflect this particular power shift. For reasons of economy, the author cannot make systematic text-​linguistic comparisons 64

‘Country’ and ‘people’: a linguistic perspective

across the previous (TM) and the then leader’s (BJ) addresses, but it should be noted that the two texts are, of course, chronologically and thematically linked as two distinct but also closely intertwined discourse events, delivered on the very same day. Reflections on the dialogue between discourse studies, cognitive linguistics and corpus linguistics can be found in various publications (for example, Gohrisch and Schulze, 2019; Wiegand and Mahlberg, 2019). Schulze (2014, 2015), also pursuing the keyword approach, tries to build what he calls a ‘discursive profile’ of expressions that have a pivotal function in written academic and non-​academic discourse. What unites all of these studies is the firm belief that meanings of words and expressions are not merely subjective associations that lexical concepts trigger in individual or groups of speakers, but that denotations and connotations are often widely shared within a speech community, dependent on who is in authority and able to force his or her views on the words’ and expressions’ usage, entrenchment and conventionalisation in the speech community. This is to say that communication is not always and necessarily about the attempted or even subversive ‘simulation of the other’s experience’ (Langacker, 2013, p 98) but it is also about the creation, consolidation and strengthening of one’s own linguistic interpretation of the world around us. It is a truism that the collocational and colligational profile of a contested lexical concept or keyword, complemented by the search for relevant semantic preferences and discourse prosody, is semantically enriched and acquires the potential to contribute to micro-​linguistic investigations (Hanks, 2013). It is appropriate to briefly consider crude frequencies and, more importantly, collocations, colligations and aspects of semantic preference and discourse (or semantic) prosody. The justification for looking at two very small corpora is that I will compare like with like –​two texts on institutionally similar occasions, written to be spoken, presented as interactional and informational monologues, and argumentative and/​or persuasive in their primary purpose (Biber, 1989, p 35). Here, the focus lies on a comparison of the most frequent nouns in TM’s resignation address with those in BJ’s. Nouns (and other content words such as verbs or adjectives) are of interest, because they serve mainly as contact points with or representations of entities supposed to exist (unless otherwise linguistically indicated) in the real political world. I will compare the frequency of nouns here with the total number of words in each text –​with TM’s contribution, however, being much shorter. Thus, which are the most frequent nouns for each speaker? That British, an adjective with an almost exclusively [+​human] orientation, should occur with generic [+​human] nouns, such as people, is hardly surprising, although other adjectives (or nouns) such as young, old, elderly, common, normal, ordinary, real, important, famous, middle-​class, working-​class, 65

Affective Polarisation

Table 3.3: Lexical frequencies in Theresa May’s speech May, 2019 Country

8

1.81

Government

3

0.68

Kingdom

3

0.68

Services

3

0.68

Success(es)

3

0.68

Boris, children, Downing Street, future, interest, minister, opportunity, parliament, people with two occurrences each    (0.45) Words

442

business, professional, working, unemployed, poor, rich, wealthy, homeless, healthy, smart, talented, lovely or nice as pre-​modifying collocates tend to be much more frequent in non-​political discourse. The British people in subject position in a subordinate clause (conceptualised in its semantic role as BENEFICIARY) and direct object (conceptualised as DONOR) in a non-​finite subordinate clause constitute two (adjectival) instances which are consistent not only in terms of the social domain NATIONALITY (and hence discourse or semantic preference), but also carry a distinctively favourable evaluative load which ‘imbues’ people with positive prosody. Compared with TM, and bearing in mind the disparity in the length of their texts, BJ uses people not only far more often than TM but in very different ways. Although the British people, similar to TM, designating unitary existence, occurs four times in his address, the respective functions are very different to those in TM’s address: in at least two of these instances, the British people and the people are equated with the address term and personal pronoun you and are thus used as an apposition, providing more explicit information (that is, with a focus on the qualification) in the second noun phrase. Moreover, the noun phrase the British people can also be part of a prepositional phrase, here either headed by by or of. By can introduce long passive sentences with an explicit focus on agency, that is the British people in its semantic role of AGENT singled out as a particular community that has brought about some substantial change for the better in British politics. Positive prosody in this instance is equalled by the second prepositional phrase in which (to the hearts) of the British people in its possessive reading (hence POSSESSOR) is closely associated with the noun phrase welfare of animals that can be identified as one of the possible semantic preferences for the British people. BJ also shows some understanding for the suffering of the British people, assigning them the role of emotionally and physically AFFECTED, when the British people have had enough of waiting. This specification opens 66

‘Country’ and ‘people’: a linguistic perspective

Table 3.4: Lexical frequencies in Boris Johnson’s speech Johnson, 2019 People

11

0.65

Country

10

0.59

Jobs

8

0.47

Deal(s)

7

0.41

Time

7

0.41

World

7

0.41

Britain

5

0.3

Decisions

5

0.3

EU

5

0.3

Work

5

0.3

Brexit

4

0.24

Business

4

0.24

Confidence

4

0.24

Home(s)

4

0.24

Years

4

0.24

Democracy

3

0.18

Education

3

0.18

Government

3

0.18

Opportunit(ies)

3

0.18

Rule(s)

3

0.18

Sense

3

0.18

Streets

3

0.18

Trade

3

0.18

UK

3

0.18

Backstop, billion(s), Brussels, care, change, checks, circumstances, days(’), flag, friends, future, hearts, hospitals, Ireland, law(s), leadership, office, outcome, partnership, patience, plan, point, politicians, ports, power(s), right(s), sector, service(s), step(s), values, week(s) with two occurrences each        (0.12) Words

1,694

up a new descriptive dimension along which the British people can be characterised: BEFORE versus AFTER. What BJ does in particular here is to trigger a pre-​existing populist narrative script according to which the British people before TM’s term of office were carriers of the role of AFFECTED, SUFFERER or even VICTIM, with an option now to become AGENTs, 67

Affective Polarisation

Box 3.1:  Collocations of 'people' in Theresa May’s and Boris Johnson’s speeches With success in that task can come a new beginning for our country –​a national renewal that can move us beyond the current impasse into the bright future the British people deserve. I also want to thank the British people. Theresa May, 2019: co-​text for people And so I am standing before you today to tell you, the British people, that those critics are wrong. The people who bet against Britain are going to lose their shirts, because we are going to restore trust in our democracy and we are going to fulfil the repeated promises of Parliament to the people and come out of the EU on October 31, no ifs or buts. I have every confidence that in 99 days’ time we will have cracked it. But you know what –​we aren’t going to wait 99 days, because the British people have had enough of waiting. And though the Queen has just honoured me with this extraordinary office of state my job is to serve you, the people. Because if there is one point we politicians need to remember, it is that the people are our bosses. And that means uniting our country, answering at last the plea of the forgotten people and the left-​behind towns by physically and literally renewing the ties that bind us together. We close the opportunity gap, giving millions of young people the chance to own their own homes and giving business the confidence to invest across the UK. Because in the end, Brexit was a fundamental decision by the British people that they wanted their laws made by people that they can elect and they can remove from office. And let’s promote the welfare of animals that has always been so close to the hearts of the British people. Boris Johnson, 2019: co-​text for people    

CREATORs or SHAPERs on their own behalf during BJ’s term of office. This interpretation is the outcome of a pragmatic implication that the hearer or reader is invited to make whenever they encounter particular patterns in language; and this is also a device or mechanism that can be successfully exploited in (public) speaking. The full text of the speech reveals that TM’s 68

‘Country’ and ‘people’: a linguistic perspective

term of office is co-​textually framed by words such as pessimists, indecision, prisoner to the old arguments, incapable and so on, thus shedding some additional light on the BEFORE versus AFTER dimension. The people, another pattern in BJ’s speech and missing in TM’s speech, again stresses its unitary existence but also clearly shows its ambivalent nature. This is to say that the uses of the people co-​occur with different semantic preferences and different discourse prosodies clustering around the discourses of betting schemas (who bet against Britain are going to lose their shirts) and of CONTROLLER-​CONTROLLED schemas (it is that the people are our bosses), with the people in a position of authority and the political (including the government), social or economic elite in a supposed serving role. The choice of words in the linguistic environment of the people can also be seen as an attempt to re-​establish the legitimacy of the people’s moral governance at a time of both national crisis and a transition to a new generation of political leadership. It is evident that this strategic device on the part of BJ again can be seen as a mental and verbal construction, thus strengthening and contributing to other ‘narratives’ that pervade his first address as prime minister. At this point, it is appropriate to ask whether the collocational and colligational behaviour is typical of the people in all its syntactic roles. Intuitively, the reader will claim that the people and its collocational environment display positive semantic prosody in the CONTROLLER-​CONTROLLED reading (with the people in subject position in a stative event schema, conceptualised as THEME) and negative semantic prosody in the betting reading (with the people again in subject position but now in a force-​dynamic action event schema, conceptualised as AGENT, and post-​modified by a defining relative clause). At least, this observation is solely confirmed by the available data, although it may be difficult to offer generalisations on the basis of this finding only. What becomes obvious, however, is the tendency of linguistic units or contested concepts in particular to be prone to ‘conceptual stretching’ (Müller, 2016, p 106), so that the CONTROLLER-​CONTROLLED reading, enabled by the relevant linguistic co-​occurrences, is not necessarily the default reading of the people, but also permitting other readings to take over, provided that the linguistic co-​occurrences and concomitant values change. Another telling example is to the people, conceptualised as BENEFICIARY, surrounded by ‘fulfil the repeated promises of Parliament’ on the left and ‘come out of the EU’ on the right. Linguistic units thus are not merely unambiguous contact points or unambiguous representations of entities in the non-​linguistic world but they are more likely to function in a much more sophisticated way, giving rise to a structured set of default and potential meanings or readings. The picture that emerges, then, is of people either being strongly associated with negative or positive discourse prosody. This ambivalence is reflected in another set of adjectival constructions involving forgotten and young as 69

Affective Polarisation

pre-​modifiers in BJ’s address. In contrast to the British people, where the adjective functions as a classifier specifying a particular subclass of the object in question and being mainly ascriptive or associative, the latter set represents adjectives that function as epithets. Epithets can be viewed as ascriptive pre-​modifiers that indicate some quality of the set of objects referred to by the noun phrase and are either attitudinal (or subjective) and/​ or descriptive (or objective). The immediate textual environment shows that the forgotten people is associated with strings of lexical units broadly related to MARGINALISATION as prime semantic preference and that young people attracts strings of units broadly related to ASPIRING GENERATION as prime semantic preference. With this qualitative evidence as guide, I will examine concordances which show country in its immediate textual environment. In contrast to the first section, this section of the analysis will be about an almost equal distribution of the second contested concept in TM’s and BJ’s speeches. This is to say that, based again on absolute frequencies, relative frequencies and rank orders, country ranks high in the two speeches. The ‘statistics’ reported here indicate that pre-​modifiers in the form of adjectives or possessive pronouns with a positive semantic load in the speech of TM are likely to have a higher than random probability of occurring in the vicinity of country. They also allow the author to spot collocates (successes, new beginnings, national renewal, huge potential, national interest, great future, of aspiration and opportunity), most of these either pre-​or post-​modified, that contribute to the semantic preference (NEW DEPARTURES or CHANGE) and positive semantic prosody of country. Moreover, collocates of this kind derive from the same or related domains and share the same evaluative load as identified by the quantitative discovery procedures; however, they may not be frequent enough individually to pass the threshold of statistical significance. TM also evokes the BEFORE versus AFTER schema by relying on the relevant pragmatic implicatures. Country as a complex noun phrase is typically found in a particular clause type that represents what is the state of the things and specifies what relation the contested concept has to other noun phrases in the clause. This relational clause type assigns country the subject complement role, enabling country to become an identifier or definer of the concept in subject position. Or to put it differently: in TM’s contribution, country does not function as an AGENT in subject position in a transitive clause, it is devoid of any activity. Rather, whenever country occurs in direct object position, the concept is preceded by transitive verbs such as love or serve, verbs which evoke either some love affair or some asymmetrical relationship in which people are not legally required to support some institution but in which they follow a moral (and legal?) obligation. Both relationships, of course, are framed to attract positive or favourable values.

70

‘Country’ and ‘people’: a linguistic perspective

Box 3.2:  Collocations of 'country' in Theresa May’s and Boris Johnson’s speeches Their successes will be our country’s successes, and I hope that they will be many. With success in that task can come a new beginning for our country –​a national renewal that can move us beyond the current impasse into the bright future the British people deserve. The heavy responsibilities are outweighed by the huge potential to serve your country. All are inspired by the noble wish to serve their country in the national interest. Everyone who loves our great country, who works hard for their family and wants their children and grand-​children to enjoy greater opportunity than they did. This is a country of aspiration and opportunity and I hope that every young girl who has seen a woman Prime Minister now knows for sure that there are no limits to what they can achieve. And play my part in making our United Kingdom –​a great country with a great future –​a country that truly works for everyone. Theresa May, 2019: co-​text for country But in spite of all her efforts, it has become clear that there are pessimists at home and abroad who think that after three years of indecision, that this country has become a prisoner to the old arguments of 2016 and that in this home of democracy we are incapable of honouring a basic democratic mandate. I have every confidence that in 99 days’ time we will have cracked it. But you know what –​we aren’t going to wait 99 days, because the British people have had enough of waiting. The time has come to act, to take decisions, to give strong leadership and to change this country for the better. My job is to make sure your kids get a superb education, wherever they are in the country –​and that’s why we have already announced that we are going to level up per pupil funding in primary and secondary schools. And that means uniting our country, answering at last the plea of the forgotten people and the left-​behind towns by physically and literally renewing the ties that bind us together. And let me stress that there is a vital sense in which those preparations cannot be wasted, and that is because under any circumstances we will need to get ready at some point in the near future to come out of the EU customs union and out of regulatory control, fully determined at last to take advantage of Brexit. Because that is the course on which this country is now set. 71

Affective Polarisation

And don’t forget that in the event of a no deal outcome, we will have the extra lubrication of the £39 billion, and whatever deal we do we will prepare this autumn for an economic package to boost British business and to lengthen this country’s lead as the number one destination in this continent for overseas investment. But if there is one thing that has really sapped the confidence of business over the last three years, it is not the decisions we have taken –​it is our refusal to take decisions. And to all those who say we cannot be ready, I say do not underestimate this country. Do not underestimate our powers of organisation and our determination, because we know the enormous strengths of this economy in life sciences, in tech, in academia, in music, the arts, culture, financial services. Let’s start now to liberate the UK’s extraordinary bioscience sector from anti-​genetic modification rules, and let’s develop the blight-​resistant crops that will feed the world. Let’s get going now on our own position navigation and timing satellite and earth observation systems –​UK assets orbiting in space, with all the long term strategic and commercial benefits for this country. No one in the last few centuries has succeeded in betting against the pluck and nerve and ambition of this country. They will not succeed today. We in this government will work flat out to give this country the leadership it deserves, and that work begins now. Boris Johnson, 2019: co-​text for country    

In general, positively loaded occurrences of country can also be spotted in BJ’s address. A more detailed look into the possible syntactic positions of country in his speech reveals that the contested concept only occurs twice in subject position in a passive voice clause where it adopts the role of AFFECTED and where it is then followed by a collocate such as a prisoner to the old arguments with a negative semantic load or integrated into the collocate the course on which this country is now set with a positive semantic load (the BEFORE versus AFTER schema will be exemplified later). Conversely, country in active voice clauses typically occurs in direct object position, again adopting the role of AFFECTED, but now attracting collocates such as strong leadership, lead as the number one destination in this continent for overseas investment, the leadership it deserves and so on. The BEFORE versus AFTER schema is activated in another set of transitive clauses in which the direct object is surrounded by uniting, renewing the ties that bind us together, to join together or to work together to achieve a particular goal. Positive semantic prosody can also be assigned to country as part of a prepositional phrase, either introduced by for and adopting 72

‘Country’ and ‘people’: a linguistic perspective

the role of BENEFICIARY, introduced by of and then activating the role of SOURCE or introduced by in evoking the role of PLACE. Collocates in the linguistic environment of for this/​the country include extraordinary bioscience sector, blight resistant crops that will feed the world, our own position navigation and timing satellite and earth observation systems or UK assets orbiting in space (these noun phrases mostly exemplifying the domain of SCIENCE); in the environment of of this country, it is pluck and nerve and ambition (noun phrases here exemplifying the domain of ATTITUDE), and in the PLACE reading, it is superb education (the noun phrase exemplifying the domain of ASSET). What the lexico-​grammatical evidence clearly shows is that collocational and colligational information, complemented by preferred semantic preferences and discourse or semantic prosody, is an analytical set of tools that helps to identify and specify otherwise disputable concepts; the hallmarks of the latter being that they are constantly being constructed and contested by those who use them, TM and BJ included.

Conclusion As a national and international issue, Brexit has been discussed in numerous publications (see, for instance, Buckledee, 2018; Adam, 2020), with the result that different social constructions of political issues have been developed and fostered (Charteris-​Black, 2019). By ‘social construction’, the author specifically means the ways TM and BJ come to make sense of otherwise contested concepts through the ways they communicate about them. The central theme of this chapter is that agents in power harness particular discursive communication practices, and the tools to uncover these are provided by different fields such as cognitive linguistics and corpus linguistics. Language can obscure as much as it reveals: when looking at the language of TM and BJ and their treatment of contested lexical concepts, the devil is truly in the detail. The micro-​linguistic analysis of the speeches reveals that the selected concepts are ‘exploited’ or ‘manipulated’ for ‘conceptual stretching’ (Müller, 2016): both concepts, incorporated in patterns such as ‘X+​people+​Y’ or ‘X+​country+​Y’, are almost always pre-​modified or post-​modified by definite articles (designating unitary existence), adjectives (evoking schemas such as NATIONALITY or SIGNIFICANCE), personal pronouns (instantiating the ‘US versus THEM’ dimension) or relative clauses, occupying different syntactic positions in TM’s and BJ’s addresses, attracting different ‘participants’ in their vicinity and thus activating different schemata involving DONOR, BENEFICIARY, AGENT, NEW DEPARTURES or ASSET but also AFFECTED or VICTIM; similarly, asymmetrical relationships such as the ‘CONTROLLER versus CONTROLLED’ or ‘BEFORE versus AFTER’ populate the discourse and point the way to many principles related to how political leaders and BJ in particular might conduct 73

Affective Polarisation

their communication efforts as they plan their nation-​related campaigns in the future. Since it is impossible for political agents to communicate with a completely ‘objective’ voice, the significance of either positive or negative discourse or semantic prosody (=​polarity-​evoking devices) as part of the agents’ attitudinal, affective or persuasive groundwork should not be underestimated. ‘Conceptual stretching’ is thus an attempt to create additional, ‘new’ extra-​categories that serve to increase the extension of the overall category ‘people’ or ‘country’ without distorting its overall make-​ up. ‘People’ or ‘country’ have a structure that, through the elaboration of ‘newly’ established categories, allows for a wide variation in meaning and application within the area of political discourse. Populist discourse presents itself predominantly as a seemingly amateurish and unprofessional style of politics which leaders and parties employ to maximise media attention and popular support (Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2017, p 4) and to ingratiate themselves with the future electorate. Populist actors are able to present themselves not only as different and novel, but also as courageous leaders who stand with ‘the people’ in ‘our country’ in opposition to ‘the elite’ and ‘EU bureaucrats’. The different ‘participant’ configurations and their schematic representations, as mentioned in this chapter, contribute to a very special narrative that involves the creation of a number of dialectical relationships in BJ’s address. Take, for example, ‘the people’: these relationships represent dichotomies which, from a macro-​ linguistic view, point to a number of additional, higher-​order lexical concepts such as ‘nationalism’, ‘sovereignty’ or ‘independence’, ‘immigration’ or ‘economics’ whenever: • ‘the people’ are pitted against the alienated establishment or ‘the elite’ which insinuates an act of emancipation; • ‘the people’ are pitted against immigrants and outsiders which insinuates an aspect of nationalism; • ‘the people’ voting for Brexit (Leavers) are pitted against those voting for non-​Brexit (Remainers) which insinuates the idea of a politically, economically and/​or geographically divided nation (see Chapter 2, this volume). Similarly, ‘country’ is pitted against EU bureaucrats and EU jurisdiction which insinuates the idea of autonomy and/​or sovereignty. All these dichotomies or acts of polarisation resonate with a political project that views the current British society as being separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic camps. Beyond these ideology-​based boundary markings, TM and BJ contribute significantly to enriching Britain’s national mythology, the ‘triumph over adversity’ that ties people and country to national goals and pride, particularly 74

‘Country’ and ‘people’: a linguistic perspective

on the agenda of BJ. The political crisis is performed as a public spectacle in which the division of society is metaphorically changed into a threat to the integrity of the nation. And as becomes obvious, at least in BJ’s address, the successful uniting of the nation becomes a defining moment in the history of Britain, bringing about a resurgence of national identity. This is supported by the presentation of a number of different event schemas, including fact-​ and-​concept schemas (‘this is a fact’), person schemas (‘pessimists’, ‘doubters’, ‘gloomsters’, ‘doomsters’), self and other schemas (‘I’, ‘we’), preference schemas (‘I/​we like’ or ‘I/​we do not like’) or procedure schemas (‘this is going to happen’), most of these including polarity-​indicating devices. Moreover, BJ’s self-​presentation could count as a ‘heroic narrative’ (here following Vladimir Propp’s main characters in different functions or domains of activity): the protagonists being the former prime minister himself and his adversaries or villains in the UK and the EU, his non-​elected helpers (or spin doctors) and donors (see the current ‘cash for honours’ debate) in the UK and the US, the princess or person looked for as coveted autonomy and independence, the allaying of the public’s fears, victory and national pride. Whether this narrative is suited to boost people’s morale and reconfirm the meaning of their lives in spite of their troubles as identified by the political agents remains to be seen. As we now know, the former prime minister tendered his resignation to the late Queen at Balmoral Castle in Scotland on 6 September 2022 before she appointed his replacement, Liz Truss. His successor, however, was the UK’s shortest-​serving prime minister, stepping down after 45 days in power. She announced her resignation on 20 October 2022, after a series of humiliating U-​turns forced on her by an adverse reaction to her tax policies in the financial markets. Rishi Sunak became another Tory prime minister, chosen without a mandate from voters or the people. He was appointed prime minister by King Charles III on 25 October 2022. References Adam, R.G. (2020) Brexit: Causes and Consequences, Cham: Springer. Biber, D. (1989) ‘A typology of English texts’, Linguistics, 27(1): 3–​43. Buckledee, S. (2018) The Language of Brexit: How Britain Talked Its Way Out of the European Union, London: Bloomsbury. Chang, M.H. and Gregor, A.J. (2021) Political Populism in the Twenty-​First Century: We the People, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Charteris-​Black, J. (2019) Metaphors of Brexit: No Cherries on the Cake?, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Chilton, P. (2017) ‘“The people” in populist discourse: Using neuro-​ cognitive linguistics to understand political meanings’, Journal of Language and Politics, 16(4): 582–​94. 75

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Evans, V. (2009) How Words Mean: Lexical Concepts, Cognitive Models, and Meaning Construction, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gallie, W.B. (1964) ‘Essentially contested concepts’, in W.B. Gallie (ed) Philosophy and the Historical Understanding, London: Chatto & Windus, pp 157–​91. Goffman, E. (1978) ‘Response cries’, Language, 54(4): 787–​815. Gohrisch, J. and Schulze, R. (2019) ‘Representing the world in language: Cultural linguistic perspectives on Brexit’, Journal for the Study of British Cultures, 26(1): 87–​100. Hanks, P. (2013) Lexical Analysis: Norms and Exploitations, Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press. Hoey, M. (2005) Lexical Priming: A New Theory of Words and Language, London and New York: Routledge. Jefferson, G. (1988) ‘On the sequential organization of troubles talk in ordinary conversation’, Social Problems, 35(4): 418–​42. Johnson, B. (2019) ‘Boris Johnson’s first speech as prime minister: 24 July 2019’, GOV.UK, [online], Available from: https://​www.gov.uk/ g​ ove​ rnme​ nt/s​ peec​hes/​boris-​johns​ons-​first-​spee​ ch-a​ s-p​ rime-m ​ inist​ er-2​ 4-​ july-​2019 [Accessed 28 February 2022]. Langacker, R.W. (2001) ‘Discourse in cognitive grammar’, Cognitive Linguistics, 12(2): 143–​188. Langacker, R.W. (2013) ‘Interactive cognition: Toward a unified account of structure, processing, and discourse’, International Journal of Cognitive Linguistics, 3(2): 95–​125. May, T. (2019) ‘Theresa May’s final speech as prime minister: 24 July 2019’, GOV.UK, [online], Available from: https://​ w ww.gov.uk/​ gov​ernm​ent/​speec​hes/​ther​esa-​mays-​final-​spe​ech-​as-​prime-​minis​ter-​24-​ july-​2019 [Accessed 28 February 2022]. Mudde, C. and Kaltwasser, C.R. (2017) Populism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Müller, J.-​W. (2016) What is Populism?, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Sacks, H. (1992 [1972]) Lectures on Conversation (vol 2), London: Blackwell. Schulze, R. (2014) ‘Representing inequality in language: Words as social categorizers of experience’, in H. Pishwa and R. Schulze (eds) The Expression of Inequality in Interaction: Power, Dominance, and Status, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp 17–​48. Schulze, R. (2015) ‘The significance of “the social” in contemporary linguistics’, in R. Schulze and H. Pishwa (eds) The Exercise of Power in Communication: Devices, Reception and Reaction, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 17–​42. Sinclair, J. (1991) Corpus, Concordance, Collocation, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 76

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Stubbs, M. (1996) Text and Corpus Analysis, Oxford: Blackwell. Stubbs, M. (2001) Words and Phrases: Corpus Studies of Lexical Semantics, Oxford: Blackwell. Wenzl, N. (2021) ‘“There is a wonderfully contrary spirit among the British people”: Conservative MPs’ (un)successful branding of the British nation in the Brexit debate’, in I. Theodoropoulou and J. Tovar (eds) Research Companion to Language and Country Branding, London: Routledge, pp 72–​89. Whitsitt, S. (2005) ‘A critique of the concept of semantic prosody’, International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 10(3): 283–​305. Wiegand, V. and Mahlberg, M. (eds) (2019) Corpus Linguistics, Context and Culture, Berlin and Boston: de Gruyter.

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4

The Challenges of Polarisation: Lessons for (Re-​)Politicising Inequality across Four English Towns Insa Koch, Mark Fransham, Sarah Cant, Jill Ebrey, Luna Glucksberg and Mike Savage

Introduction It is widely known that the UK has seen a remarkable increase in inequality over the last half-​century. In the late 1970s, the UK was one of the least unequal nations in the world measured by income and wealth disparities, in large part attributable to high and progressive taxation on income and inheritance (Piketty, 2014; Atkinson, 2015; Jenkins, 2016). Since the 1980s, however, income inequality in the UK has grown substantially, especially during the Thatcher years, and it has persisted at a high level since the turn of the 21st century. These inequalities are increasingly seen as driving wider processes of social and political polarisation (for example, Savage et al, 2015), manifested by growing political volatility and the outcome of the Brexit referendum. Recent analyses of these developments have considered how social polarisation takes a linked economic and geographical form, and especially how marginalised locations are peripheral to more prosperous and dynamic urban centres, including but not confined to London (see Goodwin and Heath, 2016; Hobolt, 2016; Ford and Goodwin, 2017). This research, important though it is, runs the risk of reducing social divisions to abstract variables and their distribution across geographical space. As the Introduction to this edited collection has argued, processes of polarisation are always historically contingent and socially situated. Focusing 78

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in on the term ‘affective polarisation’, Stedman and Gohrisch suggest that existing accounts of polarisation ought to be revised in light of the fact that affect is not a simple given, but is rather ‘subject to historical change’ and can hence not be read ‘without taking issues such as power imbalances, gender, race/​ethnicity, and the impact of social convention into account’. We share the authors’ emphasis on historical and social contingency but extend our analysis to include a focus on social relations between different groups (as well as how these relations might, in turn, shape and be shaped by affect). It is also for this reason that we prefer the term ‘social’ polarisation over that of ‘affective’ polarisation, though we acknowledge that the concepts are necessarily co-​extensive. In this chapter, we argue that we need to give more attention to the differing local processes which affect how social polarisation may be happening ‘on the ground’. Our chapter shows that processes of polarisation can at times override geographical variation and reveal commonalities that occur across apparently contrasting areas. They can also make us aware of the variety of ways that inequality is experienced on the ground. We will argue that social relations at the local level can play out differently depending on whether polarisation is concentrated at the bottom (‘poverty-​based’), where it is defined by large numbers of poorer people within a locality, or at the top, driven by the prosperity of a large and visible local elite (‘elite-​based’). It is precisely by paying closer attention to how these social relations ‘play out on the ground’ that we can understand better how local political cultures and profiles are generated. We therefore supplement a macro perspective on economic and spatial polarisation with a micro focus on relational polarisation across four contrasting towns: Margate, Oldham, Oxford and Tunbridge Wells. Our mixed methods approach, which links quantitative methods with a revived community analysis, allows us to investigate both similarities and differences in the social realities of inequality across and within the four sites. In all four towns, marginalised communities express a sense of belonging and attachment to their localities. Yet, this takes different forms. Tensions between different social groups within each town are strong and articulated along distinct lines: in the case of Oxford and Tunbridge Wells, where polarisation is elite-​based, privileged groups claim a sense of moral ownership over their towns at the expense of more disadvantaged groups. By contrast, in Margate and Oldham, where polarisation is poverty-​based, working-​class inhabitants are more able to claim the towns as rightfully theirs. However, such claims can also fracture along ethnic and racial lines, thus creating tensions between groups that otherwise confront similar structural disadvantages. Finally, these forces are compounded by the fact that all four sites are marked by a weak or ‘squeezed’ middle of mid-​range income inhabitants, which therefore tend to weaken social cohesion at a local level. 79

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We will argue that this focus on the middle is important in countering a strong tendency in recent analyses to over-​emphasise the disorganisation of popular voices and identities in the wake of the power of stigmatising forces (for a general approach to this topic see Tyler, 2020). Thus, sociologists, drawing upon a Bourdieusian tradition, have looked at how the imprint of class leaves its mark on the damaged identities of dominated populations, disabling their voices from being heard (for example, Bourdieu et al, 1999; Charlesworth, 2001; Atkinson, 2010). In a different though compatible manner, urban anthropologists have analysed the impact of neoliberal policies on intra-​community tensions, and their fracturing into racial tensions (Dench et al, 2006; Edwards et al, 2012, 2017). While both perspectives provide a useful framework for understanding how intensifying inequality can erode the prospect of collective contestation of inequalities, this perspective can under-​estimate how working-​class identities defined as ‘ordinary’ or ‘down to earth’ remain not only strong (Savage et al, 2005) but also continue to create solidarity in daily life (for example, Koch, 2018; McKenzie, 2015; Chapters 8 and 9, this volume). Rather than locate the muted extent of politicisation in sweeping conceptions of ‘mis-​recognition’ or in ‘neoliberalism’ per se, we focus on the local mechanisms that facilitate or prevent different groups collectivising around shared struggles. Our conclusion draws together how the lack of mediating figures or institutions, including those located in but not limited to the ‘squeezed’ middle, and capable of bridging strongly felt divides between social groups, thwarts the possibilities of collective action. Extending insights on brokers in both social network analysis (Burt, 2009; Stovel and Shaw, 2012) and recent anthropological work in settings of austerity (Koster, 2014; Tuckett, 2018; Koch and James, 2020), we argue for the importance of strengthening local intermediaries and their institutions that can link different constituencies around common agendas while assuming legitimacy among broad support bases. Far from assuming then a generalised crisis of disengagement (Evans and Tilley, 2017), we argue that the challenge consists in building local mechanisms concerned with networks of exchange that can cut across social groups (Koch, 2016), whether these are defined in ethnic and racial, socioeconomic or any other terms. Ultimately, our analysis not only identifies crucial obstacles to, but also potential solutions for, (re-​) politicising inequality in Britain today. Our chapter proceeds as follows. The first section sets out our mixed methods comparative community study methodology. We explain the dimensions by which we conceptualise social polarisation and set out our mixed methods approach in relation to our four case studies. The second section explores quantitative evidence on economic and spatial polarisation, while the third section discusses the relational aspects of polarisation that emerge from our ethnographic accounts, nuancing these simple aggregate 80

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patterns. The concluding discussion draws together these different evidence bases, discusses in more depth the ability of differently positioned groups to lay claims of moral ownership in their towns, and theorises the implications of weak intermediary institutions as a starting point for understanding the difficulties of mobilising collective contestations around inequality in Britain today.

A mixed methods comparative community analysis of social polarisation Economic, spatial and relational polarisation There are a range of powerful abstract economic measures, such as the Gini co-​efficient or income shares which boil down inequality to a single metric. However, the experience and meaning of inequality needs to be understood in nuanced ways which are attentive to the possibility that similar economic distributions can lead to different social outcomes. This is especially true when considering whether inequality may lead to a wider process of social polarisation. Whereas inequality may refer to variation across a continuous distribution of outcomes, polarisation exists when the extremes of a distribution are growing, and where there is a shrinking ‘middle’. Social polarisation can be framed from economic, spatial and relational perspectives. First, in economic terms, it is typically investigated through the changing shape of the distribution of structural outcomes, such as income or occupational class. Thus, in economic terms, the labour market has been polarising in high income countries over the last two decades, with mid-​skill and mid-​pay jobs declining, while at the other ends of the spectrum high-​skill and low-​skill jobs are both increasing (Goos and Manning, 2007). There is hence an increasingly ‘bimodal’ distribution described by Marcuse in terms of the image of ‘the egg and the hour glass’: whereas ‘the population is normally distributed like an egg, widest in the middle and tapering off at both ends, when it becomes polarized, the middle is squeezed and the ends expand till it looks like an hour glass’ (Marcuse, 1989, p 699). Second, social polarisation also invokes the notion of spatial segregation, a concept which can be traced back to the Chicago School of sociologists from the early 20th century (Savage and Warde, 1993). It has been given regular attention by US sociologists examining the segregation of African Americans into distinct city neighbourhoods (Johnston et al, 2003) but has also included the study of segregation by income or age (Reardon and Bischoff, 2011; Sabater et al, 2017). Thus, we might say that a city is polarised when certain social groups are segregated into different locations. On the other hand, polarisation might refer to diverging social outcomes between geographically defined neighbourhoods –​the idea that the gap between the ‘best’ and ‘worst’ neighbourhoods is growing wider, for example in terms of 81

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health, income, wealth or educational outcomes (Dorling and Rees, 2003). Again, the concept of a ‘missing middle’ is crucial: as Wacquant (2008) has pointed out, in the US –​and other parts of the global north (Slater, 2018) –​ increasing geographical divides between those living in territories stigmatised as ‘ghettos’ and wealthier, mostly suburban populations, remain stark, and map onto racialised and classed distinctions between minority-​dominated working-​class populations and their wealthier middle-​class counterparts. Third, relational polarisation acknowledges the increasing withdrawal of a population into two (or more) groups that live essentially parallel lives with few networks or connections between them. This is the kind of perspective which is best revealed by qualitative local studies. Community studies was a powerful research repertoire in the UK from the 1950s to the 1970s, and examined what Stacey (1960) famously called a ‘local social system’ by unravelling how different social groups coexisted, mingled, interacted and organised hierarchies within small-​scale, relatively bounded environments (Savage, 2010). However, following the criticism that in an increasingly globalised environment it was not possible to delineate distinctive ‘local social systems’ (Saunders, 1981, its influence declined. Some currents became more specialised within anthropology (Cohen, 1985; Rapport, 1993; Edwards, 2000; Koch, 2018), with ethnographies focusing on particular communities or even subsections thereof. Although elements of this approach persist in sociological and geographical neighbourhood studies –​such as gentrified locales (Butler and Robson, 2003) or middle class enclaves (Savage et al, 2005), we see it as crucial to return to a wider focus on town-​level analysis, in which the relationship between different kinds of neighbourhoods is examined. Taken together, economic, spatial and relational perspectives on social polarisation indicate how inequality takes a linked social and geographical form, and how ‘left-​behind’ locations are distinctive from more prosperous and dynamic, urban centres, including but not confined to London. Yet, if left unqualified, each of these perspectives also runs the risk of neglecting how polarisation may be happening within as well as between specific localities. This, in turn, can lead to an over-​linear analysis of inequality which assumes a rigid mapping of social relations onto geographical divides. In this vein, Young (1999), for instance, uses the metaphor of the ‘cordon sanitaire’ (Young, 1999, p 23), to show how cities are materially and culturally divided and how, within sequestrated areas, gentrification can result in rich and poor living ‘chic by jowl’ (Young, 1999, p 9). Butler and Robson (2003, p 93) prefer the analogy of tectonic plates to capture the reality of radically different lives played out in the same London streets. Insightful as they are, these descriptors fail to capture the complexity of difference and interaction in towns, and to explore the interplay between different groups living in proximate locations as well as the more nuanced ways in which divisions are articulated within localities. 82

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We therefore caution against the too simplistic application of concepts of polarisation. Rather, our take follows Pratschke and Morlicchio (2012) in calling for a complex and carefully contextualised analysis of the ways in which ‘generative mechanisms’ interact in different towns. Following the lead of researchers studying migration and race and ethnicities (Gilroy, 2004; Rishbeth and Rogaly, 2018 Rogaly and Taylor, 2011; Tyler, 2012), our revived community analysis sees places as simultaneously convivial and demarcated and, furthermore, links these dynamics to broader processes of elite versus poverty-​based polarisation. This allows us to bring our data to bear on the key question of our times: namely, how to understand, and possibly address, the existing mismatch between inequality and politicisation, or, to put it slightly differently, how to make sense of the weakness of political mobilisation around inequality against the backdrop of growing polarisation. In what follows, we introduce our case study towns.

A mixed methods approach Our study focused on four English towns with very different histories, trajectories, geographies and identities, but with close relationships to larger cities –​three of them to London and one to Manchester. They provide an important analytical comparison since the first two –​Margate and Oldham –​ are economically depressed areas, whereas Oxford and Tunbridge Wells are by many measures among the most prosperous places in the UK. These four towns are also revealing because their political profiles represent strikingly different trajectories. Figure 4.1 visualises the 2016 EU referendum result and the 2019 general election Conservative vote share for all UK parliamentary constituencies. Figure 4.1 shows how polarisation can play out politically in different ways. On the one hand, there is a strong divide between Margate and Oldham, which voted strongly to leave the EU, and Tunbridge Wells and Oxford, which voted to remain. This appears to conform to the standard argument pitting ‘left-​behind’ poor areas as supporting the ‘Leave’ campaign and richer and more prosperous areas supporting ‘Remain’. However, Figure 4.1 shows that the Conservative vote is strongest in Margate, one of the poorer constituencies, but much weaker in Oldham. Prosperous Oxford has the lowest Conservative vote of any of the four towns. The Lib Dem vote (not shown) is strongest in the richer towns, while the areas of Labour Party strength straddle poor Oldham and rich Oxford. Despite the swing towards the Conservatives across the north of England in the 2019 general election, Oldham retains a recognisable profile of a more classic working-​class constituency, with Labour as comfortably the biggest party. The outcome of the general election shows the difficulties of any simplistic ‘left-​behind thesis’ which typically explains the Leave vote in 83

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Figure 4.1: Percentage voting Conservative 2019 versus voting Leave 2016, UK parliamentary constituencies

Source: contains parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0

terms of a nationalistic ‘White’ working-​class vote in poor areas. Indeed, this thesis has been criticised from various angles, including that it overstates the significance of the so-​called ‘left behind’ to electoral results (Dorling, 2016), that it cannot explain why so many abstain from voting altogether, and that ethnic minorities are altogether absent in these accounts (Rhodes et al, 2019). Given these problems, we focus on the specific character of local social relations, which is important for unravelling broader processes of social polarisation across our sites. It is in this spirit that we argue that we need to interrogate local social dynamics, and that a mixed methods perspective which is attuned to local social relationships has a vital role to play. Quantitative methods Evidence of economic and spatial polarisation is drawn from official statistics, namely income, occupational class, area deprivation and population distribution by ethnic group. We present simple analyses that describe states of polarisation that are comparable across space at a point in time; as in our qualitative analysis, we do not include a longitudinal 84

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component. For the purposes of the quantitative analysis, our towns are defined by the built-​up urban area (strictly, the Office for National Statistics [ONS] ‘Built-​up area subdivision’), but income data is only available for the larger local authority area, which (excepting Oxford) includes some rural areas outside the towns. For income, we analyse the gross equivalised household income distribution1 from ‘Pay As You Earn’ income (labour income paid by an employer) and cash benefits (such as child benefit, unemployment benefit and disability benefits), provided by the ONS. It does not include income from self-​employment, property income or other investments. It is ‘equivalised’ household income, adjusted to account for the size of the household (larger households needing higher income to meet their needs). As well as plotting the distributions of income, we report the ratio of the income at the 90th centile to the income at the 10th centile as a summary inequality measure. For occupational class, we use the three-​class version of the National Statistics Socio-​Economic Classification (NS-​SEC) at the 2011 England & Wales Census. As a measure of polarisation, we report the proportion of working age people in the middle occupational class. In our spatial analysis, we map data from the 2015 Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) that measures multiple social deprivation within neighbourhoods (‘Lower Super Output Areas’ or LSOAs) using indicators of income poverty, unemployment, education, local services, housing and crime. This ranks areas relative to all other areas in England (for example, ‘among the most deprived 10 per cent of areas’). To explore patterns of spatial polarisation we plot simple maps that show the location of those areas that are among the 20 per cent most deprived and 20 per cent least deprived areas in England, relative to each other and to the towns’ commercial centres. Finally, we provide a short description of the composition of the population by ethnic group according to the 2011 Census. This is accompanied by a measure of residential population distribution, the Index of Dissimilarity, that indicates the tendency for people not identifying in the ‘White British’ ethnic group to concentrate in particular LSOAs. It varies from zero (completely even distribution) to one (complete concentration).

1

These are experimental ONS statistics, the only current data on the income distribution in these areas. ONS requests reproduction of its disclaimer: ‘The admin-​based income statistics (ABIS) bring together data from the Pay As You Earn (PAYE) and benefit systems to derive estimates of net and gross income. The ABIS are defined as experimental, because both the income measure and coverage are currently incomplete; therefore, these statistics have limited use for decision-​making. Instead, the ABIS demonstrate the potential to produce small area income statistics from administrative data and allow some interim evaluation to be made (taking their partial coverage into account).’ 85

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Ethnographic methods While census and neighbourhood statistics are widely used to examine social divisions, they cannot capture the intricate ways that people live, work and interact in the community. Here, it is essential to combine our statistical analysis with ethnographic methods central to the school of community studies. For a period of at least 12 months between 2018 and 2019 we had four designated ethnographers trained in either or both sociology and anthropology working in each fieldsite: Insa Koch in Oxford; Sarah Cant in Margate; Jill Ebrey in Oldham; and Luna Glucksberg in Tunbridge Wells. Mike Savage participated in focus groups in Margate and Oldham. We also employed locally based research assistants who helped us collect and analyse the data (including Sasha East in Oxford). This qualitative research captured the views and experiences of a number of groups residing and working in the towns, namely: residents from disadvantaged working-​class communities; the town’s economic elites (if any) and business people; artists; local authority frontline workers and professionals; as well as young people aged 18 and over who had grown up in the towns. Here, we focus predominantly on the data from the towns’ marginalised communities facing structural inequalities and on those in the ‘squeezed’ middle which we see as crucial to analyse how local social dynamics are organised as well as to identify the potential for politicising inequality. Our interest in the latter also means that we have opted not to focus on the town’s economic elites in this chapter as they tended to be either absent (in the case of Margate and Oldham) or live completely separate lives (in the case of Oxford and Tunbridge Wells). We devised an open-​ended questionnaire that would allow us to cover broad themes in interviews and focus groups, including: people’s experiences of community life; of divisions and tensions in the town; of politics and change; and of their hopes and thoughts for the future. Before each interview, we gave participants a chance to ask us any questions and all participants signed a consent form. As we got to know our fieldsites better, we revised the questions to make them speak to each of the town’s unique challenges and concerns. To build trust with individuals we spent time in places where we would meet potential informants. Our fieldsites spanned community centres, foodbanks, local authority offices, housing associations and ranged from police stations to business conferences and people’s homes, cafes and pubs. In order to ensure consistency across the research sites, we held regular meetings and, to the extent that this was possible, visited each other’s fieldsites. In the later stages of the data collection, we also held workshops with the statistical team to discuss the different types of data collected. In total, we conducted 38 recorded interviews and five focus groups in Oxford; 39 recorded interviews and eight focus groups in Margate; 34 interviews in 86

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Figure 4.2: Decile plot of household income distribution, tax year ending 2016

Source: Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v.3.0

Tunbridge Wells; in Oldham, 12 focus groups and 11 recorded interviews; and countless more hours were spent collecting data by way of participant observation and informal interviews.

Economic and spatial aspects of polarisation We now turn to our main aim of showing that economic and spatial polarisation takes varying forms in our four case studies and that we need to be attuned to these dynamics to properly comprehend how polarisation plays out ‘on the ground’. We lay out the statistical patterns first, before turning our attention to the ethnographic data. Figure 4.2 shows a percentile plot of the estimated gross household income distribution in 2015/​16, in the four local authority areas that encompass the towns in our study. The vertical axis shows gross equivalised household income from ‘Pay As You Earn’ income and cash benefits. The horizontal axis shows the centile of the distribution. For example, the 90th centile of the income distribution in Thanet is £46,000. This means that 10 per cent of households in the Thanet area have incomes of this or higher. At the other end of the distribution, the 10th centile income means that 10 pe cent of households have this income or lower. Three features of the distributions stand out. First, the income distributions in Thanet and Oldham are strikingly similar, with close similarities also between Oxford and Tunbridge Wells. Second, there is no evidence of an 87

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obvious ‘bimodal’ distribution with a hollowed-​out middle –​if this were the case, there would be a distinct ‘kink’ in the middle of the chart. Instead, the lines are smooth showing a classic skewed distribution of income, with some low incomes, many people grouped around a central value, and a minority with high incomes stretching away from others. We need to pay greater attention to the dynamics in the middle of the distribution rather than concentrate on either elites or the most marginalised groups. Third, the extent of this ‘stretching away’ is evident to a much greater extent in Oxford and Tunbridge Wells. The top 10 per cent of households in Tunbridge Wells have (equivalised) incomes of £82,000 or more; in Oxford their incomes are £66,000 or more. In Oldham and Thanet the equivalent figures are £47,000 and £46,000. Consequently, the gap between rich and poor is much greater in Oxford and Tunbridge Wells, where the ratio between the top and bottom 10 per cent of earners is 6.1 and 7.5 respectively, compared to 4.5 and 4.4 in Oldham and Thanet. On the other hand, the incomes of the poorest 10 per cent are remarkably similar across all areas, between £10,400 and £10,900 per annum (though incomes at the 20th centile diverge significantly between the areas). This is reflected in very different estimated rates of income poverty in the four towns: 9 per cent in Tunbridge Wells, 11 per cent in Oxford, 24 per cent in Margate and 30 per cent in Oldham (estimates from the English Indices of Deprivation 2015, compared to 15 per cent England average). Figure 4.3 shows the breakdown of the working age population in each town by class (NS-​SEC). The 2011 distribution of occupational classes for England shows something of a polarised distribution –​with just 22 per cent of working age people in the second ‘intermediate’ class, a lower proportion than in the first or third classes. By this measure, Oldham, Tunbridge Wells and Margate are polarised to a similar degree as England, with 19 per cent, 22 per cent and 25 per cent of working age people in the intermediate class, respectively. Oxford stands out as being more polarised, with just 15 per cent of working age people in the intermediate class. In Oxford and Tunbridge Wells it is the ‘managerial/​professional’ group that stands out as being overrepresented relative to the other two while in Margate and Oldham the reverse is true with the third ‘routine/​manual’ class overrepresented. The maps in Figure 4.4 show the classification of small neighbourhoods (LSOAs) according to the English IMD 2015. The hatched areas are those that are among the most deprived 20 per cent of areas in England; the dotted areas are among the least deprived 20 per cent. There are very different patterns of neighbourhood deprivation in the four towns. First, the intensity of area deprivation in Margate and Oldham is much greater –​they have four and five neighbourhoods respectively that are among the 1 per cent most deprived in England whereas Tunbridge Wells and Oxford have none. Second, the most deprived parts of Margate 88

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Figure 4.3: Occupational class of working age residents by sex, 2011 Census

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89 Source: 2011 Census, Office for National Statistics Note: figures are for our specific urban sites, rather than local authority boundaries. Points show England average

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Figure 4.4: Index of Multiple Deprivation 2015 for ‘Lower Super Output Areas’

and Oldham are the town centres, whereas in Tunbridge Wells and (for the most part) in Oxford, the most socially deprived areas (those among the 20 per cent most deprived in England) are on the periphery, outside the town centres, and located on the towns’ council estates. In Figure 4.5 we show the distribution of neighbourhoods according to the IMD. Areas to the left are among the most deprived, areas to the right among the least deprived in England. Margate and Oldham have an overrepresentation of neighbourhoods that are in the ‘most deprived’ quintile of the IMD, and none that are in the least deprived quintile. Tunbridge Wells has one area that is in the ‘most deprived’ quintile but an overrepresentation of areas in the ‘least deprived’ quintile. In Oxford the distribution is much more even. Margate and Tunbridge Wells have populations that overwhelmingly identify as being of White British ethnicity (89 per cent and 86 per cent), the majority of the remaining residents identifying as from ‘other White’ ethnic groups. In Oldham just over half the population identifies as White British, and a third as Pakistani or Bangladeshi. Two-​thirds of the Oxford population identify themselves as White British, 12 per cent as other White, 12 per cent as Asian and 4 per cent as Black, this latter group concentrated in the peripheral social housing estates. The Index of Dissimilarity is very high at 0.64 in Oldham, reflecting its striking pattern of residential settlement by ethnic group, with areas that have less than 10 per cent White British 90

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Figure 4.5: Number of ‘Lower Super Output Areas’ by national deprivation quintile, Index of Multiple Deprivation 2015

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91 Source: Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v.3.0

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residents next to areas with over 90 per cent White British residents. The index is relatively low in Oxford (0.14) and Tunbridge Wells (0.17), reflecting less population concentration by ethnic group. Margate has a middling value of 0.33, as people identifying as in ‘other White’ ethnic groups tend to concentrate in the centre of the town. In summary, we can distinguish two different patterns of economic and spatial polarisation. In Margate and Oldham, deprivation concentrates in the town centre, and inequality (and polarisation where it is evident) is poverty-​based. Here, areas are characterised by high levels of poverty, intense social deprivation and a higher than average proportion of people in the lowest ‘routine/​manual’ occupational class, with little evidence of very high incomes at the top end and a low proportion of people in the ‘managerial/​ professional’ class. By contrast, Oxford and Tunbridge Wells exhibit the opposite pattern, where inequality is elite-​based and people experiencing social deprivation are pushed to the geographical periphery of their towns. Rates of income poverty in both towns are below the national average, but incomes at the top of the distribution are very high (even excluding self-​ employment and investment income). Again, there is some evidence of polarisation in terms of occupational class, particularly in Oxford, but this is driven at the top of the distribution where there is an overrepresentation of people in the highest status ‘managerial/​professional’ class. We will now show how these patterns of economic and spatial polarisation sit with our qualitative evidence on relational polarisation.

Relational aspects of polarisation Conviviality and grassroots activism among marginalised populations Let us now consider how these processes of elite-​based and poverty-​based polarisation intersect with our ethnographic analysis of the quotidian activities in the four towns. It is immediately clear that different kinds of people living in the same towns do not command equal value. Tyler (2013) discusses the ways in which marginalised groups are ‘laid to waste’ (Bauman, 2004) and how this process works through the production of ‘labor precariousness’, which produces ‘material deprivation, family hardship, temporal uncertainty and personal anxiety’ (Bauman, 2004, pp 24–​5); the relegation of people to decomposing neighbourhoods in which public and private resources are dwindling; and heightened stigmatisation ‘in daily life as well as in public discourse’ (Bauman, 2004, pp 24–​5). Skeggs (2004) similarly reminds us that these processes are never just physical but involve processes of symbolic devaluation too. All four fieldsites exemplify the damage caused to people in this process, as sometimes entire towns –​in the case of Oldham and Margate –​and at others, particular neighbourhoods (usually the outlying housing estates) –​as in the case of 92

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Oxford and Tunbridge Wells –​come to be defined as places of both abject failure and, in the case of Oxford, paternalistic control by the town’s local establishment who see residents in need of moral guidance and sometimes outright disciplining. Our interlocutors expressed a strong sense that certain populations and the places that they inhabit did not count as ‘proper’ as part of a complex and riven politics of claiming ‘moral ownership’ of towns. Typically, we found that devaluation and stigma was most strongly experienced by the (by now largely post-​industrial) working-​class populations who consider themselves to be ‘local’ to their towns, including mostly British and White residents and, in the case of Oxford, also those of African-​Caribbean descent (often second-​or third-​generation migrants). In both Margate and Oldham, people were thought to sound ‘poor’, ‘working class’, ‘common’ and ‘rough’ by those living in the region. Our working-​class interlocutors spoke of how, when meeting outsiders, they did not want to give away where they were from, for fear of being judged. Sue, for example, a White working-​class woman in Oldham explained: “If somebody says, ‘Where do you come from?’ You’re like … I just say, ‘Near Manchester’, rather than Oldham.” Another White woman called Martha, now in her thirties and living in South Manchester, recounted growing up in Oldham: ‘So, when I was growing up … I would not be proud of being from Oldham and I would never like to admit that I was from Oldham. And my brother and I would pretend that we were from Manchester because we spent all our time in Manchester, all our social time.’ While in both Margate and Oldham, the entire towns and their inhabitants were associated with images of being rough and common, the dynamics in Oxford and Tunbridge Wells were somewhat different. Here, the towns themselves were commonly considered to be ‘success stories’ due to their prosperity and histories; however, residents on the peripheral housing estates spoke of how their neighbourhoods were devalued and written out of the ‘official’ narratives of their towns. In Tunbridge Wells, the large housing estates are located barely more than half an hour’s walk from the wealthy town centre, yet, they feel a world apart. Jack, a White working-​class resident who had always lived on one of the town’s estates, spoke of how people like him were constantly ridiculed for their manners and habits, including for eating badly, going to McDonald’s and not cooking as ‘proper’ people would. Similar stories were recounted in Oxford, on the Blackbird Leys estate, the town’s most notorious and largest post-​war housing estate located four miles from the town centre. Joe, a working-​class man of African-​Caribbean descent who had lived in Blackbird Leys all his life, spoke of how the estate had only ever counted in Oxford’s imaginary as its poor and destitute ‘other’, and 93

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how local authorities had always infantilised its residents by treating them with mistrust and arrogance. And yet, despite feeling devalued, older residents also expressed a sense of pride associated with their working-​class histories. Stories of an industrial past offered an alternative source of value, a way of rewriting people’s relationships to –​and claiming a sense of ownership over –​the towns they lived in. In Oldham, this tended to be expressed by White residents and recounted in memories of the heritage of the cotton manufacturing industry. In Margate, despite a frequently repeated narrative that it had suffered economic and social decline, nostalgia for the vibrancy of working-​class tourism served to anchor contemporary community identity among White working class people. Over a lunchtime pint, retirees Trevor and Bill explained: “[I]‌t was a really thriving area, every one of these places down here, all the hotels and they were full … this pub on a Friday evening, this time of the year you would be standing in line, little bit piano over there, everybody would be singing.” Similarly, in Tunbridge Wells and in Oxford, neither of which are commonly remembered in dominant societal imaginations for their industrial past, people told tales of clay pits, brickworks and of timber merchants (Tunbridge Wells), as well as of the ‘Cowley works’ when estate residents used to work in the car industry (Oxford). In addition to stories of an industrial past, people expressed more mundane and highly localised forms of belonging to their localities. Informal networks have been at the forefront of both the ‘classical’ community studies (Young and Willmott, 1957) and more recent anthropological (Edwards, 2000; Degnen, 2005; Mollona, 2009; Tyler, 2012; Koch, 2018) and sociological (Skeggs and Loveday, 2012; McKenzie, 2015) work. Our interlocutors spoke of the intense familiarity of the people and places they lived in. In Tunbridge Wells, Jack, a White man in his sixties walked Luna down the streets of his childhood, showed her the windows of the flat he lived in when he was child and then pointed out where his family was, nearby, in a tightly knit web: “My aunty used to live there; my mum used to shop there, and play bingo there.” On the Blackbird Leys estate in Oxford, people often spoke about how ‘everyone knows everyone’, and while this was undoubtedly an exaggerated claim, it illustrated how people lay claims of ‘connectedness’ (Edwards, 2000) through shared social networks of neighbours, family and friends. Such connectedness was also expressed by migrant communities. For example, South Asian women emphasised how Oldham was their home. For Sama, “the best thing about Oldham is the close-​knit community”. In Margate, Frieda, an Eastern European working-​class migrant, told Sarah: ‘[It’s] exactly like a small community, everybody knows each other. I went on a holiday to Peterborough last year and it was different, a different environment, not that many Czech and Slovak people, here 94

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it feels like there are lots of Czech and Slovak people. In Margate, you don’t have to be scared to go out in the evening. In Peterborough it’s different, people don’t want to go out in the dark.’ It was this sense of shared belonging to a place and ‘community’ that provided the basis for much grassroots activity, as disadvantaged populations mobilised, often along informal lines, to help one another. These are not demoralised and atomised communities, with plenty of evidence of organisation in the face of austerity politics. Residents and local authority officials in all four towns blamed Universal Credit (a means-​tested cash benefit introduced from 2013) and years of austerity for rising levels of food poverty, rent arrears and mental health problems. On the Blackbird Leys estate in Oxford, various initiatives were in operation, ranging from a local foodbank to an affordable community-​run cafe to, most recently, in light of the unfolding COVID-​19 crisis in the early parts of 2020, informal networks of neighbour support for those struggling to afford even the most basic necessities and to leave the house due to self-​isolation. Similar initiatives existed in the other three towns. In short, then, across all four towns, our working-​class interlocutors continued to express a strong sense of belonging and were part of mutual relations of support, despite –​or perhaps in the face of –​stigma and devaluation that were heavily associated with the towns’ respective working-​ class populations. But alongside this, clear divisions were also articulated.

Divisions and differences between town residents If people in the neighbourhoods narrated a sense of belonging and ‘connectedness’, this should not romanticise town communities: evidence of division and tension was stark. There was a strong sense articulated by our White and non-​White working-​class interlocutors of an ‘us’ and ‘them’ that was both geographically and socially specific to the localities they inhabited. This sense of difference was articulated in distinct ways. In both Oxford and Tunbridge Wells, working-​class residents tended to narrate a sense of antagonism towards the town’s wealthier people, including the landed elites who had long formed part of the towns’ business and political establishments, and the comfortable middle classes. Residents also expressed frustrations about particular urban planning projects or regeneration initiatives that were experienced as unilaterally benefiting the rich and typically also ‘outsiders’, including commuters who had moved down from London. In Tunbridge Wells, this was exemplified by a £77 million development project for a new theatre intended to ‘bring the West End to Tunbridge Wells’. On the estates, residents were angry about such investments: “This town is not for local people, it is only for the rich”, Jack told Luna. “There’s nothing in this town for the people of Sherwood [name of the estate he is from].” 95

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Similarly, in Oxford, various regeneration and property development projects were commonly perceived to benefit only the wealthier groups. A development project that had attracted much discussion concerned the recently opened Westgate shopping centre, a multi-​million-​pound covered shopping mall in the centre of the city which housed a range of mostly high-​end high street brands and expensive restaurants on the roof terrace. But for many town residents, the prices were simply beyond their means and few of them ever went to the shopping centre that they considered to be catering for the ‘rich’ and ‘tourists’ only. For them, the local council’s approval of the shopping centre was proof of a tight imbrication of the business elites with the local Labour-​run council that had let local people down. Both were constructed as a common enemy that failed to look after local people and their needs by promoting investment opportunities that were designed to ‘smarten up’ the town for wealthy tourists and elites. Sue, a White working-​class resident and former housing activist, explained the Westgate development in the following terms: ‘The council make a lot of money out of property developers and that’s why they pushed through the Westgate Centre against every … all the consultation, against everybody that was asked, they relocated vulnerable adults from their sheltered housing in order to build a fricking shopping centre that is absolutely going to bankrupt the rest of Oxford city centre. All the other shops in Oxford city centre that can’t afford to be in the Westgate Centre are losing business hand over fist, the Covered Market [an old market area in Oxford city centre] is a ghost town, but the council, Labour city council, will do that because … they have a very neoliberal attitude towards planning decisions.’ To say that in Tunbridge Wells and Oxford divisions pitched residents against the council and business elites is not to say that other, intra-​class tensions did not exist. For example, the sense of difference that our interlocutors articulated frequently extended to those living in adjacent neighbourhoods, including other working-​class populations. At times, such tension could also be expressed along racial and ethnic lines. In Oxford, particularly the older White working-​class populations sometimes spoke of how migrants were given preferential treatment. Long queues at the pharmacy, extended waiting periods for doctors’ appointments and insufficient housing could be blamed on ‘foreigners’. At the same time, ties between the Caribbean and White working-​class communities were strong and during the period of fieldwork in 2017 and 2018, several grassroots initiatives were active on the Blackbird Leys estate both in support of people affected by the ‘Windrush scandal’ and for refugees. The former council leader explained that the relative absence of racial tensions in Oxford was a positive unintended effect of its dire housing 96

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crisis: because housing was so unaffordable, migrants tended to be ‘pepper potted’ around the city, thus preventing ‘ghettoisation’ and creating the space for diverse ethnic and racial communities to meet. By contrast, in Margate and Oldham narratives of racial and ethnic tension were more common. In Oldham, the major topic of conversation was austerity but this was sometimes refracted through the lens of racism and migration. The scarcity of everyday services is evident in the conversational narratives Jill experienced in focus groups. These service cuts produced resentment among all sections of the long-​term resident working class, both White and South Asian, who feel ‘others’ are accessing those resources unfairly, with the Roma people who have recently settled in Oldham bearing the brunt of the current wave of racism. Likewise, in Margate, the White working-​class population routinely expressed resentment towards the large group of predominantly ‘marginal whites’ (Garner, 2007) –​which, since 2008, has largely included economic migrants from countries of Eastern Europe, predominantly Poles, Slovaks and Czechs, many of whom are Roma. White British working-​class people routinely reported feeling threatened by these groups, being made to feel like they were foreigners in their own town as the streets they called their own had been ‘taken over’ by others. Christine, a White English working-​class woman in her seventies, said: ‘I mean, there is a big influx of immigrants … in our market, you can’t help but see them. Singly, or two or three of them together, fine, but when you see crowds of them together, you know, it does get a bit much. I’m not racist by any means at all … you know? It’s changed the whole demographics of it, it really has … I feel like an outsider.’ There was, like in Oxford and Tunbridge Wells, a nuance to this overarching narrative, however (see also Rhodes et al, 2019). In Oldham, attempts to bridge existing gaps between different ethnic and racial groups included initiatives by the local Labour group, the Interfaith Forum, which connects various religions and a myriad of civil society organisations working together in a spirit of solidarity. More mundanely, our interlocutors often drew a distinction between types of immigrant –​the ‘hard working’ and the ‘non-​ deserving’ –​a recognition that migration brought some clear advantages, but also an easy scapegoat/​explanation for personal difficulty, attached to a belief that the White ‘indigenous’ population had a greater entitlement to services. Some people also recognised that working-​class migrants were undertaking work that the local population would not do –​fruit picking, salad farming and care work –​but this was blamed on structurally low wages and unfair competition, not that the ‘locals’ were lazy. And there were attempts to call out racism too. One White working-​class woman described how, concerned about the lack of opportunities for the children, she contacted the council 97

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for support and then set up a community group and applied for funds to bring the communities together. Charles, a White working-​class resident in Margate, told Sarah: ‘I am fed up … I just can’t stand racism and there is so much racism in this area … everybody blames all the migrants that are here … yes, they are here and yes they have been ghettoised … but that’s not their fault … take this road … the bottom end is the poor end, and top is the posh end. I live in the top end, but in the bottom end there are flats with 20, 10, 15, 20 flats, all bed sits in each house, and they are all refugees or Europeans that have come from a different country. They get the blame for everything … absolutely everything … and it frustrates me … I point out often enough that 97 per cent of refugees and asylum seekers work and pay taxes … but if you only take 3 per cent that’s what people focus on but if you take 3 per cent of British people in the same position they are exactly the same … the fact is that there is a higher percentage of British workers out of work than 3 per cent.’ To sum up, across all four towns, conviviality coexisted alongside a marked sense of difference, with our working-​class interlocutors in Oxford and Tunbridge Wells expressing this in terms of a strongly felt antagonism towards the town’s elites, while in Oldham and Margate, differences tended to fracture along intra-​class and inter-​racial/​ethnic lines. However, it is also important to acknowledge the nuances to such a picture, including the efforts made to overcome such divisions by inter-​faith and inter-​ethnic groups. We now turn to a third area of similarity and difference across our towns: namely, the relative weakness of a ‘middle’ or a middle-​income group of residents –​and the implications of such a situation for town relations.

The missing middle and its conditioning of town politics We saw earlier that polarisation has been understood in terms of a situation in which the extremes of a distribution are growing, and where there is a missing or shrinking ‘middle’; Marcuse’s (1989) image of the hourglass springs to mind. This perspective has been applied in Wacquant’s (2008) discussion of occupational polarisation in the US and in a UK context. At an urban level, Stenning (2020) has studied ‘just about managing’ low-​and middle-​income families in North Tyneside. Roberts (2011) has coined the term of the ‘missing middle’ in youth transitions and the ‘squeezed middle’ has been explored by Antonucci et al (2017) in the context of Brexit. However, our statistical analysis has shown that across all of our four towns, there were ‘middles’ in terms of large numbers of people with incomes 98

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intermediate between high and low earners. Nonetheless our ethnographic research revealed how middle-​range groups felt increasingly ‘squeezed’ in the case of Oxford and Tunbridge Wells, experiencing anxiety about loss of social mobility, while in Margate, their relative absence was being filled by the arrival of a new class of ‘creatives’. These ‘middle’ groups, however, had little connection with the towns’ existing working-​class populations, thus adding to a sense of divisions. In both Oxford and Tunbridge Wells, local authority workers and professionals were concerned about the pressures experienced by, and the subsequent lack of, a middle-​range income group of residents who sat between the wealthy elites and the working-​class populations. In Tunbridge Wells, this ‘squeezed’ middle was articulated in both generational and economic terms, especially in middle-​class circles. There was a remarkable absence of people aged between 18 and 40, as people tended to leave the city for university education and return to settle with families later on in life. Moreover, people on middle-​range incomes often could not afford to live in the town and lived in the surrounding villages. Their positions were clearly more comfortable than those of the working-​class people we encountered earlier and from whom they clearly distinguished themselves. But, at the same time, they lacked the economic means to keep up with even wealthier people. This is how a White, middle-​class and self-​ascribed left-​ leaning professional working described her experience of living in the town: ‘When my children were at school I understood a lot more about Tunbridge Wells than I had ever. When my youngest was in primary school, I felt we were too posh for the school; my accent was not right at the school gate, we would occasionally go on holiday, my partner and I worked. Then she moved to secondary school, and all of a sudden we were too poor: she did not have a horse, or an iPad, and her phone was not top of the range; we were not holidaying in Europe every few months, and having a ‘proper’ holiday somewhere further afield in the summer. It was like being always slightly off kilter, there was never a middle ground to hold on to. Or if we were the middle ground, we were definitely in a minority.’ In Oxford, similar anxieties over the lack of a middle were articulated. Local authority officials were acutely aware of the fact that the town was unaffordable for middle-​income people working in the public health, charity, university administration and business sectors, with 40,000 people commuting from surrounding villages and towns into the city on a daily basis. Linda, a White, comfortably middle-​class woman in her late fifties, also expressed concerns about the ‘squeezed middle’. She and her husband lived in an owner-​occupied house in a nice part of town, but spoke of how 99

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ever rising property prices meant that the same privileges no longer existed for their university-​educated children. She explained: “I think there are people like us who bought our houses ages ago when it was still relatively affordable and we’re sitting fat and happy and, you know, we’re fine, and we’ll probably just, you know, hang in there.” But Linda also worried that “there are fewer people in Oxford in the middle and that we’re becoming more kind of wealthy people and really desperate people”. The ‘missing middle’ further conditioned town politics in interesting ways. In Tunbridge Wells, there was a lack of progressive politics/​political initiatives in what has always been a Conservative Party-​run local authority. In Oxford, the situation was somewhat different, it being a Labour-​ dominated council and a ‘liberal’ university town. Local activism flourished, including a recently formed housing cooperative; a community land trust project; and a social enterprise that reclaimed under-​used buildings in the city and rented them out to local groups at a non-​profit rate. These projects, often consciously presented as alternatives to a neoliberal housing market, also faced much resistance, including from private developers and a conservative rural lobby opposed to more housing. But their activists’ cultural and educational capital, and their social networks, also meant that they were able to tap into national political agendas to further their own purpose in ways that the working-​class populations could not. What is more, these activities tended to remain almost entirely divorced from the grassroots activities of the more disadvantaged populations. This, as well as the highly class-​specific nature of these projects, meant that the working-​class populations often regarded activists with suspicion or even anger, seeing them as yet another example of a tight imbrication of the local establishments in town. By contrast, in Oldham and in Margate, the story played out somewhat differently again. There, the middle was not ‘squeezed’ but rather absent, often by choice, as in both places middle-​class professionals tended to live outside the towns. Each town has also embraced, in recent times, a ‘culture-​ led’ development strategy. In Oldham, a middle-​income group of mostly public sector professionals, while mostly living in the ring around the city centre and in surrounding rural areas, travel to work in the town and still participate both in more old-​fashioned forms of civic culture such as choirs and amateur theatre, initiatives in the newly regenerated town centre, as well as in groups campaigning around social issues. In Margate, an art-​led regeneration strategy that saw the opening of the Turner gallery, had heralded the arrival of the ‘creative classes’ from London, referring to themselves as ‘dfl’ (down from London) and attracted to the town because of its ‘edginess’, its ‘buzz’, as well as its affordability. Margate was presented as a sort of terra nullius, an unspoiled territory, on which to play out a creative life, distinct from conventional middle-​class values. Damian, a White British artist in 100

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his mid-​thirties, used family money to buy the home he could not afford in London and explained what attracted him to the town: ‘I now adore Margate and I sort of fell in love with it when I got off the train really … being on the beach was good … the feeling of space and emptiness was really nice … it felt really exciting … and I sort of like derelict things and so it was very atmospheric … so it was a good mix between desolation and friendship I suppose … it’s multicultural and its contemporary … like I walked down there the other day and there were … clearly families of all different ethnic backgrounds … and then there were girlfriends holding hands … there were camp gay guys chatting with their friends … there were straight couples … there were lads out … there were people there with their kids … and it was like … this feels like the modern world, like modern Britain.’ In Margate, the appropriation of the areas for creative endeavours occurs in numerous ways: not only are the hipster spaces expensive and exclusive, but the other shops and cafes can be confidently inhabited by the new residents –​ who enjoy ‘an occasional fry up’. Hence, the ‘new’ middle in Margate (similar to the ‘squeezed’ middle in Oxford) was not breaking down divisions with the existing working-​class population but reinforcing them, and in doing so is actively shaping local power imbalances. Interestingly, however, the working-​class population in Margate did not seem to resent the presence of the ‘new creatives’ in town. In marked contrast to the resentment that was articulated by Oxford and Tunbridge Wells working-​class residents towards the wealthier strata of their towns, there was a sense that these ‘creatives’ were welcome, certainly more so than the Eastern European working-​class migrants. A White British secondhand shop owner put it in the following words: “They are a better class of people. They are a mixture of people moving down from London they are buying up big houses in these roads … they’ve sold up in London and buying property here. [They are] what I call serious buyers.” In short, across all four towns, despite the existence of middle-​income groups, socially and culturally the middle was weak and unable to leave its own ‘stamp’ on local social relations. This thereby further exacerbated town divisions. In Oxford and Tunbridge Wells, a ‘squeezed’ middle and, in Margate, an incoming group of ‘creatives’, championed their own social and cultural projects that were almost wholly divorced from the lived realities of the towns’ respective working classes. But while working-​class residents in Oxford and Tunbridge Wells were resentful of the relative privileges still enjoyed by the ‘squeezed’ middle, in Margate no such antagonism was expressed towards the ‘creatives’. One reason for this difference might be 101

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that the arrival of these classes has not (yet) driven up property prices and started displacing local people. This makes it possible for residents to read the arrival of the ‘creative classes’ through a lens of ‘smartening’ the area, which appeals to the White working-​class population, many of whom feel that Eastern European working-​class migrants have been dragging down the ‘tone’ of the place, and have a stronger affiliation and respect for White middle-​class residents. It is possible that in the future, as more and more ‘creatives’ gentrify Margate and start to drive up housing prices, local discourses around who is welcome and who is not might well become more focused upon the wealthier ‘elites’.

Conclusion The concept of polarisation, where the extremes of a distribution are growing and where there is a shrinking ‘middle’, has attracted recent interest driven by concerns about the consequences of inequality in British society. However, this can lead to a dichotic picture, seeing Britain as increasingly divided between the ‘left behind’ in contrast to its elite cosmopolitan counterparts. While the growing gap between poor and rich is undeniable, our qualitative and quantitative analysis has cautioned against drawing a simplistic picture at the local level. Thus, our quantitative analysis has distinguished important differences between the towns, one where inequality is characterised by the presence of a large elite class (in Oxford and Tunbridge Wells) and one where inequality is characterised by the depth and extent of poverty (in Oldham and Margate); linked to social deprivation concentrating in the town centre versus one of social deprivation being pushed to the periphery. Our ethnography has further nuanced this picture. Notwithstanding broader patterns of polarisation, across all our fieldsites, we have shown that marginalised populations narrate a strong sense of belonging and engage in grassroots activity. But divisions are also articulated in each town, with respect to both the towns’ elites (in Oxford and Tunbridge Wells) and to ethnic and racial minorities (in Oldham and Margate), and reinforced in each case by the lack of a strong presence of groups in the middle, who might be intermediaries. While we warn against the risks of simply mapping relational dynamics onto spatial and economic polarisation, it is instructive to place our micro-​ level data in conversation with our statistical analysis, particularly in relation to understanding the claims of moral ownership that residents feel able to make over their towns. In Oxford and Tunbridge Wells, wealth is highly visible in the form of property developments, regeneration projects and, in Oxford, the university located in the town centre. These initiatives mask the economic and spatial alienation that residents on outlying estates might experience towards a town centre which they rarely visit, and reinforce a felt 102

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inability to claim the town as being rightfully ‘theirs’. At the same time, a lack of felt ownership can generate unexpected forms of (inter-​ethnic) solidarity, such as in Oxford where de facto policies of ‘pepper potting’ immigrants in different neighbourhoods have produced a shared sense of ‘us’ and ‘them’. In comparison, despite considerable investment in regeneration projects, significant wealth is not visible in Oldham and Margate. In Oldham, this allowed both White and ethnic minority working-​class residents to retain a greater sense of moral ownership, whereas in Margate there was greater evidence of the White working class seeking to reclaim their desire for moral ownership in the face of a racialised narrative of loss, leading to stronger anti-​immigrant sentiment (as evidenced by the unusually strong presence of UKIP in that town). Statistical data on economic and spatial polarisation also elaborates our ethnographic observations with respect to the ‘squeezed’ or ‘missing’ middle. Across the four towns, we noted the relative weakness of middle-​income inhabitants, with this group being almost entirely absent from Oldham and Margate, and being increasingly pushed out in Oxford and Tunbridge Wells. In both Oxford and Tunbridge Wells, this polarisation driven by wealthier groups created a situation whereby those on a middle-​range salary are effectively ‘squeezed out’: both unable to get on social housing register lists and to buy into the local housing market, these people experience a precarity –​and an anxiety that comes with it –​that is specific to their particular class position and age. Meanwhile, in Oldham and Margate, poverty-​based polarisation and spatial patterns of the towns’ socioeconomic make-​up meant that the same problems of unaffordability do not arise. Here, middle-​income people often choose to live outside of town out of their own volition, partly because, as we have seen, the town centres are very deprived. While in Oldham, this has reinforced the solid working-​class make-​up and reputation of the town, Margate has recently seen the arrival of the ‘creative classes’ who are escaping high property prices in London and feel attracted to Margate for its ‘edginess’. Notwithstanding these important differences between the towns, we also found some strong common themes cutting across the broader patterns of polarisation. Across all four towns there were impressive efforts to form solidarity movements that link up marginalised constituencies and connect them to more powerful ones, often against the grain of austerity and housing pressures. Nonetheless, there was generally an absence of effective communication or interrelations between different social groups. There were exceptions: in Oldham, most notably, we found this to be particularly the case with respect to initiatives that attempt to bridge ethnic and racial tensions. Here, efforts to shore up mediation between different groups included initiatives by the local Labour group and the Interfaith Forums. Meanwhile in Oxford, attempts to speak on behalf of broader social issues 103

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included a range of local projects undertaken around the local (and national) housing crisis. However, notwithstanding the good intentions and efforts put into them by mostly middle-​class activists, such and other initiatives remain far and few between. Crucially, in Oxford, they also tend to be riddled with the same suspicion and paternalistic relations common to interactions between disadvantaged and more privileged groups, rather than providing genuine spaces for exchange. The limits of these grassroots initiatives speak to a broader issue: that of how local configurations of social relations can help explain the weakness of popular mobilisation around growing levels of inequality in Britain today. It is striking that despite the growth of economic inequality, meritocratic beliefs have, if anything, become stronger (Mijs, 2019). Likewise, civic society movements capable of ‘capturing’ broad constituencies have been in decline, while the Labour Party and political left have increasingly been colonised by well-​educated groups, thus losing a large part of their traditional working-​ class vote (Evans and Tilley, 2017; Piketty, 2020). Recent explanations have tended to locate the causes of de-​politicisation in the broader power dynamics acting upon the most marginalised, whether this is along the lines of a Bourdieuian analysis of mis-​recognition and symbolic violence (for example, Bourdieu et al, 1999; Charlesworth, 2001; Atkinson, 2010), or alternatively, in terms of a perspective that locates intra-​class alienation in the conditions of neoliberal rule (Dench et al, 2006; Edwards et al, 2012). Instructive as these insights are, these stark accounts can over-​dramatise more mundane day-​to-​day dynamics: namely how the relative lack of intermediary institutions and actors explains both the weaknesses of, but also potential remedies for, organising collective struggles. Indeed, the angle adopted here fits well with recent attempts in both social network analysis (Burt, 2009; Stovel and Shaw, 2012) and anthropological engagements in settings of austerity (Koch and James, 2022; Koch, 2021, Koster, 2014; Tuckett, 2018) to foreground the importance of brokers in mobilising broader collectives. The former strand has shown that within corporate organisations, brokers, who form bridges between cliques who would otherwise not be in contact, can enjoy disproportionate influence and can be crucial vehicles of mobilisation and organisational efficacy. Similarly, the anthropological lens has looked at how brokers ‘move between their clients and the institutions, authority figures and actors that their clients struggle to access, occupy a veritable in-​between position, deriving their legitimacy from their seeming proximity to the “common people” while also possessing specialist skills and knowledge that the latter lack’ (Koch and James, 2020). Applied to community relations, our data shows equivalent kinds of local mediators are frequently absent from, or may not be able to operate to bridge different social groups, whether these be neighbourhood-​or interest-​based, into effective alliances. It follows 104

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too that these intermediaries are not necessarily members of a particular social class or ethnicity, but are individuals or institutions who occupy a position of trusted leadership typically grounded in localised networks of exchange. This kind of framing might help explain why Margate and Oldham, despite experiencing similar ‘poverty-​based’ polarisation, have such varying political trajectories. In Oldham, the persistence of older civic infrastructure and working-​class urban presence has facilitated ongoing command by the Labour Party, whereas the outsider led arts-​regeneration strategy in Margate has failed to stem longer-​term tensions associated with immigration, and it is striking that despite its high deprivation, it remains a very safe Conservative seat (though this partly reflects the fact that it has wealthy wards within it). How then can inequality be re-​politicised from within different localities? In a context of stark polarisation, what does it take to mobilise collective energies for redressing growing polarisation? First, and foremost, our analysis suggests that local mediating institutions and actors who can bridge the gap between different groups need to be strengthened. These mediators can come from different walks of life, and while, historically, many have been drawn from what we identified as the ‘squeezed’ middle, this is not necessarily the case. Rather, they can include professional service providers, civil society groups, political organisations and, crucially, also grassroots social movements. Second, intermediaries have to be recognised as legitimate leaders or representatives by their constituencies. This typically requires them to invest into long-​term and reciprocal relations with local people through the pursuit of a ‘bread and butter’ politics (Koch, 2016), and to link these effectively to more vertical channels of power. Finally, adequate funding and resources need to be available to support those engaging in grassroots action so that groups can build long-​term platforms for sustainable action. This, however, not only requires an urgent stop on British austerity politics but a deeper reversal of the damages caused by longer-​term patterns of inequality.

Acknowledgements We would like to thank the LSE (though the Institute for Global Affairs) for funding this research, and Liza Ryan for helping to manage the budget. Thanks to other team members Tom Kemeny, Andrew Miles, Neil Lee, Aaron Reeves and David Soskice, and to all those who assisted with our fieldwork. We would also like to thank SAGE and the journal Sociology for giving us permission to reprint this paper with some added edits. Finally our thanks to Gesa Stedman and to Jana Gohrisch for inviting us to be part of this edited volume, and to the other contributors for their feedback on this chapter. 105

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Goodwin, M.J. and Heath, O. (2016) ‘The 2016 referendum, Brexit and the left behind: An aggregate-​level analysis of the result’, The Political Quarterly, 87(3): 323–​32. Goos, M. and Manning, A. (2007) ‘Lousy and lovely jobs: The rising polarization of work in Britain’, Review of Economics and Statistics, 89(1): 118–​33. Hobolt, S.B. (2016) ‘The Brexit vote: A divided nation, a divided continent’, Journal of European Public Policy, 23(9): 1259–​77. Jenkins, S.P. (2016) ‘The income distribution in the UK’, in H. Dean and L. Platt (eds) Social Advantage and Disadvantage, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp 135–​60. Johnston, R., Poulsen, M. and Forrest, J. (2003) ‘Ethnic residential concentration and a “new spatial order?”: Exploratory analyses of four United States metropolitan areas, 1980–​2000’, International Journal of Population Geography, 9(1): 39–​56. Koch, I. (2016) ‘Bread-​and-​butter politics: Democratic disenchantment and everyday politics on an English council estate’, American Ethnologist, 43(2): 282–​94. Koch, I. (2018) Personalizing the State: An Anthropology of Law, Politics, and Welfare in Austerity Britain, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Koch, I. (2021) ‘The guardians of the welfare state: Universal Credit, welfare control and the moral economy of frontline work in austerity Britain’, Sociology, 55(2): 243–​62. Koch, I. and James, D. (2022) ‘The state of the welfare state: Advice, governance and care in settings of austerity,’ Ethnos, 85(1): 1–​21. Koster, M. (2014) ‘Bridging the gap in the Dutch participation society: New spaces of governance, brokers and informal politics’, Etnofoor, 26(2): 49–​64. Marcuse, P. (1989) ‘Dual city: A muddy metaphor for a quartered city’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Studies, 13(4): 697–​708. McKenzie, L. (2015) Getting By: Estates, Class and Culture in Austerity Britain, London: Policy Press. Mijs, J.J.B. (2019) ‘The paradox of inequality: Income inequality and belief in meritocracy go hand in hand’, Socio-​Economic Review, 19(1): 7–​35. Mollona, M. (2009) Made in Sheffield: An Ethnography of Industrial Work and Politics, New York: Berghahn Books. Piketty, T. (2014) Capital in the 21st Century, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Piketty, T. (2020) Capital and Ideology, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pratschke, J. and Morlicchio, E. (2012) ‘Social polarisation, the labour market and economic restructuring in Europe: An urban perspective’, Urban Studies, 49(9): 1891–​907.

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Rapport, N. (1993) Diverse World-​V iews in an English Village, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Reardon, S.F. and Bischoff, K. (2011) ‘Income inequality and income segregation’, American Journal of Sociology, 116(4): 1092–​153. Rhodes, J., Ashe, S. and Valluvan, S. (2019) Reframing the ‘Left Behind’: Race and Class in Post-​Brexit Oldham, Manchester: British Academy, Leverhulme Trust and University of Manchester. Rishbeth, C. and Rogaly, B. (2018) ‘Sitting outside: Conviviality, self-​care and the design of benches in urban public space’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 43(2): 284–​98. Roberts, S. (2011) ‘Beyond “NEET” and “tidy” pathways: Considering the “missing middle” of youth transition studies’, Journal of Youth Studies, 14(1): 21–​39. Rogaly, B. and Taylor, B. (2011) ‘What does migration mean for the “white working class” in the UK?’, COMPAS Breakfast Briefings, [online] 1 April, Available from: https://​www.com​pas.ox.ac.uk/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​BB-​ 2011_​Whit​e_​wo​rkin​g_​cl​ass.pdf [Accessed 10 November 2022]. Sabater, A., Graham, E. and Finney, N. (2017) ‘The spatialities of ageing: Evidencing increasing spatial polarisation between older and younger adults in England and Wales’, Demographic Research, 36(25): 731–​44. Saunders, P. (1981) Social Theory and the Urban Question, London: Routledge. Savage, M. (2010) Identities and Social Change in Britain since 1940: The Politics of Method, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Savage, M. and Warde, A. (1993) Urban Sociology, Capitalism and Modernity, Basingstoke: Macmillan International Higher Education. Savage, M., Bagnall, G. and Longhurst, B.J. (2005) Globalization and Belonging, London: SAGE. Savage, M., Cunningham, N., Devine, F., Friedman, S., Laurison, D., McKenzie, L., Miles, A., Snee, H. and Wakeling, P. (2015) Social Class in the 21st Century, London: Penguin. Skeggs, B. (2004) Class, Self, Culture, London: Routledge. Skeggs, B. and Loveday, V. (2012) ‘Struggles for value: Value practices, injustice, judgement, affect and the idea of class’, The British Journal of Sociology, 63(3): 472–​90. Slater, T. (2018) ‘The invention of the “sink estate”: Consequential categorisation and the UK housing crisis’, The Sociological Review, 66(4): 877–​97. Stacey, M. (1960) Tradition and Change: A Study of Banbury, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stenning, A. (2020) ‘Feeling the squeeze: Towards a psychosocial geography of austerity in low-​to-​middle income families’, Geoforum, 110(10): 200–​10. Stovel, K. and Shaw, L. (2012) ‘Brokerage’, Annual Review of Sociology, 38(1): 139–​58.

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Tuckett, A. (2018) ‘Ethical brokerage and self-​fashioning in Italian immigration bureaucracy’, Critique of Anthropology, 38(3): 245–​64. Tyler, I. (2013) Revolting Subjects: Social Abjection and Resistance in Neo-​Liberal Britain, London: Zed Books. Tyler, I. (2020) Stigma: The Machinery of Inequality, London: Zed Books. Tyler, K. (2012) Whiteness, Class and the Legacies of Empire: On Home Ground, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Wacquant, L. (2008) Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality, Cambridge: Polity. Young, J. (1999) The Exclusive Society: Social Exclusion, Crime and Difference in Late Modernity, London: SAGE. Young, M.D. and Willmott, P. (1957) Family and Kinship in East London, London: Routledge & Paul.

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“Go Away, But Don’t Leave Us”: Affective Polarisation and the Precarisation of Romanian Essential Workers in the UK Anisia Petcu

Introduction The UK has always been a country that, much like all developed economies, has relied on a migrant workforce for its economic prosperity. This element of global capitalism goes back centuries and is riddled with exploitation and injustice, which has endured until today. In very broad strokes, the pattern speaks of an economic system that is happy to allow people from less economically developed countries to enter the UK and work towards its growth for sub-​par pay and benefits as long as it can ensure that the very same people remain outsiders with fewer benefits and protections than the White UK-​born population. One need look no further back than the 2018 Windrush scandal to see that the present injustices and inequalities are still enduring (Gentleman, 2020; The Guardian, 2021). Since joining the EU in 2007, Romanian and Bulgarian workers have also become part of this history of exploitation in the UK. They have gained notoriety as a population perceived as corrupt, as criminals and ‘benefit scroungers’, as diseased and dangerous for the local population. Vilified in the media, treated as second-​class citizens (The Migration Observatory, 2014; McGrath, 2019), they are nevertheless crucial to the British economy, particularly due to the countless so-​called ‘low-​skilled’ but essential jobs that they do: care work, factory work, maintenance and cleaning, or work in agriculture and the food industry (GLAA, 2020). 110

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This contradictory status was highlighted with painful clarity in the wake of the first COVID-​19 lockdown restrictions. Migrant seasonal agricultural workers were initially forced to return to Romania, leaving British crops unpicked in the fields and British farmers in a critical situation (Harvey, 2020). Employers and even the government went to great lengths to try and offset this imbalance by recruiting British workers, many of whom had been furloughed, to work at picking the crops. Nevertheless, British authorities and employers soon discovered that British workers were unwilling to do the backbreaking work that agriculture entailed and especially for the low pay that was being offered. Pressed for time, the solution was not to increase pay, nor to improve working conditions, nor to make the jobs more appealing for British workers (at the expense, one would assume, of a share of the profits); rather the solution was to charter in Romanian agricultural workers, who had both the experience, the willingness and the endurance to work for the low pay that was being offered (O’Carroll, 2020a, 2020b). This situation highlighted yet again a paradoxical and painful process in British society (and in neoliberal economies more broadly): that immigrants are simultaneously discursively rejected and vital to running the economy. The neoliberal economic system, as it stands, cannot function without a vulnerable social group1 that it can simultaneously exploit and blame for the ills it is creating. Those groups are often the economically disadvantaged, with migrants an increasingly significant proportion (see Castles and Kosack, 1973, quoted in Briggs and Dobre, 2014, p 10; Allen, 2009). Employers and politicians need these social groups as scapegoats –​they can shift onto them the blame for poverty, low wages, lack of benefits and limited social welfare. The destabilisation of society that has ensued from austerity can then be attributed not to greedy, unregulated market policies, but to the allegedly lazy, work-​shy lower classes, on whose lack of productivity the failures can be blamed (Tyler, 2015). Those most affected become the imaginary culprits, thus effectively hindering empathy and solidarity. Added to this class discrimination, there is also the layer of racism that is embedded in capitalism (Bhattacharyya, 2018), which ensures that further divisions also hinder solidarity, collective action and a recognition of shared struggles. Romanians, and immigrants more broadly, are caught in the crossfire of these destructive dynamics.

1

It is important to note that this group cannot be regarded as a coherent whole –​people find themselves in danger of exploitation or actually exploited on the basis of several characteristics, such as language, ethnicity or race, physical ability and so on. The purpose of this chapter is to focus on Romanian migrant workers, but the mechanisms affect a much larger segment of the population, most of which fulfil the same kinds of indispensable roles under similarly disadvantageous conditions. An intersectional approach is therefore necessary. 111

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This chapter therefore takes as a starting point the outbreak of the COVID-​19 pandemic in order to analyse the status of Romanian agricultural workers in the UK,2 highlighting the role that affective polarisation plays in shaping economic relations and upholding disparities. To do so, it will first look at their position by taking into account the broad context of the neoliberal international economy and Romania’s position in that economy in order to understand their motivation for migrating. It will then illustrate how affective polarisation serves to ensure that Romanian low-​skilled workers continue to remain in a marginalised position, by creating an ‘us–​them’ mentality in the local population, which hinders solidarity and effective political organising. My argument is that migrant Romanian workers suffer a double process of othering, on account of their being part of the ‘lower classes’ as well as being Eastern European and thus considered ethnically ‘other’. This process of affective polarisation3 ensures that their position in British society remains marginal, thus making them easier to exploit and vilify. In order to illustrate this point, I will analyse the negative media coverage that they have received as well as the processes of racialisation that they undergo in British society.

Romanians in the UK The Romanian contingent in the UK can be looked at from both a temporal and a causal perspective. Romanians can be divided depending on when they reached the UK (pre-​or post-​1989, pre-​or post-​EU ascension), as well as depending on their reasons for coming to the UK. These can be broadly divided into two categories: ‘academic’ migration and ‘labour’ migration. The former are migrants who come to the UK already possessing the specific skills and knowledge required to advance in their studies or open up career possibilities, while the latter are workers whose main goal is short-​term economic gain, and whose existence is marked by uncertainty (see Romocea, 2012, pp 125–​6). This latter, more visible, group forms the focus of this chapter. Because of the restrictions imposed by the Communist regime, the pre-​1989 Romanian contingent in the UK was low, and consisted mostly of political refugees and asylum seekers. From the 1990s until Romania

2

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The totality of the migrant Romanian population in the UK comprises a lot more than economically unstable seasonal workers. Many Romanians are professionals working in high-​paying jobs: examples of neoliberal success. Nevertheless, they are neither as visible nor as vulnerable as low-​skilled workers. Therefore, this chapter does not take them into account. I employ the broad definition of affective polarisation outlined in the Introduction to this volume, drawing on Hobolt et al (2020), which sees the phenomenon as not only limited to partisan affiliation, but more broadly applicable to opinion-​based identities. 112

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joined the EU, the flow of Romanians arriving in the UK was increasing but still slow (Romocea, 2012, pp 124–​5). The first key moment in the history of Romanian migration to the UK came in 2007, when the country joined the EU. It was seen as a crucial opportunity by Romanians, because the promise of the right to travel and work abroad in the EU (which at the time also included the UK) brought with it the hope of better work opportunities and the overall improvement of economic conditions (Romocea, 2012, p 124). However, in the UK, the accession of Romania and the eventual lifting of travel restrictions in 2014 triggered great alarm and fearmongering among the general population, stoked by right-​wing politicians and tabloid media. In the UK, Romanians and Bulgarians were portrayed as dangerous individuals coming to the UK to exploit the social security systems and undertake criminal activities. High-​profile politicians such as Nigel Farage, for example, made explicitly xenophobic statements regarding Romanians (O’Brien, 2014), and publications such as the Daily Mail stoked fear by publishing fake information about the alleged ‘hordes’ and ‘tidal waves’ of Romanian and Bulgarian citizens ready to ‘swamp Britain’ on 1 January 2014 (Craven and Arbuthnott, 2013; Greenslade, 2014). In the first year after the removal of work and travel restrictions: most articles on Romanians published by British newspapers highlighted aspects like their poverty and criminality. … Politically, present Romanian migration to Britain has been particularly contentious, with both the tabloid press and far right political parties promoting an exclusionary and racist rhetoric, emphasizing both the economic danger they pose for UK workers and their ‘otherness’. (Paraschivescu, 2020, pp 2670–​1) A big reason for this fear was the fact that Romanian and Bulgarian accession came in ‘the aftermath’ of the accession of the A8 countries to the EU, against a background of migration from Eastern Europe in general, with Polish immigration to the UK in particular becoming a very heated topic. The UK was one of the very few countries which had not imposed a period of travel and work restrictions following the A8 EU accession in 2005. This meant that numerous workers migrated from the east into the UK, so that by 2015, there were almost 800,000 Polish workers active in the UK (Hall, 2016), becoming one of the country’s largest immigrant groups. The overall numbers of A8 immigrants that entered the UK as a consequence of this decision greatly surpassed the expectations of British authorities, making it ‘undoubtedly the largest ever single in-​migration to the UK’ (Fitzgerald and Smoczyński, 2017, p 660). This shifted immigration to the top of the government’s agenda and created a fear of migration as a process that is 113

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difficult to forecast and to control, especially within the framework of liberties demanded by the EU (Petrache, 2019, pp 223–​4). This fear of immigration became even more acute once the country was hit by the financial crisis of 2008, when cuts made the available social security even more scarce. The new austerity measures created an even deeper sense of insecurity in the UK, exacerbating the feeling that there are simply not enough resources to be shared with immigrants. This all had the effect that when the UK lifted travel and work restrictions for Romanians in 2014, right-​wing politicians and tabloid media were already alarmed at the imagined ‘wave’ of immigrants that were going to take over the country. Therefore, an attack was mounted on them in the press, with public voices casting them as dangerous, criminal, unwanted additions to the country –​see, for example, Nigel Farage, who in 2014 stated that ‘[a]‌ny normal and fair-​minded person would have a perfect right to be concerned if a group of Romanian people suddenly moved in next door’ (BBC, 2014). Misinformation regarding their cultural practices and intentions was rife and drew attention to this new group of immigrants as a danger to the British economy and society (Fox et al, 2012).

So why come to the UK in the first place? One might ask why then do Romanians and Bulgarians choose to come to the UK if they are discriminated against, exploitation is rife, work is hard and the pay is not what it should be? The answer is, of course, complex, and individual reasons may vary, but it comes down to this: it is the lesser of two evils. Regardless of the target country, Romanians who choose seasonal work abroad generally invoke the same reasons: the lack of opportunity in Romania, lack of social funding and support, precarious living conditions, debts and hardship, domestic violence, and neglect by the authorities (Teleleu, 2020, 2021a, 2021b; Țenter, 2020). They are pushed into this decision by a wish to provide for their families and to make up for some of the shortages that they face in their daily lives, for which they are unable to secure institutional or state support: the lack of indoor plumbing, electricity, heating and house maintenance. They also come to the UK ‘in search of an alternative to the soaring unemployment and corrupt politics in Romania’, under a political regime ‘that has “chameleoned” itself in the transition from communism to a supposed form of democracy’ (Briggs and Dobre, 2014, p 1). They are seeking a solution to the problems caused by an economic system that, once it embraced neoliberalism, did so at amazing speed, ‘[obliterating] social cohesion concerns’ (Ban, 2016, p 1) and leaving the most vulnerable even more exposed and unprotected –​those who have now become Romania’s notorious migrant workforce. 114

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These shifts in Romania’s economy following the fall of the Communist regime need to be placed within the broader context of the global shift towards neoliberal ideology and policies (Briggs and Dobre, 2014, p 84). Alongside this is the very entry of Romania into the EU, which was celebrated as an event of the utmost importance and a promise of a better life, but which in fact has meant the opening of Romania to exploitation from big financial players (such as the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund [IMF]) and European companies: The activity of the institutions known as Bretton Woods loan-​givers, i.e. the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as well as the European Commission, officially attempted to support the country’s systemic adjustment to the Western world, bringing in anti-​ communist narratives and promising the right to property, freedom, and prosperity. At the same time these states supported the regulation of global capitalism by connecting less advanced economies to the advanced ones and reproducing uneven development. (Miszczyński, 2019, p 20) International players are now able to outsource their work to Romania for far less pay, and often with fewer restrictions or obligations towards the employees than in Western Europe (Ban, 2016, p 5). Forced to compete on the international market, Romania has become a country with low tax rates and low wages as its key competitive factor (Ban, 2016, pp 5–​6), which offered its public sectors up for privatisation and handed them to foreign investors, who were able to reap the benefits and did not concern themselves much with the costs: ‘The price tag was high and multi-​f aceted. Public utilities were privatized, and private operators took the almost guaranteed profits that utilities generate. However, according to the government auditor (the Court of Accounts), they raised prices close to EU levels while not making the promised billions of euro investments’ (Ban, 2016, pp 5–​6; emphasis added). With the involvement of the IMF, the World Bank and the EU,4 Romania privatised a significant part of its economic sectors in the first years of the 21st century, which left the state weaker and less capable to provide its citizens with affordable products and services.

4

It needs stating that membership of the EU has undoubtedly also brought benefits to Romanian society, particularly when one considers the issue of minority rights. In a religious and conservative society, the influence of the EU and the European Court have been crucial factors in the push for more equality and a decrease in discrimination against ethnic and sexual minorities, for example. 115

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These decisions [uncompetitive international privatizations, forms of state aid for new transnational industries, subsidies and tax breaks for large companies, fiscal measures that disproportionally benefit the upper levels of the income pyramid] came at the expense of the social cohesion and state investment in education, research and other key enablers of sustainable development. (Ban, 2016, pp 5–​6) This in turn contributed to the citizens’ precarious living conditions and motivated/​forced them to emigrate in search of work (Briggs and Dobre, 2014, p 88). It has been argued that ‘migrant work abroad became a safety valve for extreme and extensive social dislocations … a structural aspect of the Romanian welfare system’ (Ban, 2016, p 3). There is some variation in the estimation of migrant workers abroad, but an average of three to four million for a country with a population of 21 million is telling (Miszczyński, 2019, p 39).

Where does this leave Romanians then? Vilified by the media, seen as the probable cause of many social ills, and without a social support system in their country to care for them, Romanian labour migrants to the UK become a social group open for easy exploitation. Their situation is characterised by precariousness and temporariness –​ understood here both in its typical sense of a limited period of work, and in a more nuanced sense, as ‘a way of being in place, an indefinite state (Fedyuk, 2012, quoted in Udrea, 2020, p 273) whereby money and resources tend to flow “back home” –​the place where migrants see themselves as living their “real” lives, as opposed to their “work” lives in [the UK]’ (Udrea, 2020, p 273; Teleleu, 2021b). The income is low and their employment is not stable; moreover, unlike social classes which are ‘traditionally’ associated with lower incomes but have developed a system of community support, they have lost ‘traditional community benefits and [did] not gain enterprise or state benefits’. They are all characterised by a shared sense ‘that their labour is instrumental (to live), opportunistic (taking what comes) and precarious (insecure)’ (Standing, 2011, pp 12–​15). Romanians are caught between different forms of discrimination and vilification, both of which contribute to their marginalisation in British society. On the one hand, they are subjected to the same kind of neoliberal rhetoric that sees all working-​class and precarious workers as work-​shy, benefit-​hungry opportunists who are out to cheat the state and get money for nothing (Tyler, 2015). On the other hand, as Eastern Europeans, they are subjected to processes of racialisation, which further increase the divide between them and the local population. Despite their shared disadvantage with the local working-​class population, solidarity and mutual recognition between these groups becomes virtually 116

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impossible: ‘[t]‌ensions within the precariat are setting people against each other, preventing them from recognising that the social and economic structure is producing their common set of vulnerabilities. Many will be attracted by populist politicians and neo-​fascist messages’ and will believe it when they are being told that the hardships they are facing are the fault of immigrants coming to their country (Standing, 2011, p 25). However, they are part of the same vicious circle of neoliberalist policies since the 1970s: the drive towards a more flexible labour market (Standing, 2011, p 45). All of these social, political and economic factors create a particularly vulnerable situation into which Romanian migrants arrive. The increasing economic insecurities and the inflammatory media discourses, which point to seasonal immigrants as the culprits, contribute to a process of affective polarisation between them and the general British population. Their racialisation and casting as ‘other’ furthers this affective divide by creating an artificial separation between them as workers and the rest of the local workforce. In broader terms, this is just one facet of a process that increasingly sees lower-​class and migrant workers as culpable for the failings of a global economic system that they have no influence on and that is rigged against them. Such a strategy ensures that blame is always shifted away from those who are in fact responsible (Virdee, 2019, p 9). At the other end of the equation, employers benefit from the abundance of seasonal migrant workers. One reason for this is that they represent less of a commitment in the long run, as seasonal work places fewer demands on the employers in terms of obligations and benefits. The pricing of this labour force becomes the primary attribute according to which business decisions are made, and cheap immigrants thus become attractive when ‘reduced in meaning to their price’, seen in a way that is ‘purely instrumental’ (Bhattacharyya, 2018, p 107). Another reason is the perception that immigrants are ‘better’, work harder and have higher productivity rates. While this latter conception might at first seem like a positive comment on the reception of Eastern European workers in the UK, studies have shown that what lies behind it is in fact a reluctance to demand their rights and contest the authority of the employer (Fitzgerald and Smoczyński, 2017, p 661). Romanian workers often don’t speak the language, have difficulty writing and reading, and are unaware of their rights and their contractual obligations. This makes them less likely to contest abuse and more prone towards overwork and docility (Teleleu, 2021b). Time and time again, in interviews and studies about their work abroad, Romanian workers speak of contracts in which the conditions differ from what had been originally agreed on at home: longer hours, smaller pay, no days off, penalties for underperforming, poor living conditions, verbal and sometimes physical abuse (Teleleu, 2021b; Țenter, 2020). In the COVID-​19 context, they also spoke of unsafe conditions, shortened quarantine and lack 117

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of appropriate hygiene rules (Țenter, 2020). They work for lower wages, for longer periods, and adapt to worse conditions than British nationals would be willing to (Kotýnková, 2020, p 2). This in turn also affects the employment prospects of the local workers. It is not the migrants who should bear the blame of decreasing wages. They are the products of the actions of the same class of people who simultaneously destabilise their national economies and then happily employ them as migrant workers in the West for unfair rates, to the detriment of both local workers and migrants themselves: ‘A more inegalitarian society, combined with a cheap migrant labour regime, enabled the affluent to benefit from low-​cost nannies, cleaners and plumbers. And access to skilled migrants lessened pressure on firms to train the unemployed in manual skills, leaving locals at a further disadvantage’ (Standing, 2011, p 103). The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority Report from 2018 shows that Romanians rank among the most exploited immigrant groups in the UK, second only to the Vietnamese. In industries such as Agriculture and Food Packaging, they are the top documented migrant group to be exploited (GLAA, 2020). In the same report, the GLAA cautions against changes that will come about as a result of Brexit, warning that the risk of exploitation and illegal work is expected to increase, because of the regulations that might have to be set in place. Such a warning cannot be ignored, particularly when taking into account the realities for immigrant workers in the UK prior to the lifting of work and travel restrictions in 2014 (GLAA, 2020).

Whiteness, class and racialised capitalism Due to their history, their portrayal in the media and the policies they have been subjected to, Romanians are only ‘nominally white’ in British society, and do not count as such in the collective imaginary (Paraschivescu, 2020, p 2668; Zorko and Debnár, 2021). The privileges afforded by their white skins are being counterbalanced by ‘the socio-​cultural and economic precarity they are perceived to embody’ (Paraschivescu, 2020, p 2665). An understanding of this requires an understanding of the fact that ‘race’ as a category has moved away from plain visual markers such as skin colour, and is now decisively related to issues of ‘culture’ (clothes, accents, familial ties, food) and ‘religion’ (Balibar, quoted in Loftsdóttir, 2017, p 71). There are several reasons why Romanians (and Eastern Europeans generally) do not count as ‘white’ in British eyes (Fox et al, 2012). Historically, Romanians, as Eastern Europeans, have had attached to them an image of the alleged inferiority of Communism, which has held them back economically and socially. This is part of the larger image that Western Europe has created about Eastern Europe, as a counterpart to its ideal of free markets and neoliberal self-​determination (Samaluk, 2016). The geographical 118

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space of Eastern Europe, despite being diverse and far from homogeneous, is exoticised and transformed in the collective Western imaginary: a space of disorder, a space that is still evolving, a space that needs the saving hand of the neoliberal West to deliver it from its backwardness and lack of civilisation (Samaluk, 2016). In the case of Romania in particular, this image was made even more powerful by the circulation of images of overcrowded orphanages, of deplorable conditions in hospitals, of children sick with AIDS and so on, right after the fall of Communism, when the country opened itself up to (the gaze of) the West. These images were still recent enough when the country joined the EU in 2007 to have an impact on how Romanians were perceived (Fox et al, 2012). Added to that, there is also the conflation of Romanians and the Roma, which very successfully draws on long-​established, harmful stereotypes about this ethnicity and thus contributes to the racialisation and vilification of ethnic Romanians and Roma Romanians alike, by identifying them with a group that has already historically been racialised and discriminated against, and which is very much present in the collective British imaginary (Fox et al, 2012; Zorko and Debnár, 2021, p 4). The migrant Romanian Roma in particular are a social group that suffers enormously from the dynamics of racialised capitalism. It is a group that faces extreme poverty and violent discrimination in their home country, and who, once forced to emigrate, arrive in countries with equally strong histories of Roma persecution and discrimination. The discrimination that Romanians perpetuate in their home country against the Roma, which drives them to poverty and hardship, is, in an ironic twist of fate, redirected at them as a population once they migrate themselves. In a neoliberal economic system, classification becomes a process of othering and hierarchisation (Tyler, 2015). A low social class is associated with alleged criminality and lack of education, thus stripping away from White people some of the privilege that well-​off Whites enjoy (Allen, 2009, pp 214–​15; Paraschivescu, 2020, p 2667). Naturally, being phenotypically White still confers advantages that Black, Indigenous, People of Colour (BIPOC) people do not enjoy, but there are ‘degrees of whiteness’, and where one falls on this spectrum of Whiteness has a say on the kind of treatment one might receive. Racialisation becomes about more than just skin colour, with ‘visual, cultural and economic elements such as clothing, hairstyle, the ability to speak English as well as the type of employment [determining] how white Eastern Europeans’ “culture” is perceived’ (Paraschivescu, 2020, p 2668). ‘Shades of whiteness’ are thus constructed, which ‘create forms of exclusion for Eastern Europeans on the basis that they are not culturally white’ (Paraschivescu, 2020, p 2668). Romanians therefore enter a category of the ‘other’ that is at the same time indispensable (to the economy, through their activities) and disposable –​a category of people that ‘the state does 119

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not protect, but rather manages and controls’ (Paraschivescu, 2020, p 2667). Understanding Romanians as possessing ‘a different kind of whiteness’ (Allen, 2009, p 210) allows for a reading of their position through the lens of ‘racial capitalism’ (Bhattacharyya, 2018) in order to draw on insights into how racialisation as a classificatory process (Tyler, 2015) also contributes to social divisions and affective polarisation. Racial capitalism, as put forward by Gargi Bhattacharyya, is an understanding of capitalism that acknowledges that racism and racist differentiation are part of the essential functioning of the capitalist mode of production and not merely superstructural to it (Bhattacharyya, 2018). Such differentiations and hierarchisations of people are part and parcel of the functioning of capitalism, a system that always requires a group of people who are deemed ‘less than’ and therefore can be exploited without remorse.5 Romanian seasonal workers in the UK experience the effects of this dynamic, joining the groups of local workers who are already experiencing increasingly precarious working conditions. Their ‘otherness’ as Eastern Europeans further marks them out and leaves them vulnerable to discrimination. Workers are placed in an ‘imagined competition without end, in the process encouraging the deployment of any and every racialized defence available in the struggle to retain some remnant of security at work’ (Bhattacharyya, 2018, pp 109–​10). ‘[M]‌ore often now the workplace racist lashes out to say “do not collapse the difference between me and you, because that difference is my only solace and source of status”’ (Bhattacharyya, 2018, p 113).6 This therefore increases the divide between the local working-​class workers and Romanian immigrants. An additional element of ‘otherness’ is added to the definition of this social group, which once again reinforces the ‘us–​them’ dynamic when they are being spoken about in the public, by right-​wing politicians or certain media outlets. Polarisation is therefore encouraged, and recognition and allyship become more and more difficult to obtain.

5

6

The theory of racial capitalism is, of course, much more complex and nuanced than can be captured in this chapter. The theory in its full power can be found in Bhattacharyya (2018). An important observation needs to be made here: White working-​class people have also been extensively vilified and disregarded as a social class, easily dismissed with accusations of racism or backwardness. However, they also need to be regarded with empathy, as victims of an economic system that is pushing them towards the margins. Often, the hate and discrimination they might produce is simply a reaction to the fear and insecurity that is being pushed onto them. An unfortunate and unhelpful reaction, but one that can be understood. For an interesting discussion of this dual position, see Gilborn (2010) and Allen (2009). Also Chapter 9 in this volume and Guderjan and Wilding (2020). 120

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Conclusion Romanian migrant workers in the UK illustrate the forces at play in upholding the global neoliberal economy. They are crucial to the economy, providing essential work for low pay, ensuring the continuity of the market both in their host and home countries, though they are simultaneously treated as disposable. Deprived of state support at home, they are forced to emigrate in order to ensure the economic survival of their families. They arrive in Western countries, such as the UK, where they are vulnerable to exploitation and marginalisation on account of their lack of local language skills and knowledge about their rights. Simultaneously, they are vilified and made to carry some of the blame for the austerity-​induced disintegration of the UK’s social welfare system, and portrayed as benefits-​oriented, lazy and criminal. Their class opens them up to the vilifying gaze of the middle-​ and upper-​class citizens, who view them, alongside the local working-​ class population, as work-​shy benefits scroungers ready to cheat the state and fill their pockets. Their racialisation and exoticisation reinforce this otherness and create a divide between them and the local population, a mechanism at play that can be understood through the lens of affective polarisation. This polarisation creates an ‘us–​them’ divide and effectively hinders solidarity and collective action against the neoliberal economic system, thus upholding it. The situation going forward shows no signs of improvement. As has already been seen, the global COVID-​19 pandemic is further endangering seasonal migrant workers, as they are forced to live in inadequate conditions and to undergo their tasks without a real chance at social distancing and sometimes without even being provided with the necessary protective equipment. Moreover, with the UK having exited the EU, these same workers will also have to face difficulties regarding their immigration status. The new points-​based system seems intent on hindering ‘low-​skilled’ immigration to the UK, and could lead to even more short-​term, exploitative work arrangements (Tudor, 2020). Their needs continue to be largely ignored, and their position as marginal remains unquestioned, thus perpetuating inequality (Milbourne and Coulson, 2021). References Allen, R.L. (2009) ‘What about poor White people?’, in W. Ayers, T. Quinn and D. Stovall (eds) Handbook of Social Justice in Education, New York: Routledge, pp 209–​30. Ban, C. (2016) ‘Romania’s disembedded neoliberalism’, Ruling Ideas: How Global Neoliberalism Goes Local, Oxford Scholarship Online, DOI:10.1093/​ acprof:oso/​9780190600389.001.0001. 121

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BBC (2014) ‘Nigel Farage attacked over Romanian “slur”’, BBC, [online], Available from: https://​www.bbc.com/​news/​uk-​27459​923 [Accessed 20 December 2021]. Bhattacharyya, G. (2018) Rethinking Racial Capitalism. Questions of Reproduction and Survival, London: Rowman & Littlefield. Briggs, D. and Dobre, D. (2014) Culture and Immigration in Context: An Ethnography of Romanian Migrant Workers in London, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Castles, S. and Kosack, G. (1973) Immigrants, Workers and Class Structure in Western Europe, London: Oxford University Press. Craven, N. and Arbuthnott, G. (2013) ‘Thousands of Bulgarians and Romanians “plan to flood UK in 2014” as employment restrictions relax’, Daily Mail, [online] 27 January, Available from: https://​www.dailym​ail.co.uk/​ news/​arti​cle-​2268​952/​Thousa​nds-​Bul​gari​ans-​Romani​ans-​plan-​flood-​UK-​ 2014-​emp​loym​ent-​restr​icti​ons-​relax.html [Accessed 19 July 2021]. Drnovšek, Z. and Debnár, M. (2021) ‘Comparing the racialization of Central-​East European migrants in Japan and the UK’, Comparative Migration Studies, 9(30), https://​doi.org/​10.1186/​s40​878-​021-​00239-​z. Fitzgerald, I. and Smoczyński, R. (2017) ‘Central and Eastern European accession: Changing perspectives on migrant workers’, Social Policy & Society, 16(4): 659–​68. Fox, J.E., Moroşanu, L. and Szilassyet, E. (2012) ‘The racialization of the new European migration to the UK’, Sociology, 46(4): 680–​95. Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA) (2020) ‘Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority annual report and accounts for 2018 to 2019’, [online] 27 January, Available from: https://​www.gov.uk/​gov​ernm​ent/​ public​ atio ​ ns/g​ angm ​ aste​ rs-a​ nd-l​ abo ​ ur-a​ buse-​author​ity-​ann​ual-​rep​ort-​and-​ accou​nts-​for-​2018-​to-​2019 [Accessed 20 March 2021]. Gentleman, A. (2020) The Windrush Betrayal: Exposing the Hostile Environment, London: Faber. Gillborn, D. (2010) ‘The white working class, racism and respectability: Victims, degenerates, and interest-convergence’, British Journal of Education Studies, March, 58(1): 3–25, Available from: https://www.jstor.org/ stable/40962569 [Accessed 22 May 2023]. Greenslade, R. (2014) ‘How the Daily Mail escaped censure for its false immigration story’, The Guardian, [online] 17 March, Available from: https://​www.theg​uard​ian.com/​media/​g re​ensl​ade/​2014/​mar/​17/​ dailym​ail-​pcc [Accessed 19 July 2021]. The Guardian (2021) ‘Windrush scandal: 2021–​2022’, The Guardian, [online], Available from: https://​www.theg​uard​ian.com/​uk-​news/​windr​ush-​ scan​dal [Accessed 20 December 2021]. Guderjan, M. and Wilding, A. (2020) ‘Brexit populism: Disenfranchisement and agency’, in M. Guderjan, H. Mackay and G. Stedman (eds) Contested Britain. Brexit, Austerity and Agency, Bristol: Bristol University Press, pp 103–​16. 122

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Hall, P. A. (2016) ‘The Roots of Brexit: 1992, 2004 and European Union Expansion’, Foreign Affairs, [online], Available from: https://​scho​lar. harv​ard.edu/​hall/​publi​cati​ons/​roots-​bre​xit-​1992-​2004-​and-​europ​ean-​ union-​expans​ion [Accessed 20 February 2021]. Harvey, F. (2020) ‘Farmers call for “land army” to sustain UK food production during Coronavirus crisis’, The Guardian, [online] 20 March, Available from: https://​www.theg​uard​ian.com/​envi​ronm​ent/​2020/​mar/​ 20/​f arm​ers-​call-​for-​land-​army-​to-​sust​ain-​uk-​food-​pro​duct​ion-​dur​ing-​ coro​navi​rus-​cri​sis [Accessed 19 July 2021]. Hobolt, S., Leeper, T.J. and Tilley, J. (2020) ‘Divided by the vote: Affective polarization in the wake of the Brexit referendum’, British Journal of Political Science, [online], Available from: http://​epri​nts.lse.ac.uk/​103​485/​1/ ​Divi​ded_​by_​t​he_​v​ote.pdf [Accessed 20 March 2021]. Loftsdóttir, K. (2017) ‘Being “the damned foreigner”: Affective national sentiments and racialization of Lithuanians in Iceland’, Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 7(2): 70–​8. McGrath, R. (2019) ‘Young Eastern Europeans living in UK “face more racism since Brexit vote” ’, The Huffington Post, [online] 22 August, Available from: https://​ w ww.huf​ f ing​ t onp​ o st.co.uk/​ e ntry/​ s ch​ o ol-​ bully​ing-​rac​ism-​east​ern-​european_​uk_​5​d5e5​4e1e​4b0d​fcbd​4887​d30 [Accessed 19 July 2021]. Migration Observatory, The (2014) ‘Bulgarians and Romanians in the British national press’, The Migration Observatory, [online] 18 August, Available from: https://​migra​tion​obse​rvat​ory.ox.ac.uk/​resour​ces/​repo​rts/ ​bul​gari​ans-​romani​ans-​in-​press/​ [Accessed 19 July 2021]. Milbourne, P. and Coulson, H. (2021) ‘Migrant labour in the UK’s post-​ Brexit agri-​food system: Ambiguities, contradictions and precarities’, Journal of Rural Studies, 89(1): 430–​9, [online], Available from: https://​doi.org/​ 10.1016/​j.jrurs​tud.2021.07.009 [Accessed 12 February 2022]. Miszczyński, M. (2019) ‘Romania’s systemic transformation: Chaos, austerity and imposed neoliberal reform’, in The Dialectical Meaning of Offshored Work, Leiden: Brill, pp 20–​41. O’Brien, J. (2014) ‘Nigel Farage v James O’Brien: Interview in full –​LBC’, Live Stream, [online] 16 May, Available from: https://​www.yout​ube.com/​ watch?v=​-p​ yY​oL9n​gtE&t=​1074s&ab_​chan​nel=​LBC [Accessed 19 July 2021]. O’Carroll, L. (2020a) “Romanian fruit pickers flown to UK amid crisis in farming sector”, The Guardian, [online] 15 April, Available from: https://​ www.theg​uard​ian.com/​world/​2020/​apr/​15/​roman​ian-​fruit-​pick​ers-​ flown-​uk-​cri​sis-​farm​ing-​sec​tor-​coro​navi​rus [Accessed 19 July 2021]. O’Carroll, L. (2020b) ‘British workers reject fruit-​picking jobs as Romanians flown in’, The Guardian, [online] 17 April, Available from: https://​www. thegu ​ ardi​ an.com/e​ nvir​ onme​ nt/2​ 020/a​ pr/1​ 7/​brit​ish-​work​ers-​rej​ect-​fruit-​ picki​ ng-j​ obs-a​ s-​romani​ans-​flown-​in-​coro​navi​rus [Accessed 19 July 2021]. 123

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Paraschivescu, C. (2020) ‘Experiencing whiteness: Intra-​EU migration of Romanians to Paris and London’, Ethnics and Racial Studies, 43(14): 2665–​83. Petrache, A.M. (2019) ‘Making the most of the EU internal mobility: Romanian citizens’ migration to the UK in the context of Brexit, a race against time’, Europolity: Continuity and Change in European Governance, 13(2): 215–​40. Romocea, O. (2012) ‘Facets of migrant identity: Ethical dilemmas in research among Romanian migrants in the UK’, in U. Ziemer and S.P. Roberts (eds) East European Diasporas, Migration and Cosmopolitanism, London: Routledge. pp. 123–​138. Samaluk, B. (2016) ‘Migration, consumption and work: A postcolonial perspective on post-​socialist migration to the UK’, Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization, 16(3): 95–​118. Standing, G. (2011) ‘The precariat’, in The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp 1–​25. Teleleu (2020) ‘Nu ai ce să muncești în România [There’s no work in Romania]’, Teleleu, [online] 29 May, Available from: https://​tele​leu.eu/​ nu-​ai-​ce-​sa-​munce​sti-​in-​roma​nia/​ [Accessed 19 July 2021]. Teleleu (2021a) ‘Copiii rămași singuri acasă: “Ruptura de părinți este resimțită ca o durere acută” [The children left alone at home: “The break from the parents is felt like an intense pain”]’, Teleleu, [online] 23 February, Available from: https://​tele​leu.eu/​cop​iii-​rama​ si-s​ ingu ​ ri-a​ casa-r​ uptu ​ ra-d​ e-​ pari​nti-​e-​resimt​ita-​de-​copil-​cu-​dur​ere-​acuta/​ [Accessed 19 July 2021]. Teleleu (2021b) ‘Românii suportă abuzurile din străinătate pentru că nimeni nu i-​a învățat în țară că au drepturi [Romanians endure abuse abroad because nobody at home taught them that they have rights]’, Teleleu, [online] 17 March, Available from: https://​tele​leu.eu/​roma​nii-​supo​r ta-​abuzur ​ile-​ din-​stra​inat​ate-​pen​tru-​ca-​nim​eni-​nu-​i-​a-​inva​tat-​in-​tara-​ca-​au-​drept​uri/​ [Accessed 19 July 2021]. Țenter, O. (2020) ‘Exploatarea din farfurie. Cum muncesc romțnii la fermele din Marea Britanie [Exploitation on your plate: How Romanians work in British farms]’, Scena 9, [online] 22 June, Available from: https://​www. sce​na9.ro/​arti​cle/​muncit​ori-​sezoni​eri-​pande​mie-​exp​loat​are-​migra​tie [Accessed 19 July 2020]. Tudor, A. (2020) ‘Racism, migration, Covid’, The Feminist Review Blog, [online], Available from: https://​epri​nts.soas.ac.uk/​33001/​1/ ​Rac​ism%2C%20Mi​g rat​ism%2C%20Co​vid%20%E2%80%93%20f​emin​ ist%20rev​iew.pdf [Accessed 12 February 2022]. Tyler, I. (2015) ‘Classificatory struggles: Class, culture and inequality in neoliberal times’, The Sociological Review, 63(2): 493–​511. Udrea, A. (2020) ‘Fashioning masculinities through migration: Narratives of Romanian construction workers in London’, Migration and Society: Advances in Research, 3(1): 272–​86. Virdee, S. (2019) ‘Racialized capitalism: An account of its contested origins and consolidation’, The Sociological Review, 67(1): 3–​27. 124

6

Racialised Affective Polarisation in the UK Jana Gohrisch

Introduction Reni Eddo-​Lodge begins her polemic Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race (2017) by indicting ‘the emotional disconnect that white people display when a person of colour articulates their experience’ (Eddo-​ Lodge, 2017, p ix). White people, she continues, behave as if their skin colour was ‘the norm’ and they ‘truly believe that the experiences of their life as a result of their skin colour can and should be universal’ (Eddo-L ​ odge, 2017, p ix). She appeals to her readers to channel their anger and use it to overcome racial inequality. The book surged in sales during the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests in the US and the UK in 2020 and 2021. This chapter reads it, and similar titles, as an intervention into the current conjuncture to take a closer look at this particular discourse and its argumentative thrust. Social inequality in the UK and elsewhere has been severely exacerbated during and following austerity politics, Brexit and the COVID-​19 pandemic. One fault line, which has emerged early on, is that which runs along the colour line (see the Introduction to this volume). How then can one read the responses against racial inequality brought to the fore during BLM? From an intersectional perspective, one cannot easily separate the impact of race and ethnicity from other factors such as class, gender, geography and age as they have to be analysed together. More importantly still, the current movement needs to be seen as part of a historical trajectory. Comparing older and more recent activism and publishing in Britain throws patterns into relief and shows where salient differences lie. One of the differences follows from the affective argument, which many activist writers make. This in turn is linked to an upsurge in both emotion research (‘affect studies’) and 125

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emotion-​based memoirs, books of advice, popular culture and accounts by activists. However, basing political activism solely on individual emotional experience and addressing audiences on the level of morality only will not lead to structural change as it continues to hold the individual liable, thus reinforcing neoliberal tenets of individualist responsibility for economic, social and individual ‘success’. This appeal to the emotions also links with the idea of affective polarisation, which is a key concept structuring the current volume. This chapter seeks to unravel the connections between affective polarisation, Black activism and the presence of Black authors in the British literary field. It shall analyse the recent activist discourse against the backdrop of earlier political attempts at overcoming structural racism in the UK –​the latter being one of the key factors which have made Britain’s response to the COVID-​19 crisis so problematic. It will first contextualise the sites and subjects of racialised affective polarisation in the UK and then look at the role of emotion in the discussion of White supremacy in non-​fictional texts by Reni Eddo-​Lodge, Afua Hirsch, Akala and Johny Pitts in comparison with the semi-​documentary films and film essays by Steve McQueen and Raoul Peck. The chapter concludes by juxtaposing Bernardine Evaristo’s most recent novel to racial and ethnic diversity management in the literary field as an example for the debate on Black participation and social inclusion.

Sites and contexts of racialised affective polarisation In the last decade, the number of decidedly antiracist publications across all genres has been growing rapidly in the UK. Very prominent among them are the journalistic non-​fiction by Reni Eddo-​Lodge and Afua Hirsch, the life writing by rapper Akala and the travel writing by Johny Pitts. In 2019, Bernardine Evaristo published Girl, Woman, Other, for which she won the Booker Prize as the first Black woman to do so, and followed this with a life writing-​style Manifesto in 2021. In addition to Evaristo, a host of Black British writers have been producing diasporic narrative fiction for decades –​Caryl Phillips, Fred D’Aguiar or the late Andrea Levy, who had two of her historical novels, Small Island (2004) and The Long Song (2010), adapted for the screen, to name just a few. More recent and commercially successful writers include Candice Carty-​Williams with her popular coming-​ of-​age novel Queenie (2019) and Monique Roffey with her six novels, which combine a variety of modes, including magic realism. In cinema, the filmmakers Steve McQueen, who won an Oscar for 12 Years a Slave in 2013 as the first Black director ever, and the award-​winning Haitian director Raoul Peck have addressed racism and White supremacy in serial cinematographic formats with Small Axe (2020) and Exterminate All the Brutes! (2021), respectively. A few years earlier, historian David Olusoga 126

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wrote and presented a widely acclaimed four-​part TV documentary Black and British: A Forgotten History (2016), accompanied by a book. The writers publish with large and internationally operating publishing houses such as Bloomsbury (Eddo-​Lodge), Jonathan Cape (Hirsch) or Penguin (Evaristo, Pitts), indicating the revenue publishers make with such books. The filmmakers are contracted with equally established TV stations such as the BBC (McQueen, Olusoga) and streaming services such as HBO (Peck) and Amazon Prime (McQueen). In June 2020, following weeks of intense BLM protests against the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police, Reni Eddo-​Lodge and Bernardine Evaristo became the first Black British women to top the UK’s non-​fiction and fiction paperback charts. They both used this moment to criticise the British publishing industry for its continued discrimination against writers of colour. Evaristo made this point again in her foreword to the empirical study Re:Thinking ‘Diversity’ in Publishing by Anamik Saha and Sandra van Lente (2020). In 2013, Paul Gilroy observed what has since become even more obvious: ‘In spite of racism, Britain’s black communities are more present in the country’s evolving cultural mainstream than we sometimes appreciate. Neoliberal cultural and economic habits unearthed the value in previously abjected black life’ (Gilroy, 2013, p 36). The proliferation of antiracist material through influential media and to widespread public acclaim is a striking proof of this –​even if only individually successful –​presence, which sets the current generation of activist writers and artists apart from earlier generations of Black British authors. Another remarkable difference is the number of awards under the Order of the British Empire that major figures have received as official approval of their work: MBE (Evaristo), OBE (Evaristo, McQueen, Olusoga) and CBE (McQueen, knighted in 2020) as well as Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (Peck). Far from any such state recognition, the writers in the 1970s and 1980s founded their own outlets such as the Brixton-​based political magazine Race Today, which pursued a Marxist politics and collective antiracism strongly influenced by C.L.R. James. Trinidadian-​born Darcus Howe played a leading role in the collective, as well as with the British Black Panthers, and was one of the Mangrove Nine activists commemorated in McQueen’s Small Axe series. In the 1980s, Race Today had Linton Kwesi Johnson, the Jamaican-​born British reggae musician and performance poet, as its arts editor and Indian-​born writer Farrukh Dhondy as a frequent contributor. Moreover, migrants from the Caribbean founded publishing houses such as New Beacon Books and Bogle-​L’Ouverture Publications. The latter published Walter Rodney’s economically focused study of colonial capitalism, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, in 1972. They played a central role in establishing the International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books in London (1982–​95). 127

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What today’s practitioners share with their earlier colleagues, however, is a decidedly transatlantic orientation involving Britain, the Caribbean, the US and western Africa. This clearly reflects the colonial and postcolonial histories of forced and voluntary multidirectional migration as well as patterns of political and cultural affiliation, brought to wider public attention by Paul Gilroy in his seminal study The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993). In the following, I shall survey recent non-​fiction, fiction and film by Black British writers and artists for representations of what I would like to call ‘racialised affective polarisation’. This term serves to understand the potential emotional divide between Black and White human beings suggested by frequent indictments of White supremacy, White privilege and racist White identity. Writers and artists of colour do not seek, however, to devalue their White opponents emotionally, as the concept of deliberate affective polarisation would imply. Rather, they powerfully speak out against the structural and individual racism Black and Brown people have been experiencing for centuries at the hands of Whites. At best, this discourse may encourage liberal-​minded White individuals to be extra careful in speech and action mortifying themselves for unearned privileges, while less liberal-​minded Whites just pay lip-​service –​if anything at all. None of these practices, I argue, has brought Western capitalist societies any closer to being non-​racist. On the contrary, instead of doing away with difference, ‘racialised affective polarisation’ cements the division caused by racism because it continues to divide the human beings of the transatlantic world into two coarsely defined identity groups based on phenotypical appearance. This unintended effect makes solidarity and joint struggle for fundamental change based on shared political beliefs increasingly difficult to imagine. On the level of aesthetic shape, the unbroken desire of writers and their implied readers for belonging and wholeness registers in self-​reflective storytelling in fiction and film, which favour a biographical, individual narrative as well as a non-​chronological episodic structure to construct Black communities in time and space. This produces generic hybrids blending realist and documentary as well as postmodern modes of narration with historical reflection and political analysis.

Emotion and White privilege: ‘Get angry. Anger is useful. Use it for good’ With this urgent appeal, Reni Eddo-​Lodge (b. 1989) closes her widely read pamphlet about race in the UK (2017). Before she rejects ‘white guilt’ as pointless and encourages Whites ‘to get angry’ instead and use their ‘anger for good’ (2017, p 221), she claims: ‘racism is a white problem. It reveals the anxieties, hypocrisies and double standards of whiteness. It is a problem in 128

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the psyche of whiteness that white people must take responsibility to solve’ (2017, p 219). Offering a diagnosis along with a cure, Eddo-​Lodge anchors the political in the realm of the mental and medical. She calls upon White people to cultivate anger as the most energetic of emotions bent on radical change and enlist it to cure themselves of their racism conceptualised as mental illness. This effectively boils down to accepting ‘the privatization of the struggle against racial inequality and hierarchy’ (Gilroy, 2013, p 35), which Paul Gilroy establishes with regard to former Black activists, who have ‘begun to sell their expertise and insight in the form of consultancy services’ (2013, p 35). Where Gilroy is concerned with the burgeoning field of ‘diversity management’ in corporations and public administration (2013, pp 24, 35), Eddo-​Lodge’s strategy reverberates with yet another current trend in antiracist policies. There is a conspicuous increase in the publication of advice books targeted at White middle-​class readers on both sides of the Atlantic teaching them how to improve their self-​awareness and combat their individual racism. This shows in the growing market for self-​help manuals in the US with Ijeoma Oluo’s So You Want to Talk About Race (2018) and Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism (2018) as well as in the UK with Arab-​British writer Layla Saad’s Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World and Become a Good Ancestor (2020), which started out as a blog as did Eddo-​Lodge’s book. In truly neoliberal fashion, what should be a collective political struggle against racism gradually becomes an emotion management exercise conducted by isolated Whites.1 These texts resemble both in principle and methodology the business self-​ help manuals Gilroy studies using Pascoe Sawyers’ MePLC: Your Life is Your Business (2007) as an example. Sawyers propagates ‘the confusing concept of self-​leadership’ (Gilroy, 2013, p 29) characteristic of what Gilroy calls ‘vernacular neoliberalism among black communities in Britain’ (2013, p 29). This ‘inward turn’ is in line with ‘the implosion and disaggregation of the social under the pressures of neoliberalism’s impact. We are reminded that there is no such thing as society’ (2013, p 30). In his film essay Exterminate All the Brutes! (2021), the Haitian filmmaker and producer Raoul Peck (b. 1953), arrives at a psychologised diagnosis, which resembles Eddo-​Lodge’s understanding of racism as a mental problem.

1

A similar trend can be observed in the German book market, which also favours personal memoirs or accounts, interspersed with political analysis which stop short, however, of naming structural features of racism or social inequality. To name but a few: Alice Hesters, Emilia Roig and bestselling author Tupoka Ogette propose individual improvement, awareness-​raising and everyday antiracist training to overcome racism. 129

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Adopting the infamous phrase of the character of Kurtz from Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness (1899) as a bitter-​ironic leitmotif, Peck non-​ chronologically traces the violence perpetrated by Whites against Native Americans, Africans and Jews since the Crusades. He repeatedly inserts fictional scenes featuring always the same White male actor perpetrating a variety of crimes against these groups thus staging racism as a White masculine crime.2 Set against images of a desert and refugees, Peck’s first-​ person voice-​over narrative announces in the fourth episode, The Bright Colours of Fascism: “The Western world is panicking. A delirious, spiralling panic. … Privilege makes vulnerable. … And panic, when blended with ignorance and bigotry, creates anger. Limitless and blinding anger. Everyone else becomes the enemy. The fortress becomes a prison” (Peck, 2021, episode four, 30:25 and the following). What kind of anger and whose anger would this be? It is, quite obviously, not the productive self-​healing type Eddo-​Lodge has in mind, but the destructive anger of people standing to lose privileges. In his study Wutkultur (2021), which translates as ‘rage culture’ or ‘anger culture’, the German cultural critic and dramaturg Bernd Stegemann compares the anger management cultures of left-​wing liberals to right-​wing conservatives and draws attention to the double standards of the former (2021, p 79). While the anger of the victims of racism counts as a precious emotion because it bears witness to earlier grievances, the anger of Whites merely proves White guilt and White fragility (Stegemann, 2021, p 78). On the side of the victim it testifies to the injustices suffered and provides a boost of energy for change (Stegemann, 2021, p 78). On the side of the perpetrator anger indicates recalcitrance and the admission of guilt (Stegemann, 2021, p 78). Thus, the angry pitch of the victim stands for truth, while it is mere White arrogance when shown by the perpetrator (Stegemann, 2021, p 78). This results in a communicative double bind where one side is always right, while the other can only get it wrong, regardless of their actions (Stegemann, 2021, p 78). I shall employ Stegemann’s analysis as an interpretative foil for the racialised affective polarisation lurking beneath the surface of particular aesthetic means and argumentative strategies in the selected texts and films. ‘What is white privilege?’ asks Eddo-​Lodge in the third chapter of her book and then provides the answer: ‘white privilege is an absence of the consequences of racism. An absence of structural discrimination’ (Eddo-​ Lodge, 2017, p 86). Structural racism, however, is not about moral values but

2

In the New York Times, reviewer Mike Hale observes ‘that the art-​house staginess and solemnity’ of these fictional scenes ‘serve only to distance us from what we’re seeing. (It’s also noticeable that women are not often seen or heard from in the film, except as silent victims)’ (Hale, 2021, np). 130

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about systemic power (Eddo-​Lodge, 2017, p 64). It is ‘about how Britain’s relationship with race infects and distorts equal opportunity. I think we placate ourselves with the fallacy of meritocracy by insisting that we just don’t see race. … But this claim not to see race is tantamount to compulsory assimilation’ (Eddo-​Lodge, 2017, p 81). The artificial invisibility of race and its detrimental consequences for people of colour is the starting point for Afua Hirsch’s exploration of race, identity and belonging in Britain (Hirsch, 2018, pp 10–​11, 25). Hirsch (b. 1981) is particularly interested in identity formation of mixed-​race Britons and, like Eddo-​Lodge, points to colonial ideology as the reason why ‘white supremacy is ever present in British society’ (Hirsch, 2018, p 24). Denouncing White supremacy and its harmful effects is a central concern in the ironically titled life-​writing Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire by Akala (b. 1983), a successful rapper. He was born as Kingslee Daley to a Scottish mother and Jamaican father and grew up on a council estate in Camden, north-​west London. Akala repeatedly indicts White supremacy and superiority (Akala, 2018, pp 61–​4, 284–​5, 287–​93), acknowledging Whites as a heterogeneous group, which is nevertheless ‘used to having all of the political power, and virtually unlimited privilege to define and name the world’ (2018, p 61). To people thus conditioned, ‘any power sharing, any obligation to hear the opinions of formerly “subject races” … can feel like oppression’ (Akala, 2018, p 61) and ‘evoke white racial anxieties’ (Akala, 2018, p 288). This is reminiscent of Peck’s observation of panic and anger as the reactions of Whites feeling threatened because they stand to lose their privileges. When he talks about class, Akala uses the term as a synonym for the kind of poverty and deprivation he experienced when growing up: ‘Class affects everything, even racism … and a phrase like “white privilege” is not an absolute but a trend, a verifiable factor in human history produced by the philosophy and practice of institutionalised white supremacy’ (Akala, 2018, p 63). Later on, he points out the political function of ‘the narrative of white racial victimhood … for the white ruling classes’ (Akala, 2018, p 302). Akala explains: ‘By demonising the undeserving ethnic other with whom poor whites have more materially in common, the upper classes can use racial solidarity rooted in the history of dominating the other to mask a history and reality of exploitation’ (2018, p 302). While this comes close to a Marxist analysis, the rest of the 11th chapter featuring ‘capitalism’ in its heading deals with ‘whiteness’ instead of political economy, ownership, profits, let alone class struggle for systemic transformation. After discussing the US under Trump, voted into office by Whites (Akala, 2018, pp 290–​1), as a ‘white-​supremacist empire’ (Akala, 2018, p 293), Akala remarks on ‘the whiteness of Brexit’ (2018, p 300) because ‘among black Brits 74% voted remain, the highest of any ethnic group’ (2018, p 297). Personified Whiteness appears as an agent both grammatically and politically: it acts and 131

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does things on its own, effectively obscuring the interests and actions of the human agents as well as the nature of their interrelations. Instead, Akala’s ‘key question(s)’ for the global future run: ‘What happens once whiteness no longer whitens? When whiteness is no longer a metaphor for power? … Whiteness will have to find a totally new meaning’ (2018, p 306). At the very end of his book Akala imagines the ‘formative race and class experiences of a child born in 2018 into a similar family like mine’ (2018, p 307). He observes that ‘the small black middle class is probably now permanent, but the 2018 child will likely have far less chance of “lifting themselves out of poverty” than I did, as the mechanisms that helped make that possible for me continue to be eroded’ (Akala, 2018, p 307). Although the inverted commas may signal some unease, the neoliberal programme remains untouched: the struggle for equal opportunities to enable social rise for the few replaces the struggle to abolish the injustices for the many. These injustices result from the intersectional structural inequalities of capitalist economy, which scattered individual actions cannot call into question, let alone harm. In a similar vein to Akala and Eddo-​Lodge, Afua Hirsch ends her exploration on a moral plea, demanding acceptance of Black and mixed-​race people like herself: ‘Race is there as a lived experience, as the basis for the most dramatic economic and human shifts in history. … Britishness is an identity that is excluding a growing number of people, who, like me, should be among its core constituents’ (Hirsch, 2018, p 318). Eddo-​Lodge spells out how to establish a basis for the healing type of anger by providing a search agenda for activists. The most likely outcome of this exercise, however, will be racialised affective polarisation, not unity: In order to dismantle unjust, racist structures, we must see race. We must see who benefits from their race, who is disproportionately impacted by negative stereotypes about their race, and to who power and privilege is bestowed upon –​earned or not –​because of their race, their class, and their gender. (Eddo-​Lodge, 2017, p 84) Unlike many others, Eddo-​Lodge explicitly points to race, class and gender, paying attention to the intersectionality of this political issue. Despite the politically correct pronoun in the third person plural, however, the solution remains individualist.

Communities of race, class and gender: “No, it’s not knowledge we lack” At the beginning of his four-​part film essay, which “is a story, not a contribution to historical research” (Peck, 2021, episode one, 38:47), the director states for the first time the refrain which runs through all four 132

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episodes: “It is not knowledge we lack. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and to draw conclusions” (Peck, 2021, episode one, 24:38). The story Peck tells in clear words and impressive images is an emotionally intense representation of how and why (mainly) White males have destroyed the world in colonial and imperial wars, committing genocides to appropriate land and resources. However, it ends inconclusively with a last commentary spoken by Peck himself: “No, it’s not knowledge we lack” (Peck, 2021, episode four, 57:35). The long high-​angle tracking shot shows the bleak ruins of Auschwitz underpinned with a soprano voice spiralling ever higher. The audience never learns to whom the pronoun ‘we’ refers that Peck constantly invokes. Would it be the same ‘we’ Reni Eddo-​ Lodge and Afua Hirsch honour in their books? What kind of community do these writers and artists address? Is it people of colour and Whites, specific classes and social groups or the whole of humanity? Could it be that this film project first and foremost caters to comparatively affluent and educated middle-​class audiences with enough time to spare for viewing long serial films and readers who can afford their books? Small Axe (2020) by Steve McQueen (b. 1969) runs for more than seven hours with the first episode, ‘Mangrove’, a two-​and-​a-​half-​hour reconstruction of the Mangrove Nine case of 1970 (2020).3 It is followed by the experimental 70-​minute-​long second episode, ‘Lovers Rock’, which is set on one night in 1980. It presents a fictional house party for Black youths and replaces story with soft-​version reggae music, dancing and atmospheric emotion. Part Three, ‘Red, White and Blue’, features a young Black man making his way into the racist police force to try and change it from within. Part Four, ‘Alex Wheatle’, narrates the childhood and youth of the eponymous Black writer of young adult fiction. Part Five, ‘Education’, shows parents of Black children battling racism in the British school system. In contrast to Peck’s, McQueen’s series offers an extended chronicle of Black community building and connectivity across the social, political and cultural spectrum. Taking their time, the films show rather than tell how collective agency is being built on the basis of class solidarity and antiracist politics to enable successful individual action inside and outside the dominant institutions. Raoul Peck bases his film essay on a book by Sven Lindqvist and, in addition, gives credit to three scholars on whose findings he draws: the 3

In August 1970, the Mangrove Nine, a group of black political activists with Darcus Howe and Altheia Jones-​LeCointe in prominent positions, had organised a march to protest against the repeated police raids on The Mangrove, a restaurant and meeting place for the Caribbean community in Notting Hill in London. They were subsequently charged with inciting a riot and tried, but eventually acquitted, in 1971. The case became famous because it exposed for the first time the systematic racism in the criminal justice system. 133

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socialist US-​American historian Howard Zinn, the feminist and American Indian Movement activist Roxanne Dunbar-​Ortiz, and the Haitian anthropologist and social historian Michel-​Rolph Trouillot. Set against images of dancing Native Americans he declares: “I have learned from Howard, Roxanne and Michel-​Rolph as we learn from our elders. From them, I learned to favour the collective over the individual. To look for the ‘we’ before indulging in the ‘I’ and to always place oneself in the world, not above” (Peck, 2021, episode two, 45:50 and the following). This looks similar to McQueen, at least at first sight. But why would Peck, who is indebted to these materialist thinkers and who directed the feature film The Young Karl Marx (2017), be so unspecific about the ‘we’ and about ‘our knowledge’? Why would he conclude his four hours of film with a cleft sentence and a paradoxical double negation? On the linguistic micro-​level, “[n]‌o, it’s not knowledge we lack” points to ‘knowledge’ as its central topic, but why with such an understatement? Does this mean the opposite, a lack of knowledge, or does it imply that the knowledge is disaggregated and fragmented without a political narrative to organise it? I argue that this stylistically striking sentence eventually points the audience to knowledge beyond the racialised and gendered affective divide so prominent in Peck’s film and many non-​fictional texts. It is the decisive field of systematic macro-​level knowledge about economic ownership and power relations, which ultimately helps to explain the unjust distribution of equal opportunities resulting in excessive inequality. In the neoliberal economics that became dominant in the UK with Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives, it is the interests of those who own capital that are served first. Without such knowledge the spectators, like the New York Times reviewer, are left to wonder about Peck’s last sentence merely in moral terms: ‘He closes with a reproving phrase. … But he declines to say what it is we lack –​compassion? Willpower? If there is something we possess that could have made history different, either he doesn’t know, or he isn’t telling’ (Hale, 2021, np). The moral is close to the emotional with its appeal to ineluctable fundamentals. It leaves the White viewers with no suggestion as to what to do, except for feeling ashamed of the incomprehensible violence committed by ‘them’ across the globe. The racialised affective polarisation into ‘us’ and ‘them’ is complete. In The Trouble with Diversity (2006), American literary critic Walter Benn Michaels observes the political implications of racialised division sold as diversity in the US. It ‘obscures political difference just as well as it does economic difference. It makes it hard not only to solve the problem of inequality but even to argue about whether it is a problem and about what its solution should be’ (Michaels, 2006, p 173). The result is a ‘debate … about prejudice and respect’ (Michaels, 2006, p 173), or, as the selected British texts show, about acceptance, belonging and recognition. 134

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While Hirsch, as a barrister and journalist (like Eddo-​Lodge), acknowledges speaking from a middle-​class perspective, Akala and Johny Pitts (b. 1987) address race in Britain from a working-​class point of view. Similar to the characters modelled on real-​life people who appear on screen in Small Axe and the people portrayed in Black and British by David Olusoga (b. 1970), Akala and Pitts explicitly mention the racialised social and economic injustice they experienced. Pitts begins his award-​winning travelogue Afropean: Notes from Black Europe (2019) with ‘Prologue: Sheffield’ and states: ‘I was born black, working class and northern in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain’ (Pitts, 2019, p 11). Where middle-​class culture stresses individual achievement, spelling it out as economic and social advancement, Pitts’ origins lie in the working-​class culture wrecked by neoliberalism: Over time, I have witnessed the destruction not only of civic working-​ class spaces and geographies but of the very idea of the civic within the minds of the working-​class community; aspirations of private comfort have replaced community spirit and intellectual engagement with ideas that go beyond capitalist convenience. Communities once connected by local industries and imbued with a sense of pride and craftsmanship have been displaced by anonymous environments of globalization. You can’t build much of a culture around call centres and shopping malls. (Pitts, 2019, p 21) The loss of working-​class community life Pitts experiences in the north of Sheffield underpins his search for ‘Afropea’ with the aim to ‘think of myself as whole and unhyphenated’ (Pitts, 2019, p 1). The term was coined by musicians in the early 1990s and initially taken by Pitts as a metonym for ‘ “success stories” of black Europeans’ (2019, p 2), then understood as ‘an aspiration’ rather than a reality (2019, p 4) and finally adopted ‘as a potentially progressive self-​identifier’ (2019, p 24). Pitts travels on behalf of ‘the working-​class black community and children of immigrants’ (2019, p 30), who never get the chance to move across Europe to meet with Black Europeans in its capitals: ‘Was there really a cohesive idea of a black Europe I might find some sort of solidarity with?’ (2019, p 33). In Brussels, Pitts meets up with Caryl Phillips (b. 1958) and later in Liège with Linton Kwesi Johnson (b. 1952) and a host of critics specialising in Black British writing, who awe him as a young man and as a non-​ academic. Phillips’ The European Tribe (1987), with its mocking Black gaze at White Europe, is one of the precursors of Pitts’s Afropean (2019, p 116). Phillips, ‘as a black kid from a council estate’ (Pitts, 2019, p 120), serves as a mentor for Pitts (2019, p 126). Phillips gives advice on how to deal with one’s working-​class origins and how to write as a Black man ‘any anger or disenchantment found not in a Twitter rant but in subtle 135

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and well-​considered arguments in beautifully written prose’ (2019, p 120). The question that Pitts grapples with had earlier plagued Caryl Phillips who, as a student in Oxford, had turned to Linton Kwesi Johnson for help: ‘Where could a black kid from the north of England, now moving into a new social class through an elite education, find a scene or a collective that could empower his work?’ (2019, p 121). The discussion with Phillips, Johnson and the academics concentrates on ‘the black British canon and the importance of mentors in order to allow us to stand on the shoulders of giants’ (2019, p 121). Comparing the formative years of his ‘literary idols’ (Pitts, 2019, p 121) with his ‘peers’, Pitts notes ‘that there had been a sense of community that was missing among my generation’ (2019, p 122). Where there was ‘friendly competition that produced excellence and camaraderie in the 70s and 80s’, Pitts now sees mainly ‘the unhealthy variety’ of competition leading to ‘more visibility but less cooperation’ (2019, p 122). Phillips recalls the artist collectives formed in those years, which, among others, featured Bernardine Evaristo (b. 1959), who in Girl, Woman, Other gives a humorously fictionalised account of her earlier conspicuous theatrical activism (Evaristo, 2019, pp 2, 6, 8, 14). Pitts then stylistically changes track and employs the same trope as Akala: the personification of skin colour. Only here it is Blackness, which acts or is acted upon, generating a paradox. ‘As blackness in Britain was commodified and neutered by a country that in the 90s was convincing itself of being a “post-​racial” society, and that blackness had won and made itself invisible, blackness had to find a different form to move forward’ (Pitts, 2019, p 124). He then concludes: ‘it’s time to reclaim blackness for collective change’ (Pitts, 2019, p 124). Pitts mentions the importance of London-​based organisations like the Keskidee Centre and Race Today, which ‘gave people like Caryl his first sense of a black community … and Linton a hub of literary and intellectual excellence’ (2019, p 124). Pitts reflects ‘about the lack of such centres of black excellence’ today (2019, pp 124–​5) and then resorts to passive constructions and the slightly reproachful modal verb ‘should’, which both disguise and reveal the lack of community-​building activity on the part of the younger generation. ‘It is as though all this great knowledge work was done and then not passed down to the next generation as coherently as it should have been’ (Pitts, 2019, p 125). There are no suggestions as to what may be done to remedy this. Instead, the solutions are once again imagined only at the individual level as Pitts recounts how meeting Phillips and Johnson finally got him an agent and a publisher for Afropea. This offered him the chance to participate in the British and international literary field, making at least some money out of his experience as a traveller across countries and classes. Equal opportunity and individual participation remain central, as the next section will show. 136

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Racial and ethnic diversity in the literary field: ‘For the many not the few’ In her foreword to Re:Thinking ‘Diversity’ in Publishing, Bernardine Evaristo states: ‘Because I’m a believer in the mantra, “For the many not the few”, I believe that my recent success winning the Booker Prize will only be truly meaningful if it opens the doors for other writers of colour to break through’ (Evaristo, 2020, p 5). While the connotations of ‘mantra’ point to religion and meditation, the expression itself alludes to Percy Bysshe Shelley’s long poem ‘The Mask of Anarchy’ (1819), which he famously ends with ‘Ye are many –​they are few’ (Shelley, 2012, p 789). In 1995, New Labour under Tony Blair rephrased it in a very general sense when it eliminated the old Clause IV from its constitution, which had advocated the nationalisation of industries. In 2017, the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn more pointedly adopted the quotation as the title of its manifesto to promote its plans for radical economic, social and political reform. The kind of change Evaristo encourages is different, however: clad in the well-​worn metaphor of ‘open doors’ she demands equal opportunities for people of colour to participate in the publishing industry as writers, editors, publishers and profit earners. Pursuing a similar agenda, Anamik Saha and Sandra van Lente recently explored the current state of British publishing in terms of diversity by interviewing scores of publishers, writers, marketing and sales people, booksellers and editors (Saha and van Lente, 2020).4 Their empirical report is remarkable for three reasons: first of all, it is addressed to the industry itself and therefore tries to show up points of action, rather than being too critical of the status quo. Second, it reveals that individual bottom-​up initiatives are more far-​reaching than anything the industry has developed itself to address inequality. And, third, the most revealing feature of the report is the voices of key agents such as editors or authors. There is an ocean to cross if some of the covert and perhaps inadvertently revealed beliefs of crucial players such as commissioning editors are ever to change, as the following quotation by a senior, White and female editor shows: ‘If you’re not from a family that’s already going to support you somehow, you’re probably not going to be motivated to sit down and write books’ (quoted in Saha and van Lente, 2020, p 11). What the report does not do, however, is challenge how the book market works in Britain. The question which poses itself reads: is gradual and piecemeal change and individual initiative sufficient if the structure

4

I would like to thank Gesa Stedman for her valuable input on Saha and van Lente’s study and the current state of affairs in the British literary field, upon which I rely in the following paragraphs. 137

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of the field remains intact? Participation for authors as well as other actors to enter the field as employees might increase but real change is unlikely as the commercially oriented market, which caters most of all to White middle-​class and mostly female readers favours what this readership wants to read: middlebrow fiction, advice and self-​improvement books, thus supporting and shoring up complacency, middle-​class meritocratic values, and the wide-​spread belief in self-​improvement as the best means to overcome any physical, social, moral or economic ills which might befall them (Pardey, forthcoming; Neumann and Stedman, 2020). If the gatekeepers, be they Black or White, continue to support this capitalist logic, then real change is unlikely. It is much more probable that the literary field continues to work along the lines it has done so for many decades: largely driven and powered by the so-​called big five conglomerate publishers and their commercial interests, with bottom-​up initiatives to occasionally enlarge and change perspectives. The park-​bench principle will continue to apply: if the visibility and participation of Black writers increases, such as Bernardine Evaristo winning the Booker Prize (even though the prize was shared with Canadian writer Margaret Atwood), then this will be read as sufficient. Diversity will have been shown to work. White middle-​class majority readers and key agents in the field will not have to share resources, let alone lobby for radical change, as the issue seems to have been successfully addressed. But if diversity itself is a problematic goal, as it does nothing to overcome social inequality and affective polarisation or might even, perversely, increase it, then the examples of what seem to be instances of greater participation and diversity might even have a down-​side to them. They will turn away the critical thinker’s gaze from the issues of social division: poverty exacerbated by gender inequality and ethnic inequality, in turn exacerbated by the fallout of austerity politics, Brexit and COVID-​19.

Conclusion Participation is what many of the characters in Evaristo’s Booker Prize winning novel Girl, Woman, Other (2019) have achieved, many against the odds. The dominant narrative pattern is episodic and serial, but the text uses realist storytelling similar to the cinematographic reconstructions of West Indian immigrants’ lives in McQueen’s Small Axe and to Peck’s global search for the meaning of war, destruction and genocide perpetrated by Whites. The frame narrative praises Amma Bonsu and the playful tone of Evaristo’s novel focus the readers’ attention on individual achievement rather than on the Black community’s resistance against racism and exploitation so prominent in McQueen and commemorated by Olusoga. The protagonist of the frame narrative is a lesbian playwright and director who has made it into the Royal National Theatre in London to stage her 138

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play about the amazons of Dahomey to great acclaim. With this character conception, the novel adds another specimen to the long list of self-​employed entrepreneurial Black (but also Asian) Britons in fiction. They were especially cherished during New Labour’s celebration of multiculturalism, but are much older. To them belong Moses Aloetta in Samuel Selvon’s Moses Ascending (1975), Hanif Kureishi’s Karim Amir in the Buddha of Suburbia (1990), Nazneen in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (2003) or Gilbert and Hortense in Andrea Levy’s Small Island (2004), who have all lifted themselves out of poverty, not unlike Akala. Evaristo’s character Amma Bonsu is a house owner (Evaristo, 2019, p 34) like Moses Aloetta and Gilbert and Hortense as well as a performing artist like Karim. Unlike them, however, she is a Black lesbian, which in Evaristo’s novel makes all the difference. Where Eddo-​Lodge calls upon her readers to ‘see race’, Evaristo wants them to see race and sexuality in all their diverse shades and varieties, making ethnic, racial and sexual diversity the key motif of the novel. The detail about house ownership lends itself to being read as a metaphor of social uplift and advancement. It is reminiscent of Margaret Thatcher’s policy of the ‘right-​to-​buy’ codified in the 1980 Housing Act. What followed was an unprecedented transfer of public property into private ownership as the rented council houses and apartments were bought by their occupiers at very favourable conditions. The newly minted lower middle-​and working-​class owner-​occupiers were henceforth busy paying off their mortgages instead of engaging in industrial disputes. In fiction by Black British writers, owning one’s home stands for making a permanent home in Britain. In non-​fiction, Reni Eddo-​Lodge puts it conclusively when she states: ‘We need to let it be known that black is British, that brown is British, and that we are not going away’ (Eddo-​Lodge, 2017, p 223). How do the fictional and real-​life stories of cultural belonging and economic success of middle-​class Black Britons relate to the kind of racialised binary polarisation potentially fostered by the texts and films analysed here? What kind of political future is there for an anger management culture that attributes clear roles to Black and Brown ‘victims’ and White ‘perpetrators’ of racism? Is there any chance to redefine the ‘we’, the community of antiracists, on another basis than skin colour, which eventually boils down to demanding recognition and respect within a basically racist system? Where does all the rage and anger go that reigns in societies dug up by neoliberalism (Engler, 2021, p 104)? In terms of aesthetic shape, it goes into fragmented and non-​linear storytelling and into appeals for emotional identification contradicting the binary choices that the racialised political discourse of affective polarisation seems to demand. Despite its contradictions, the concept of affective polarisation allowed me to explore the emotional consequences of racialised identities. The emotions produce binary oppositions and thus offer only singular choice 139

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where intersectional connections call for multipolar decision-​making based on political opinion rather than on ‘what one is’. Moreover, insisting on racialised identities does not even offer a choice as phenotype is beyond personal decision. Similar to other cross-​class interest groups, which are constantly growing in number, racial and ethnic identities voice moral concerns against discrimination and injustice. Once emotionalised and personalised, these concerns are out of reach for a class-​based alliance necessary to enable fundamental change transcending the capitalist relations of production. It is here that Steve McQueen’s filmic reconstruction of a radical collective past may inspire today’s activists to translate their individual anger into organising combined political resistance against capitalism and racism, exploitation and austerity policies. References Akala (2018) Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire, London: Two Roads. Ali, M. (2003) Brick Lane, London: Doubleday. Carty-​Williams, C. (2019) Queenie, London: Trapeze. Conrad, J. (1899) Heart of Darkness, Edinburgh: Blackwood’s Magazine. DiAngelo, R. (2018) White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, Boston: Beacon. Eddo-​Lodge, R. (2017) Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race, London and New York: Bloomsbury Circus. Engler, W. (2021) Die offene Gesellschaft und ihre Grenzen, Berlin: Matthes & Seitz. Evaristo, B. (2019) Girl, Woman, Other, London: Penguin. Evaristo, B. (2020) ‘Foreword’, in A. Saha and S. van Lente (eds) Re:Thinking ‘Diversity’ in Publishing, London: Goldsmiths Press, p 45. Gilroy, P. (1993) The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, London: Verso. Gilroy, P. (2013) ‘“We got to get over it before we go under”: Fragments for a history of Black vernacular neoliberalism’, New Formation, 80(81): 238. Hale, M. (2021) ‘Review: “Exterminate All the Brutes!” rewrites a brutal history’, New York Times, [online] 6 April, Available from: https://​www. nyti​mes.com/​2021/​04/​06/​arts/​tel​evis​ion/​rev​iew-​exte​r min​ate-​all-​the​bru​tes.html [Accessed 31 March 2022]. Hirsch, A. (2018) Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging, London: Jonathan Cape. Kureishi, H. (1990) The Buddha of Suburbia, London: Faber and Faber. Levy, A. (2004) Small Island, London: Headline Review. Levy, A. (2010) The Long Song, London: Headline Review. McQueen, S. (director) (2020) Small Axe (five episodes), BBC. Michaels, W.B. (2006) The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality, New York: Metropolitan Books. 140

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Neumann, B. and Stedman, G. (2020) ‘Innovation and constraint: The UK literary field from a cultural studies and postcolonial perspective’, Anglistik, 31(3): 89–​105. Olusoga, D. (director) (2016) Black and British: A Forgotten History (four episodes), BBC. Oluo, I. (2018) So You Want to Talk About Race, Berkeley: Seal Press. Pardey, H. (forthcoming 2023) Middlebrow 2.0 and the Digital Affect: Online Reading Communities of the New Nigerian Novel. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Peck, R. (director) (2017) The Young Karl Marx, Agat Films & Cie et.al. Peck, R. (director) (2021) Exterminate All the Brutes! (four episodes), HBO Documentary Films & Velvet Film. Phillips, C. (1987) The European Tribe, London: Faber and Faber. Pitts, J. (2019) Afropean: Notes from Black Europe, London: Allen Lane. Saad, L. (2020) Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World and Become a Good Ancestor, London: Quercus. Saha, A. and van Lente, S. (2020) Re:Thinking ‘Diversity’ in Publishing, London: Goldsmiths Press. Sawyer, P. (2007) MePLC: Your Life is Your Business, Middlesex: My Life Is My Business. Selvon, S. (1975) Moses Ascending, London: Davis-​Poynter. Shelley, P.B. (2012) ‘The mask of anarchy’, in S. Greenblatt (ed) Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period (9th edn, vol D), New York and London: Norton, pp 779–​89. Stegemann, B. (2021) Wutkultur, Berlin: Verlag Theater der Zeit.

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“Now You Have to Listen”: A Historical Analysis of Britain’s Left-​Behind Communities Harvey Butterfield

Introduction This chapter proposes that affective polarisation, as outlined throughout this volume, is fundamentally steeped in historicity. The crises and tribulations that have destabilised Britain’s long-​standing political systems and traditions in the early 21st century are broadly consequences of sweeping transformations that have disproportionately impacted upon specific demographics and regions. Indeed, since Britain’s voters took the unprecedented and seismic decision to leave the EU in 2016, there has been significant academic interest in the Eurosceptic demographic of ‘older, white, socially conservative voters in economically marginal neighbourhoods’ that Ford and Goodwin have termed the ‘left-​behind’ (2014a, pp 151–​9). They recognised these voters as being ‘on the wrong side of social change … and feeling threatened by the way their communities and country are changing’ (Ford and Goodwin, 2014b, np). The left behind saw the referendum as an opportunity to rally against a ‘political class’, perceived to be ‘dominated by socially liberal university graduates with values fundamentally opposed to theirs’ (Ford, 2016, np). The left behind are characterised as a collective of unskilled workers surviving on stagnant incomes in towns where globalisation has extenuated inequality (O’Rourke, 2018, pp 175–​83). These voters are now furious at the ‘establishment in London’ for allowing their communities and country to decay (Ainsley, 2018, pp 139–​51). More nuanced analysis has also enriched our understanding of left-​behind values and culture. By correlating support for Brexit with personal principles, Kaufmann found that the referendum is best understood as a dichotomous choice between 142

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‘order’ and ‘openness’, with Leave voters proving overwhelmingly in favour of measures such as surveillance and capital punishment (2020, np). Kaufmann’s study found that left-​behind voters opposed ‘modern liberal’ values including forgiveness and diversity, and voiced ‘a feeling that they don’t belong to the present’ (2020, np). This formative analysis is undoubtedly insightful, and collectively provides a definitive impression of an elusive, reticent demographic –​ but is steeped in contemporaneity, with only partial consideration given to the historical changes that have facilitated the formation of the left-​behind voting bloc. These ‘top-​down’ examinations pay inadequate attention to the gradual, subtle transformations that have influenced disenfranchised voters; after all, the left behind were once the ‘lagging behind’, and, before then, the ‘keeping up’. As such, this chapter charts the development of England’s left-​behind communities over time; its purpose is to articulate the material, tangible changes –​political, cultural and economic –​that have stoked feelings of abandonment, betrayal and disillusionment among the left behind. To achieve this, the chapter comprises historical analysis of political events at the national level, but also undertakes three localised case studies. The rationale for this localised analysis is that within the context of British politics, locality matters. A large majority of Britons have strong feelings of attachment to their neighbourhood (Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, 2018, pp 10–​13). Although citizens care about their locality, ‘low public knowledge of political institutions’ has pervaded; fewer than 30 per cent of voters surveyed in 2008 could name the party or councillor leading their local council, and only 41 per cent understood the services provided by it (Local Government Association, 2008, p 9). There has been a steep decline in perceived knowledge of politics and the role of parliament in recent years (McGreal, 2017). The cumulative effect is that British voters frequently conflate local and national politics. Constitutionalist Vernon Bogdanor has suggested that local politics is widely perceived as dull, inefficient and impotent in contemporary Britain, as the first-​past-​the-​post system and prevalence of safe seats have fostered amateurish, lacklustre local polities, and by extension, a fundamental disconnect between local and national governance (Bogdanor, 2006). Consequently, local elections are ‘a judgment not so much on the effectiveness of local council as the effectiveness of national government’ (Bogdanor, 2009, np). With many voters convinced that change is rarely achieved locally, turnout for local elections is often lower than anywhere else in Western Europe (Chandler, 2007, p 321). Low engagement remains a problem in England, where limited devolution has pushed disgruntled voters to project local concerns onto national elections. The purpose of this digression is to illustrate the extent to which left-​behind voters hold Westminster accountable for localised decline. While the closure of a town’s theatre or vandalism of its parks is nationally insignificant, such 143

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events are meaningful and politically charged from the perspective of left-​ behind voters. While no standalone, incongruent event singularly caused the development of the left behind, the viewpoints of the left behind have been profoundly shaped by the cumulative, long-​term effects of local decline. The following analysis centres around three English towns and cities: Scarborough, Stoke-​on-​Trent and King’s Lynn. Scarborough is a coastal town in North Yorkshire and a traditional holiday resort. It voted to leave the EU by a margin of 62 per cent to 38 per cent in 2016, along with the overwhelming majority of the UK’s coastal constituencies (Kilcoyne and Ledwith, 2019). Stoke-​on-​Trent is a city in North Staffordshire where 69.4 per cent of residents voted to leave the EU in 2016, earning the city the nickname ‘Britain’s Brexit Capital’ (Wallis, 2019, np). King’s Lynn is a rural town in Norfolk, where 66.4 per cent voted to leave the EU. These locales were selected as they are characteristic of many coastal, post-​industrial and rural environs that have proved fertile breeding grounds for anti-​establishmentarianism. The chapter first examines the sweeping transformations that instigated the development of left-​behind communities during the 20th century, reflecting upon manifestations of economic decline including redundancies, the closure of amenities, escalating crime levels and the degradation of prominent buildings. It then explores the consolidation of left-​behind sentiments during the New Labour era, suggesting that stark disparities between rhetoric and the lived experiences of those in left-​behind towns sowed the seeds of widespread political distrust. It finally analyses how policies implemented by the coalition government mobilised the left behind from 2010 onward. It details how austerity and underinvestment alienated the left behind from mainstream politics. Ultimately, the chapter affirms the importance of undertaking locally orientated historical research when investigating left-​behind communities, and advocates for greater emphasis to be placed upon the transformative lived experiences of voters on the margins of the mainstream. In doing so, the chapter acknowledges how affective polarisation can surface outside the context of partisanship, and beyond the confines of traditional party lines and policy attitudes (compare Hobolt, Leeper and Tilley, 2021: 1476–​80). Throughout, it charts the trajectory of the animosity that has defined Britain’s contemporary political landscape, and invites analysis of the interplay between class, culture, emotion and identity within the framework of affective polarisation.

Left-​behind communities before 1997 Between the Industrial Revolution and 1945, British capitalism had a distinctive, dual character: unregulated, factory-​based industry drove prosperity in the provinces, while commerce thrived in the capital (Ingham, 1984, p 6). The Great Depression impacted heavily upon the industrialised 144

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north of England, while sluggish reconstruction, fragmentary modernisation and imperial decline in the post-​war period became harbingers of pessimism about the future (Hazeldine, 2017, p 55). Collective efforts to forge and maintain the Empire had bound the country’s constituent nations and provinces together for centuries, and the gentry and working classes alike feared that decolonisation would trigger the unravelling of their union (Colley, 1992). The humiliating Suez Crisis decimated public confidence about the future and introduced an enduring narrative of ‘declinism’ (Ward, 2001, pp 7–​12). The turbulence of the 1970s reinforced this worldview, as the breakdown of the post-​war consensus, divisions over Europe and trade unionism caused political infighting and economic stagnation (Sanbrook, 2010, pp 612–​24). In the following decade, the newly elected Thatcher government engendered ‘landshifts in the terrain of history’, as the traditional industries of coal, steel, railways, gas and electricity were parcelled out for private ownership (Goodman, 2003, pp 240–​3). Marketisation and monetarism accelerated the collapse of heavy industry in Britain’s rustbelt and successfully converted London into a ‘free-​wheeling international oligarchy’ (Hazeldine, 2017, pp 55–​6). London outpaced international rivals to become the world’s dominant financial centre, accounting for an astonishing proportion of global market trading (Robertson, 2016). Simultaneously, the old working class in Britain was replaced by an ambiguous, splintered new working class (Goodman, 2003, p 247). This demographic was demarcated by an extraordinary rise in the number of literate, technologically-​savvy professionals (Beider, 2015, pp 4–​7). As traditional industry subsided beneath the burgeoning service sector, regional economies collapsed; neighbouring towns and cities across England shed their collaborative, integrated economies and began directly competing with one another (Urry, 1990, p 188). London thrived under these conditions, as did secondary cities such as Manchester, Birmingham and Bristol, where ‘metropolitan consciousness’ was cultivated through cultural projects, infrastructural improvements and ‘technological booms’ (Deas and Hebbert, 2000, pp 79–​85). However, medium-​sized towns struggled to keep pace, and anti-​metropolitan sentiment in Scotland, Wales and England’s regions surged (Field, 1997, pp 79–​83). Simultaneously, a ‘moral panic’ surfaced in Britain, defined by Cohen as a phenomenon in which ‘a group of persons … become defined as a threat to societal values and interests’, typically by the proprietors of mainstream media in an exaggerative, excessive manner (Cohen, 1972, pp 1–​3; also see Chapter 2, this volume). This particular moral panic pertained to a supposed ‘underclass’ of citizens associated with ‘vandalism, hooliganism, street crime, long term unemployment, joyriders, drug abuse, urban riots, declining family values, and single mothers’ (Bagguley and Mann, 1992, p 118). Concern about juvenile delinquency and the dispersion of loitering ‘hoodies’ from inner cities to smaller towns 145

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was driven by the tabloid press (Voce, 2015, p 56). This dynamic directly contrasted older, aspirational traditionalists within the working-​class –​who viewed themselves as hard-​working, productive contributors to society –​ with the younger, more nihilistic working-​class Britons, who were more apprehensive about the benefits of subscribing to societal norms, abiding by the law, partaking in long-​term employment and following in their parents’ footsteps. As such, the underclass became a ‘powerful metaphor for societal decay’ within the more conservative division of the working class during the early 1990s (Williamson, 1997, p 70). Scarborough evolved from an isolated backwater to Britain’s first resort during the mid-​Victorian period, marketing itself as an elegant, upmarket destination. The resort offered ‘genteel entertainment’ to middle-​class visitors through its gardens, beaches, sun courts, theatres and concert halls, which elevated its ‘social tone’ (Barton, 2005, pp 133–​5). An array of guest houses, municipal buildings and lavish hotels embellished the town’s skyline, including the Grand Hotel –​Europe’s largest upon opening –​which encapsulated the ‘vastness of enterprise and magnificence of appearance’ that Scarborough cultivated during its heyday (Linstrum, 1971, pp 83–​4). However, Scarborough’s fortunes waned after the war as the innovation of the jetliner and affordable package holiday in the 1960s enticed middle-​class families to venture overseas (Farr, 2017, p 108). The town’s tourist-​centric, seasonal economy stagnated amid a downturn in visitor numbers, triggering the closure of numerous entertainment venues (Vallantine, 2013). In 1963, Prime Minister Harold Wilson had famously warned Labour Party members packed inside Scarborough’s Spa ballroom that a ‘new Britain’ would need to be forged amid the ‘white heat of technology’ (Francis, 2013). His choice of venue for such a proclamation could not have been more pertinent. The number of nights spent in accommodation in Scarborough decreased by 16 per cent between 1990 and 1997 (Scarborough Borough Council, 1998, p 14). This sharp downturn in business led many hoteliers to convert their properties into houses of multiple occupancy during the 1990s. The proliferation of affordable accommodation resulted in the relocation of vulnerable, unemployed persons from larger cities, as the Department of Social Security encouraged a ‘seaward migration of job-​seekers, single-​ parent families and others … who had fallen through the holes in the working economy’ (Girling, 2007, pp 22–​3). The Department of Social Security advertised the possibility of a new life by the sea to those in cities including Liverpool, Leeds and Hull, and even inside prisons. The abundance of hostels, coupled with the town’s economic slump, resulted in social problems to which Scarborians sought a response from political representatives. Although local MPs bemoaned the scandal of ‘Dole-​on-​Sea’, crime remained persistent (Sykes, 1994). While housing benefit claimants increased nationally by 27 per cent between 1988 and 1995, claims rose by 146

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80 per cent in Scarborough (Sanders, 1998). By 1997, structural economic forces had transformed Scarborough from a premier, European resort to an inaccessible, antiquated and increasingly deprived town. The city of Stoke-​on-​Trent is an amalgamation of six towns, uniquely federated in 1910 and unified as a city in 1925 (Cannon and Crowcroft, 2002, p 846). A strong civic identity was cultivated in Stoke-​on-​Trent through impressive public buildings such as town halls, museums and libraries, funded by philanthropic elites such as the ceramicist Josiah Wedgwood (Stobart, 2004, pp 485–​6). Under the direction of Wedgwood and his contemporaries, Stoke-​on-​Trent became the world’s largest exporter of ceramics, and the region became known as the Potteries (McKendrick, 1982, p 436). During the 19th century, three in five ‘Stokies’ worked in ceramic production and 70 per cent of all ceramic products worldwide were crafted in the city’s factories, breeding a skilful, generational workforce unique to the environs of the town (Imrie, 1991, p 436). A culture of industriousness permeated working-​class communities across the six towns, as life revolved around the triumvirate of pits, pots and steel. Unlike neighbouring cities that recalibrated their economies around light industry, Stoke-​on-​Trent’s economy depreciated before the outset of war, in tandem with England’s north. Industry was further impeded by the advent of environmental consciousness in the 1950s, as the 1956 Clean Air Act rendered coal-​fired bottle kilns –​prolific in every neighbourhood of the Potteries –​obsolete (Ministry of Labour and National Service, 1959, p 17). Throughout the 1960s, nearby coalfields and collieries closed, and mining communities experienced poverty (Imrie, 1991, pp 437–​8). The blast furnace at Shelton Bar steelworks was decommissioned in 1978, leaving 2,000 workers jobless and severing ‘an invisible umbilical cord linking the steelworks and Potteries people’ (Edwards and Gratton, 2019, np). As the overall prosperity of the town declined, long-​standing sites of leisure closed en masse (Burnett, 2020). By the 1970s, it was evident that Stoke-​on-​Trent was teetering on the precipice of severe economic decline. While a 1972 council report confirmed an unhealthy dependency on the precarious industries of coal, steel and ceramics, attempts to achieve economic diversification were sluggish and sporadic (Stoke City Council, 1972). The service sector evolved slowly, costing the city dearly in the 1980s when the ceramic industry was upended by plummeting profit margins and fiercer competition from Asia, facilitated by globalisation (Wedgwood, 1982). Upward of 65 per cent of ex-​factory workers that found employment in the service sector worked on a part-​time or ad-​hoc basis, struggling to find regular, structured income (Stoke City Council, 1986). A clear correlation between an upturn in diagnosed psychiatric disorders –​principally depression and anxiety –​and joblessness became apparent during the early 1980s (Platt, 1986, pp 312–​13). Spiralling poverty prompted record numbers of people to train with the Citizens’ Advice Bureau in 1992 (Gibbons, 1992, p 8). 147

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In half a century, Stoke-​on-​Trent metamorphosed from a manufacturing powerhouse into a decaying city with bleak prospects. Enriched by its medieval trading links, steelyards and brick kilns, King’s Lynn developed alongside the great university cities of Oxford and Cambridge, as merchants built private quays, dwellings and warehouses along the banks of the Great Ouse (Benton, 1938, p 248; Pantin, 1962, p 173). However, the town’s population dipped in the 1930s, amid slum clearance works, and the economy suffered (Pols, 2018, p 114). Labourers in King’s Lynn largely ‘scraped by’ in the post-​war years, undertaking seasonal work in the fields and canning factories that underpinned the local economy (Garfitt, 2011, p 114). Concerned by the static, ageing population during the 1950s, the council encouraged inward migration (Thomas, 1973, p 138). Travellers participating in temporary agricultural labour were invited to settle but were coldly received by residents, who widely associated them with theft and lawlessness (Okely, 1983, p 127). In 1962, parliament designated King’s Lynn an ‘overspill town’ that would provide homes for London’s surplus population, triggering substantial urban transformations (Page, 1973). Initially, King’s Lynn’s workers favoured these developments, anticipating improved utilities, healthcare, commercial services and transport links (Green, 1966, pp 29–​32). Indeed, migrants from the city brought with them employment opportunities; Campbell’s soup factory expanded throughout the 1970s in response to the town’s burgeoning population (Lynn Museum, 2017). A report from 1971 boasted of King’s Lynn bustling industrial estates (Porter, 1971, pp 42–​3). The town’s ‘overspill’ status staved off the inching decline being felt more acutely in Stoke-​on-​Trent and Scarborough during the 1970s. Migration from the metropolis also had adverse consequences. The local council opted to bulldoze one-​fifth of historic buildings in King’s Lynn between 1962 and 1971, to make way for council housing (Pevsner and Wilson, 1999, p 165). Uninhibited development replaced the backstreets with largely unoccupied ‘drab concrete shops’ (Pryor, 2011, pp 327–​9). Competition for jobs intensified, especially for unskilled, low-​paid positions in food production factories (Campbell-​Savours, 1996). In the mid-​1980s, public opinion regarding migration from London shifted, as ‘the impact of widespread housing estates … in small villages’ sparked conservationist sentiment and a desire to preserve the town’s heritage (Martins, 2015, pp 134–​5; Richards, 2016, p 11). Infrastructural improvement also failed to materialise and the condition of local railways deteriorated (Nash, 1992, p 214). A rise in crime in the mid-​1980s prompted the council to develop a comprehensive closed-​circuit television (CCTV) network (Brown, 1995, pp 48–​9). This costly investment initially had a 96 per cent approval rating among townsfolk (Geake, 1993, p 19). Yet mere months after council officers celebrated the return of a ‘feel-​good factor’ to King’s Lynn, public opinion 148

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reversed. Working-​class traditionalists, gripped by the enduring moral panic surrounding anti-​social behaviour, were frustrated that police were only able to investigate around 16 per cent of incidents captured, and criminal damage returned to its pre-​CCTV levels around 18 months later (Ward, 1996). Evidently, local economies suffered under the crushing weight of globalisation during this era, through both the outsourcing of manufacturing by the managerial classes and declining trade and tourism. Poor planning caused these once prominent towns to fade into obscurity. Most frustrating for the residents of these peripheralised locales was the loss of amenities; an array of cinemas, entertainment venues, pubs, shops, churches and schools permanently closed, diminishing the quality of everyday life. Left-​ behind communities have developed where historic buildings have been demolished, supporting the view that nostalgia, patriotism and civic identity are consolidated through the permanence, grandeur and familiarity of historic buildings (Briggs, 1963, pp 156–​83; Abrams and Wrigley, 1978, pp 23–​33). It is striking that fledgling left-​behind communities were dismayed not only by the decay of splendid municipal buildings but also by the erosion of unglamorous industrial facilities, associated strongly with the prosperity and cohesion of the past; disappointment at the demise of kilns and quayside warehouses coalesces with patterns of potent, working-​class nostalgia (Byrne and Doyle, 2004, pp 164–​6). A further inference is that the left-​behind evolved in areas sensitive towards perceived increases in crime and disorder. More serious incidents of drug-​dealing and theft inflamed anxieties about societal decay, but communities also reacted fiercely to more trivial anti-​social behaviour. Intolerance towards petty criminality, purportedly perpetrated by a so-​called underclass comprised of ill-​disciplined youths, was symptomatic of a widespread fear among the left behind that modernity would usurp traditional values, further stoking affective polarisation.

Left-​behind communities between 1997 and 2010 The election of 1997 represented a critical turning point in British political history. The Labour Party –​stylised as ‘New Labour’ by enigmatic leader Tony Blair –​swept to a landslide victory over the incumbent Conservatives, carrying a tangible sense of optimism into office. New Labour regarded itself as ‘the embodiment and creator of a new Britain, in which the vast majority of people are middle class’, engaging in a ‘complex juggling act in which it tries to appeal to everybody while retaining some connection with its historical identity and values’ (Duncan, 1999, pp 32–​5). This reinvention was driven by the telegenic Blair, who cultivated an impression of ordinariness and successfully reassured regional voters that New Labour was authentic, accessible and attuned to their needs (Bennister, 2015, p 156). New Labour’s strategy for mitigating industrial decline revolved around educating the 149

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populace and reorienting the economy towards sophisticated, creative industries. This approach was realised most spectacularly in the capital, where New Labour’s commitment to expanding creative industries birthed a ‘knowledge economy’ (Hazeldine, 2017, p 59). Blair also helmed the Cool Britannia project, which consciously branded Britain as cosmopolitan, creative and outward-​facing, with a national identity centred around London (Calhoun, 2017, p 61). However, neither the knowledge economy nor Cool Britannia diffused beyond the boundaries of major cities. Instead, New Labour facilitated abstract cultures of neoliberal managerialism in post-​industrial towns, discouraging the teaching of ‘specific vocational skills’ to support ‘general transferable skills’ (Glasman, 2011, pp 23–​4). Accordingly, the white-​collar working class grew even faster under New Labour than it had under the Tories (Hazeldine, 2017, pp 56–​7). As New Labour’s devolutionary agenda in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland placated nationalism, English regions were given little consideration; senior advisors cynically identified that provincial voters had ‘nowhere else to go’ (Kilfoyle, 2010, p 44). With crime still salient, New Labour sought to appease provincial voters by implementing Blair’s memorable mantra: ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ (1995). The Social Exclusion Unit was tasked with modernising the White working class, framed as ‘an almost Luddite and recalcitrant group’ (Beider, 2015, p 18). Pivoting from outmoded discussion of class, Blair sought to convert disengaged members of the working class into ‘hardworking families’ that would adopt middle-​class outlooks, thereby radically altering the composition of the country (Ainsley, 2018, p 11). In Scarborough and Whitby, newcomer Lawrie Quinn usurped the sitting Conservative MP to propel Labour to its first-​ever win in the constituency but struggled to inhibit criminality, urban decay and economic decline (Waller and Criddle, 2002). In 1999, the historic gardens of Peasholm Park were subjected to vandalism, then partially mothballed when funding for repairs could not be sourced (Harper, 2012). Then came the closure of the nearby Mr Marvel’s Amusement Park (Laister, 2001). Dennis Printworks, producer of iconic postcards during Scarborough’s heyday, folded in the year 2000 (Parnell, 2013). TransBus International, the largest employer in Scarborough, closed in 2001, delivering what Quinn described as a ‘devastating blow to the local economy’ (2001). In 2002, an audit revealed that the local economy was floundering; employment had grown by only 12 per cent, while an enlarged private rental sector had unhealthily ‘colonised many former hotels and guest houses’ (Scarborough Borough Council, 2002a, np). Unemployment was twice the North Yorkshire average, and an increasing number of Scarborians lived in deprivation (Archer, 2008). The council also reported a pervasive sense of malaise and a run-​down appearance to the town (Scarborough Borough Council, 2002b). Investigations by the 150

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BBC exposed urban decay inside the once-​opulent Grand Hotel (Sanders, 2005). With New Labour’s promises of regional renovation unrealised, Quinn faced substantial pressure from constituents, who felt the MP had passively allowed Scarborough to be ‘penalised’, with only ‘inner-​city areas’ benefiting from increased spending (Pynn, 2003). By the 2005 election, patience had thinned to the extent that even a dramatic, unscripted appearance from Tony Blair himself was not enough to avert a return to normalcy. On 5 May 2005, Conservative candidate and former MEP Robert Goodwill was instated as MP for Scarborough and Whitby (Dalston, 2005). Criticism was broadly directed towards the council in the following years. In 2006, councillors controversially refused struggling Scarborough Football Club permission to sell its ground in a fundraising drive, ending its 128-​ year history (Gittins, 2019; Rayner, 2020). Simultaneously, allegations of corruption circulated when an independent report exposed that an expensive contract for sea-​defence work had been awarded illegally (Redfern, 2006). The council’s reputation was dented again when it sanctioned the closure and sale of the Kinderland children’s park to redevelopers (Coggrave, 2014). Following the 2008 credit crunch, Scarborough Building Society merged with Skipton’s society, resulting in redundancies (Osborne, 2008). Numerous printing companies in Scarborough entered administration during the recession, as demand for printed goods fell in a digitalising world (Harris, 2008). In 2008, 200 jobs were lost when Polestar Greaves collapsed, and there were severances at Pindar in 2011 (Hugill, 2008, p 12; Hooker, 2011). In 2009, public spending was equivalent to 44 per cent of economic output in Yorkshire and the Humber, compared to a national average of 38 per cent (Dolphin, 2009, p 16). Sudden spending cuts caused ‘a particularly painful adjustment process’ for hundreds of jobless public-​sector workers in Scarborough (Wellings, 2009). Healthcare services were relocated to Scarborough in cost-​saving efforts, causing its overburdened hospital to plummet in league tables and provide the second-​worst quality of care in the country (Donnelly, 2009). As locals struggled through the recession, MP Goodwill drew criticism for supposedly ‘double-​dipping’ via the expenses system. His embarrassment was compounded when an earlier interview, in which he proudly confessed to ‘pocketing’ excess expenses and ‘profiting on the system’, resurfaced in broadsheets (Osborn, 2000). Voters in Stoke-​on-​Trent Central unsurprisingly returned the Labour MP Mark Fisher in the 1997 election. Having held the seat since 1983, Fisher inherited responsibility for a constituency in endemic decline –​not least in terms of population, as Stoke had haemorrhaged residents through the 1990s (Lupton and Power, 2004, p 10). Vandalism and anti-​social behaviour escalated on the city’s most deprived estates between 1995 and 1999 (Painter and Farrington, 1999, p 87). In 2001, small-​scale race riots erupted on the Cobridge estate, triggered by rumours of an impending British National 151

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Party (BNP) rally (Bright, 2001). In a 2004 review of the city’s cultural scene, Jayne felt that Stoke-​on-​Trent suffered from conflicting class interests, and observed that anti-​managerialist factions of the working class were reluctant to relinquish the culture of ‘pottery, railways, Bennett, boxing and football’ that underpinned their daily lives (2004, pp 202–​3). Job losses remained relentless, as overseas competition presented ceramics producers with insurmountable challenges. In 2001, 1,400 jobs were cut by Wedgwood and, in 2003, 1,000 further redundancies were made as the firm’s directors outsourced all operations to Indonesia (Conway and Britton, 2003). The Ceramic and Allied Trade Union made strident efforts to provide laid-​off workers with retraining but found that most ceramicists had received no formal education, and were without literary, administrative or computing skills (Ridge, 2002). In 2004, the ‘Renew North Staffordshire’ scheme was rebuffed by senior politicians, who cited concerns about overspending and corruption within the council (Thame, 2004a, pp 68–​9). Their apprehension stemmed from scandals that had undermined public confidence (Hetherington, 2002; Jones, 2002). In 2004, several council officers were implicated in a scandal involving dubious, undeclared payments, clerical mistakes, insurance miscalculations and an overspend of £15 million for the regeneration of Hanley’s Victoria Hall (Thame, 2004b, p 69). Having shed 96 per cent of its stock value since 1996, Royal Doulton closed its last British ceramics factory in 2005 with the loss of over 500 jobs. Its executives came under scathing attack for protecting their ‘high salaries, share options, housing allowances, bonus entitlements and free trips abroad’ while winding down operations (Fabricant, 2004). Many voters in the Potteries lurched towards the far-​r ight, as the BNP targeted council seats aggressively. By 2008, the BNP benefited from unprecedented support in the deprived area of Bentilee –​where 49 per cent of residents were jobless, and 98 per cent White British (Barkham, 2008). Local party activists there presented themselves as ‘community champions’, and distributed pamphlets juxtaposing the town’s modern-​day dilapidated high street with historical photographs of housewives, churches and industry. In 2009, the mayor of Stoke-​on-​Trent and vocal critic of the BNP, Mark Meredith, was found to have colluded with investors to close a pool and subsidise a privately run facility instead (Latham, 2017, p 48). Soon after, MP Mark Fisher was found to have claimed £17,000 in parliamentary expenses –​used to finance a second property, but also for purchasing bizarre items (Ball, 2009). These embarrassments dislodged a Labour hold on the Potteries as old as the party itself. Party membership plummeted from over 400,000 members in 1997 to 200,000 in 2009, while the BNP claimed nine council seats (Trilling, 2009). The city’s veteran MP announced in 2010 that he would not be seeking re-​election (Stockley, 2010). 152

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The election of Labour MP George Turner ended a long streak of Conservative dominance in West Norfolk. Like Quinn in Scarborough, Turner’s electability was enhanced by his understanding of local bugbears and his commitment to resolving them. In 1998, King’s Lynn suffered from 30 per cent more crime than the average metropolitan area, and twice the county average (Turner, 1998). In 1999, a West Norfolk farmer, Tony Martin, shot and killed a burglar in a tragic incident that had unexpectedly political ramifications. As the courts rejected Martin’s claims of self-​defence, locals rallied against the legal system, which they felt to be unfairly castigating law-​ abiding citizens. Vanderbeck suggests that the Martin affair ‘allowed Norfolk residents to build a case that Travellers were victimising rural communities that had largely been abandoned by the police’, while tabloids espoused that an underclass had seeped into the countryside, fuelling a belief among struggling rural communities that they were being forsaken (2003, pp 369, 379–​81). Upon Martin’s early release in 2003, he received a standing ovation at the UK Independence Party’s annual conference, where he declared himself a ‘non-​voting Tory’, lamenting that contemporary MPs were ‘out of touch with ordinary people’ and disinterested in maintaining ‘law and order’ (Storer, 2003). As the millennium passed, so too did hopes that proposed regeneration schemes would come to fruition (Dodge, 2001). Although the decline of the fishing industry and port activity had raised unemployment to three times the national average in 1994, Labour reneged on its 2002 proposal to designate King’s Lynn an ‘Assisted Area’, depriving it of substantial grants from the EU (Caborn, 2000). Disappointed voters unseated Turner in 2001 as the Conservatives reclaimed West Norfolk. Returning MP Henry Bellingham questioned the likelihood of road improvements being completed, and bemoaned empty properties that generated ‘a sense of depression and gloom’ in King’s Lynn (2001a). Bellingham was frequently frustrated by indeterminate improvements pledged by ministers and made little headway with securing funding for regeneration (Bellingham, 2002). Crime remained persistent around King’s Lynn, with CCTV networks having merely displaced crime to the outskirts of town (Bellingham, 2001b). There was also considerable erosion of ‘community cohesion’ in King’s Lynn, as local agricultural workers (largely comprising of European migrants after 2004) were subjected to ‘poor quality multiple occupancy housing, inadequate access to health services, and illegal and exploitative employment relations’ (Taylor and Rogaly, 2003, p 9; see also Chapter 5, this volume). King’s Lynn’s economic performance in the early 2000s was dour. Del Monte closed several food-​processing plants in West Norfolk in 2003, and its workforce struggled to find alternative employment opportunities (Shephard, 2003). Employment in the manufacturing sector fell by 2,500 between 1997 and 2005, while average weekly earnings in King’s Lynn dropped to £436 153

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in 2005, well below England’s average of £528 (Ecotec, 2007, pp 14–​16). Problems were compounded in 2007, when managers at Campbell’s soup factory chose to cease operations, leaving all 250 workers jobless (Bishop, 2017). To the dismay of residents, post office services were relocated from a ‘great historic building’ to a ‘nondescript counter in WH Smith’, with the loss of several jobs (Bellingham, 2007). At the outset of the 2008 economic downturn, Dow closed the latex production facility at its site, leading to further job losses (Seewald, 2008). At the end of the decade, King’s Lynn Football Club folded following promotion, as a result of being unable to fund necessary upgrades to its stadium (Clayton, 2020). Successions of false promises, economic sluggishness and bungling incompetence by politicians contributed to the development of left-​behind communities during the New Labour era. As genuinely ambitious proposals to enhance schools, infrastructure, housing and employment opportunities were side-​lined or indefinitely postponed by policy makers, communities were left in despair and disrepair. Overall levels of crime decreased, but locally significant events belied statistical improvements, as the environs of the left behind felt increasingly disordered. Persistent joblessness and a shortage of well-​paid positions extended inequality between the capital’s elites and the provinces’ low-​paid workers (Gerard, 2007). Local councils were disdained, as corruption and inexperienced leadership undermined trust and hampered development opportunities. The 2008 recession exacerbated discontent, as regional voters regarded Labour as a party of privileged professionals complicit in the malpractices of hedge-​fund tycoons and exploitative employers. By the 2010 general election, a significant proportion of England’s blue-​collar provincial populace nascently recognised itself to have been left behind.

Left-​behind communities between 2010 and 2016 The 2010 election ended New Labour’s 13-​year tenure, as a ‘hung parliament’ resulted in David Cameron’s Conservatives and the resurgent Liberal Democrats striking a governing agreement (Porter, 2010). Cameron’s calls for community-​building, charitability and social participation were initially popular with the left behind (Norman and Ganesh, 2006, pp 42–​6). Advocacy of localism, selective decentralisation and even outright regional devolution became core tenets of Cameronism, winning over peripheralised voters in towns fractured by decline and recession (Blond, 2010, p 15). However, Cameron’s proposed ‘Big Society’ soon became ‘a hashtag for coalition hypocrisy’ (Butler, 2015). The coalition government prioritised London’s economic recovery over regional development, and disparities in public spending were stark; the 2011 budget allocated £2,700 of spending per Londoner, but just £5 per person in the north-​east of England (Ellis and Henderson, 2014, p 42). Welfare cuts were inequitable, halving the number 154

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of benefits claimants in post-​industrial Britain in comparison to the south-​ east (Beatty and Fothergill, 2016, p 19). Anti-​London sentiment brewed in the peripheries, as left-​behind voters contrasted local hardships with the capital’s celebrated re-​emergence as an economic powerhouse. Provincial voters characterised London as consumeristic, overly expansive, crime-​ ridden, prone to hoarding wealth and power, and pretentiously cosmopolitan. In a 2018 survey, over 80 per cent of respondents felt that London received more than its fair share of government funding (Smith, 2018). In 2013, the city was responsible for 41 per cent of all global foreign exchange trading, with more dollars traded in London than in the US (Cummings, 2015). Such glaring inequality caused the UK to enter the Organisation for Economic Co-​operation and Development’s top ten countries with regional disparities in household disposable income (OECD, 2016). Further to its economic recovery, London also enjoyed cultural successes, with the London Olympics of 2012 acting as a ‘second crescendo’ in the marketing of Britain as sophisticated, diverse and progressive (Calhoun, 2017, pp 61–​5). The government’s policy of austerity sharply impacted on Scarborough. In 2010, surrounding hospitals were downscaled, placing enormous strain on Scarborough Hospital, which assumed responsibility for a vast geographical area (Shaw, 2010). In 2015, a ‘major incident’ was declared as it struggled to cope with demand (Payne, 2015). Long overdue transport improvements were shelved and the 2010 spending review slashed services for Scarborough’s homeless and vulnerable citizens (Scarborough Borough Council, 2015, pp 23–​4). A 2012 study was decidedly pessimistic about Scarborough town centre’s recovery from the recession, recommending that councillors should ‘adopt a degree of pragmatism and … consider the process of managing decline’ (Scarborough Borough Council, 2012, p 9). The council’s reputation waned again in 2012 when councillors contentiously voted to spend over £54,000 on iPads for their own use, despite professing to be ‘cash-​strapped’ (Glanvill, 2012). In early 2016, the University of Hull’s Scarborough campus became a ‘ghost town’ due to its impending closure; while 1,800 students had originally used the campus, just 13 ‘utterly demoralised’ students remained as ‘the campus and town of Scarborough were hung out to dry’ (Halliday, 2016). In the same year, the wards of Eastfield, Woodlands and Castle in Scarborough were listed among the 1 per cent most deprived of England’s 32,844 Lower Super Output Areas (Department for Communities & Local Government, 2016). In 2010, historian and columnist Tristram Hunt was elected to represent Stoke-​on-​Trent Central as a Labour MP (Batty, 2010). Hunt’s ambitions to aid those floored by the regional economic collapse were foiled by devastating budget cuts made during the early 2010s. While the new government debated costly improvements to Birmingham Airport, MPs for constituencies in the Potteries objected that Hanley’s bus station remained incomplete (Walley, 155

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2010). Further cuts led to the closure of libraries, the country’s oldest pool and the Willfield leisure centre (Edwards, 2018, p 2; Davis, 2011; Nath, 2012). In a damaging 2011 report, the council was exposed for spending £330,000 of taxpayer funds on redundancy packages for 25 staff, before rehiring them within a month (Smith, 2011). Earlier in 2012, Newham’s council, situated 174 miles away in London, was rebuffed by housing associations in Stoke-​on-​Trent when it requested for homeless Londoners to be accommodated in Longton, as the Olympic Games and an ‘influx of young professionals’ led London’s property market to thrive (Jacobs, 2012). Relations between Potteries and metropolises further deteriorated when plans for a high-​speed rail project were unveiled. Hunt was dismayed that the proposed route bypassed Stoke-​on-​Trent, reducing the city’s connectivity and competitiveness with Manchester and Birmingham (Hunt, 2011). Unbridled wastefulness and inequality continued to perturb residents; in 2014, the highest-​earning council executive earned £195,516 –​a salary greater than the prime minister’s (Henry et al, 2014). A 2011 initiative to delineate Stoke-​on-​Trent as a ‘local enterprise zone’ fell through after Chancellor George Osborne deemed the proposal uneconomical (Osborne, 2011). A 2013 report showed that North Staffordshire had a significantly lower enterprise rate than the national average and that vacancies for unskilled, ‘elementary occupations’ far outnumbered those for professional positions (Staffordshire County Council, 2013, pp 14–​16). Over a third of people in Stoke-​on-​Trent were in debt by 2012, although residents were acutely aware that the area’s richest families had emerged from the recession unscathed (Flello, 2013). In particular, the Coates family, owners of the online betting company Bet365, were enormously successful during the austerity era; they were collectively worth £2.4 billion by 2013 –​half as much as Stoke’s entire annual economic output (Bounds, 2015). Such imbalance provoked apathy in Stoke-​on-​Trent, as muted acceptance of decline fostered a working-​class culture of low aspiration and political indifference. School performance had historically been regarded as unimportant in the Potteries, as lifelong, manual jobs awaited its residents –​ and this systemic psychological hangover caused politically alienated residents to resist improvement (Wigmore, 2015, p 18). In the 2015 election, Stoke-​ on-​Trent Central had the lowest turnout of any constituency in the country. Following Bellingham’s re-​election in 2010, residents in King’s Lynn maintained a vehement defence of the town’s architecture –​especially in 2011 when proposals were made for a £169 million incinerator to be built on its outskirts (Blackmore, 2012a). In 2014, the plan was derailed, with the contract officially cancelled at an enormous expense that would cost each household in Norfolk over £200 to recoup (Sinclair, 2014). In April 2012, furore erupted over the conversion of an abandoned pub into an Islamic community centre; councillors received 140 letters of objection 156

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signed by 735 people (Blackmore, 2012b). Offensive comments were left on the centre’s website, in addition to racist graffiti on the walls of the pub itself (Kavanagh, 2012). Government funding cuts also closed the Lynn Arts Centre permanently (Hepburn, 2015). An investigation into King’s Lynn’s recovery from the recession revealed low aspirations among young people in the town, as well as poor health and lifestyle choices in deprived suburbs (Glenn, 2011, pp 1–​6). Young people were stunned by the sudden closure of the College of West Anglia’s campus following a £3 million cut to the council’s further education fund (Semmens, 2011). Recovery was hindered by a chronic lack of infrastructural investment; plans to improve Norfolk’s dilapidated roads were touted as having the potential to bring 750 new jobs, 400 homes and £15 million of private investment to King’s Lynn but ultimately stalled (Bellingham, 2013). In November 2014, the A&E department at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn asked patients not to attend, due to waiting times exceeding 24 hours (Miliband, 2014).

Conclusion The focus of this chapter is the emergence of left-​behind communities in the latter part of the 20th century in parts of England where deprived families became increasingly polarised as they contrasted local hardships, joblessness and declining quality of life with the tangible successes of socially mobile, metropolitan elites. Sharp economic decline wrought by government and employers prompted the politicisation of sociocultural issues at the local level, which served as ‘proxies’ for disgruntled blue-​collar communities to pursue the preservation of their heritage, values and traditions amid disorientating changes to the textures of their daily lives. Alongside this complicated dynamic, incompetent and often self-​serving councillors and businesses pursued neoliberal policies that ill-​served their constituents, causing rampant anti-​establishmentarianism among the working classes, and solidifying the view that politicians were fundamentally distanced from their electors, in terms of ideology, class and geography. These conclusions affix a new dimension to debates about the emergent affective polarisation between Britain’s left-​behind communities of blue-​collar workers and the elites that they believe to have betrayed, exploited and overlooked them in the pursuit of power and profit. While earlier literature has considered this phenomenon at the national level, and most often explored left-​behind communities as they exist and vote today (see, for example, Guderjan and Wilding, 2020; Koch et al in this volume), this chapter has shown how fragmented concerns about societal decay at a local level have cumulatively resulted in political disaffection and affective polarisation throughout the course of contemporary British history. Only through comprehensive, localised analysis of the historical development of this demographic can 157

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one hope to understand the nuanced causes of affective polarisation in contemporary Britain’s discontented peripheries. This chapter has documented developments that occurred before the Brexit referendum in June 2016, and does not acknowledge subsequent events. However, it lays the groundwork for understanding why left-​behind communities seemingly voted against their own economic interests by opting for ‘Leave’ in the Brexit referendum. Furthermore, it might help to explain why the so-​called ‘red wall’ fell during the 2019 general election, and elucidate how this result relates to affective polarisation. Its findings are also pertinent to the cost-​of-​living crisis that excessively impacted upon working-​class employees in late 2022, prompting further deluges of anti-​ establishmentarianism, this time articulated via organised labour disputes and a near total collapse in support for the incumbent Conservative Party across the seats it gained in 2019. The impact of COVID-​19 upon left-​behind communities has been complex. While it is certainly accurate that the pandemic disproportionately harmed deprived areas (compare, for example, Munford et al, 2021), there is a more nuanced argument that some left-​behind communities benefited (or at least believed themselves to have benefited) from the pandemic. For example, the pandemic reinstated the tradition of domestic holidaying, invoked a ‘community spirit’ in many areas, and at least verbally affirmed the importance of workers in overlooked sectors such as social care and food production. These are all phenomena that seemingly align with the interests and needs of alienated, traditionalist working-​class voters which will require further in-​depth research, similar to the ethnographic work undertaken by Insa Koch (see Chapter 4, this volume). References Abrams, P. and Wrigley, E. (1978) Towns in Societies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ainsley, C. (2018) The New Working-​Class: How to Win Hearts, Minds and Votes, Bristol: Policy Press. Archer, D. (2008) ‘After decades of decline, Scarborough is now set fair’, The Times, [online] 31 October, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​2Ejx​1VD [Accessed 18 July 2020]. Bagguley, P. and Mann, K. (1992) ‘Idle thieving bastards? Scholarly representations of the underclass’, Work, Employment and Society, 6(1): 113–​26. Ball, J. (2009) ‘Items Mark Fisher charged to the taxpayer’, This Is Staffordshire, [online] 25 June, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​3lxh​xOS [Accessed 10 June 2020]. Barkham, P. (2008) ‘Labour’s lost ground’, The Guardian, [online] 28 May, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​2PED​vRH [Accessed 5 August 2020]. 158

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Hepburn, L. (2015) ‘King’s Lynn Arts Centre galleries to close’, Eastern Daily Press, [online] 16 December, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​2Q2N​ 10T [Accessed 17 August 2020]. Hetherington, P. (2002) ‘Councillors pay the price for embarrassing losses’, The Guardian, [online] 30 April, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​2PiD​9j8 [Accessed 28 July 2020]. Hobolt, S., Leeper, T.J. and Tilley, J. (2021) ‘Divided by the vote: Affective polar-​ization in the wake of the Brexit referendum’, British Journal of Political Science, 51(4): 1476–​93. Hooker, A. (2011) ‘Pindar enters into administration’, Printweek, [online] 26 July, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​2Ep7​UAR [Accessed 28 July 2020]. Hugill, S. (2008) ‘Former town print company faces changes’, Scarborough Evening News, 21 April, p 12. Hunt, T. (2011) ‘High-​speed rail’, Hansard 534 c. 304WH, [online] 2 November, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​3l7Q​9ag [Accessed 20 August 2020]. Imrie, R. (1991) ‘Industrial change and local economic fragmentation: The case of Stoke-​on-​Trent’, Geoforum, 22(4): 433–​53. Ingham, G. (1984) Capitalism Divided? The City and Industry in British Social Development, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Jacobs, L. (2012) ‘Newham Council under fire over bid to move housing benefit tenants elsewhere’, Newham Recorder, [online] 24 April, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​31mc​nNF [Accessed 10 August 2020]. Jayne, M. (2004) ‘Culture that works? Creative industries development in a working-​class city’, Capital & Class, 28(3): 199–​210. Jones, P. (2002) ‘Hi-​tech failure leaves £3m bill’, BBC, [online] 22 January, Available from: https://​bbc.in/​31Tg​KiB [Accessed 9 August 2020]. Kaufmann, E. (2020) ‘Brexit as a story of personal values’ LSE Blogs, [online] 7 July, Available from: https://b​ it.ly/3​ iUQ9​ ID [Accessed 10 August 2020]. Kavanagh, P. (2012) ‘Racist messages about King’s Lynn Islamic centre taken off website’, BBC, [online] 26 April, Available from: https://​bbc.in/​3iL6​ Lm4 [Accessed 10 August 2020]. Kilcoyne, C. and Ledwith, S. (2019) ‘In Brexit-​on-​Sea, the left-​behind still want out’, Reuters, [online] 4 April, Available from: https://​reut.rs/​2QoF​ tG7 [Accessed 25 August 2020]. Kilfoyle, P. (2010) Labour Pains: How the Party I Love Lost Its Soul, London: Biteback. Laister, N. (2001) ‘Golden oldies: Britain’s amusement park heritage’, Joyland Books, [online] 30 June, Available from: https://b​ it.ly/3​ 087M ​ y9 [Accessed 25 July 2020]. Latham, P. (2017) Who Stole the Town Hall?, Bristol: Policy Press. Linstrum, D. (1971) ‘Brodrick Cuthbert: An interpretation of a Victorian architect’, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, 119(5174): 72–​88. 163

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Local Government Association (2008) The Reputation of Local Government, London: Ipsos. Lupton, R. and Power, A. (2004) The Growth and Decline of Cities and Regions: CASE-​Brookings Census Briefs (vol I), London: Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion. Lynn Museum (2017) Twitter, [online] 19 June, Available from: https://​bit. ly/​37oJ​qCf [Accessed 16 May 2020]. Martins, S. (2015) The Conservation Movement in Norfolk: A History, Woodbridge: The Roydell Press. McGreal, J. (2017) ‘How politically engaged are the UK public?’, Raconteur, [online] 1 June, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​2Pq4​i3V [Accessed 4 August 2020]. McKendrick, N. (1982) ‘Josiah Wedgwood and the commercialization of the potteries’, in N. McKendrick, J. Brewer and J. Plumb (eds) The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-​Century England, London: Europe Publications, pp 100–​45. Miliband, E. (2014) ‘Engagements’, Hansard 588 c. 911, [online] 26 November, Available from: https://b​ it.ly/3​ 2jp​w9Q [Accessed 27 July 2020]. Ministry of Labour and National Service (1959) Industrial Health: A Survey of the Pottery Industry in Stoke-​on-​Trent, London: H.M.’s Stationery Office. Munford, L., Khavandi, S., Bambra, C., Barr, B., Davies, H., Doran, T., Kontopantelis, E., Norman, P., Pickett, K., Sutton, M., Taylor-​Robinson, D. and Wickham, S. (2021) ‘A year of COVID-​19 in the North: Regional inequalities in health and economic outcomes’, Northern Health Science Alliance, Newcastle, [online], Available from: https://w ​ ww.thenh ​ sa.co.uk/​ app/​uplo​ads/​2021/​09/​A-​Year-​of-​COVID-​in-​the-​North-​rep​ort-​2021.pdf [Accessed 17 February 2022]. Nash, C. (1992) ‘Appraisal of rail projects’, Project Appraisal, 7(4): 211–​18. Nath, D. (2012) ‘A year at the sharp end’, The Independent, [online] 2 November, Available from: https://b​ it.ly/3​ hxP​IDe [Accessed 27 July 2020]. Norman, J. and Ganesh, J. (2006) Compassionate Conservatism: What It Is, Why We Need It, London: Policy Exchange. OECD (2016) ‘Regional inequalities worsening in many countries’, OECD, [online] 16 June, Available from: https://b​ it.ly/​34fN​8P2 [Accessed 19 August 2020]. Okely, J. (1983) The Traveller-G ​ ypsies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. O’Rourke, K. (2018) A Short History of Brexit: From Brentry to Backstop, London: Pelican Books. Osborn, A. (2000) ‘New perks for MEPs bound to rile Eurosceptics’, The Guardian, [online] 10 November, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​33OF​efa [Accessed 20 July 2020].

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Osborne, G. (2011) ‘Autumn statement’, Hansard 536 c. 824, [online] 29 November, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​3l8W​pyg [Accessed 19 August 2020]. Osborne, H. (2008) ‘Skipton and Scarborough building societies to merge’, The Guardian, [online] 3 November, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​3hDg​ Elc [Accessed 19 July 2020]. Page, G. (1973) ‘London overspill’, Hansard 850 c. 445W, [online] 16 February, Available from: https://b​ it.ly/2​ NTJk​ cQ [Accessed 12 June 2020]. Painter, K. and Farrington, F. (1999) ‘Street lights and crime: Diffusion of benefits in the Stoke-​on-​Trent project’, Crime Prevention Studies, 10(1): 87. Pantin, W. (1962) ‘The merchants’ houses and warehouses of King’s Lynn’, Medieval Archaeology, 6(1): 173–​81. Parnell, G. (2013) ‘Dennis printworks: Postcard company’s HQ demolished’, BBC, [online] 27 December, Available from: https://​bbc.in/​30Sd​8wA [Accessed 25 July 2020]. Payne, S. (2015) ‘Scarborough hospital: “Major incident” declared due to “unprecedented demand” for services’, International Business Times, [online] 5 January, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​39DF​YVw [Accessed 23 July 2020]. Pevsner, N. and Wilson, B. (1999) Norfolk: North-​West and South (2nd edn), New Haven: Yale University Press. Platt, C. (1986) ‘Social class, underprivileged areas and psychiatric disorder in the city of Stoke-​on-​Trent’, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 11(1): 309–​14. Pols, R. (2018) King’s Lynn From Old Photographs, Stroud: Amberley Publishing. Porter, A. (2010) ‘Coalition government’, The Telegraph, [online] 12 May, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​2YWU​jYO [Accessed 29 August 2020]. Porter, C. (1971) ‘King’s Lynn’, Industrial Management, 71(1): 42–​9. Pryor, F. (2011) The Making of the British Landscape: How We Have Transformed the Land, London: Penguin. Pynn, D. (2003) ‘Schools fear over budgets’, Northern Echo, [online] 28 January, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​3gJl​8XA [Accessed 9 August 2020]. Quinn, L. (2001) ‘Emergency move to soften blow’, Northern Echo, [online] 5 May, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​2XNu​El5 [Accessed 10 August 2020]. Rayner, S. (2020) ‘Scarborough bids farewell to beloved Theatre of Chips’, Yorkshire Post, [online] 21 April, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​3flC​OqI [Accessed 2 August 2020]. Redfern, B. (2006) ‘Failures and blame culture behind Scarborough sea defence fiasco’, New Civil Engineer, [online] 19 January, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​2X3X​aOU [Accessed 22 July 2020]. Richards, P. (2016) King’s Lynn History Tour, Stroud: Amberley Publishing. Ridge, M. (2002) ‘Gone to pot’, The Guardian, [online] 29 May, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​2O1U​c8J [Accessed 1 July 2020].

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Robertson, J. (2016) ‘How the Big Bang changed the City of London for ever’, BBC, [online] 27 October, Available from: https://b​ bc.in/2​ QxfH ​ zz [Accessed 28 August 2020]. Sanbrook, D. (2010) State of Emergency: Br itain, 1970–​1 974, London: Allen Lane. Sanders, A. (1998) ‘Seaside towns’, Hansard 321 c. 821, [online] 2 December, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​3fbg​4JV [Accessed 26 July 2020]. Sanders, M. (2005) ‘Hotel not-​so-​g rand’, BBC, [online] 14 February, Available from: https://​bbc.in/​3g9x​1pd [Accessed 23 July 2020]. Scarborough Borough Council (1998) Scarborough Tourism Economic Activity Monitor 1997–​1998, Scarborough: Scarborough Borough Council. Scarborough Borough Council (2002a) ‘Scarborough 2002: Audit of Scarborough today’, JTP, [online] 1 June, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​ 2OZd​IDe [Accessed 10 July 2020]. Scarborough Borough Council (2002b) ‘Scarborough 2002: Cultural audit’, JTP, [online] 1 June, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​305q​fLA [Accessed 10 July 2020]. Scarborough Borough Council (2012) Scarborough Retail Study Update, Manchester: GVA. Scarborough Borough Council (2015) Homelessness Strategy and Review, 2015–​2020 , Scarborough: Scarborough Borough Council. Seewald, N. (2008) ‘Dow closes three latex sites’, Chemical Week, [online] 22 December, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​31n9​cEe [Accessed 4 August 2020]. Semmens, D. (2011) ‘King’s Lynn college axes jobs and closes campus’, Eastern Daily Press, [online] 11 May, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​2FbK​ M9f [Accessed 25 August 2020]. Shaw, D. (2010) ‘No more babies to be born at Malton hospital’, York Press, [online] 29 April, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​306D​wUh [Accessed 25 July 2020]. Shephard, G. (2003) ‘Del Monte factory, Methwold’, Hansard 398 c. 98WH, [online] 22 January, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​3hj8​P4R [Accessed 8 June 2020]. Sinclair, A. (2014) ‘King’s Lynn incinerator: Plans for £500m scheme abandoned’, BBC, [online] 7 April, Available from: https://​bbc.in/​34kc​ Nq3 [Accessed 16 August 2020]. Smith, G. (2011) ‘Council blasted for spending scandalous £330,000 on redundancies for 25 workers’, Daily Mail, [online] 10 October, Available from: http://​dai​lym.ai/​3mbx​WJr [Accessed 20 July 2020]. Smith, M. (2018) ‘Where is London most and least popular?’, YouGov, [online] 25 June, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​2C7e​Hhi [Accessed 1 June 2020].

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Staffordshire County Council (2013) Staffordshire and Stoke-​on-​Trent Economic Review 2013, Stoke-​on-​Trent: Insight Team at Staffordshire County Council. Stobart, J. (2004) ‘Building an urban identity: Burslem, 1761–​1911’, Social History, 29(4): 485–​98. Stockley, B. (2010) ‘Sadness as health forces MP to quit’, Stoke Sentinel, [online] 11 March, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​3gDh​8qD [Accessed 29 August 2020]. Stoke City Council (1972) An Analysis of the Critical Elements in the North Staffordshire Economy, Stoke-​on-​Trent: Stoke City Reconstruction Committee. Stoke City Council (1986) Part-​T ime Employment: Internal Research Memorandum, Stoke-​on-​Trent: Stoke City Planning Department. Storer, J. (2003) ‘Martin urges decency in politics’, BBC, [online] 10 October, Available from: https://​bbc.in/​31Xn​wUb [Accessed 12 August 2020]. Sykes, J. (1994) ‘Social security’, Hansard 250 c. 1219, [online] 30 November, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​3g6A​vsJ [Accessed 27 July 2020]. Taylor, B. and Rogaly, B. (2003) Migrant Working in West Norfolk, Norwich: Norfolk County Council. Thame, D. (2004a) ‘Special delivery for reborn town’, Estates Gazette, 17 July, pp 68–​9. Thame, D. (2004b) ‘Victoria Hall overspend controversy’, Estates Gazette, 17 July, p 69. Thomas, R. (1973) ‘Growth in a regional context’, Built Environment, 2(3): 138–​40. Trilling, D. (2009) ‘Just the sort of place the BNP loves’, New Statesman, [online] 21 May, Available from: https://​www.newst​ates​man.com/​long-​ reads/​2009/​05/​bnp-​stoke-​local-​city-​party [Accessed 10 June 2020]. Turner, G. (1998) ‘Crime and disorder’, Hansard 318 c. 8, [online] 26 October, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​2C0k​UvP [Accessed 10 June 2020]. Urry, J. (1990) ‘Place and policies’, in M. Harloe, C. Packvance and J. Urry (eds) Place, Policy and Politics, London: Unwin Hyman, pp 187–​204. Vallantine, S. (2013) ‘Endangered 20th century buildings and structures of northern England’, East of the M60, [online] 16 October, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​2DVf​53x [Accessed 10 August 2020]. Vanderbeck, R. (2003) ‘Youth, racism, and place in the Tony Martin affair’, Antipode, 35(2): 363–​84. Voce, A. (2015) Policy for Play, Bristol: Policy Press. Waller, R. and Criddle, B. (2002) The Almanac of British Politics (7th edn), London: Routledge. Walley, J. (2010) ‘West Midlands’, Hansard 515 c. 14WH-​15WH, [online] 7 September, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​3l8v​y5K [Accessed 16 August 2020].

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Wallis, W. (2019) ‘Attitudes harden in UK’s Brexit capital’, Financial Times, [online] 12 February, Available from: https://​on.ft.com/​3huO​V6A [Accessed 25 August 2020]. Ward, M. (1996) ‘Someone to watch over me’, NewScientist, [online] 20 January, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​31F3​SfG [Accessed 6 August 2020]. Ward, S. (2001) British Culture and the End of Empire, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Wedgwood (1982) Company Report for 1981–​1982, Barlaston: J. Wedgwood. Wellings, R. (2009) ‘North to pay heavy price for dependence on public spending’, IEA, [online] 16 November, Available from: https://​bit.ly/​ 3fKH​Fm9 [Accessed 12 July 2020]. Wigmore, T. (2015) ‘How to transform a city in decline’, New Statesman, [online] 30 July, Available from: https://w ​ ww.newst​ates​man.com/​polit​ics/​ 2015/​07/​let​ter-​stoke-​how-​transf​orm-​city-​decli​ ne [Accessed 24 July 2020]. Williamson, H. (1997) ‘Status Zero Youth and the Underclass’, in R. Macdonald (ed) Youth, the Underclass and Social Exclusion, London: Routledge.

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8

Britain in a State of Emergency: Studying Ken Loach’s Films I, Daniel Blake (2016) and Sorry We Missed You (2019) Ellen Grünkemeier

Introduction The global spread of SARS-​CoV-​2 leading to the illness COVID-​19 is a strong reminder of how pervasive and disastrous a virus can be –​in medical terms and in terms of social, cultural, economic and political repercussions. The pandemic has exposed and exacerbated the shortcomings of the social security system in Great Britain, which was already under pressure after ten years of austerity politics. As social scientists point out, ‘[w]‌ave after wave of “welfare reform” and cuts to entitlement meant that the social security system entered the pandemic ill-​equipped to provide effective support to families already in poverty and those pushed into it by COVID-​19’ (Kaufman and Patrick, 2021). During the pandemic, the proportion of the population with some experience of claiming benefits rose considerably (see de Vries et al, 2021, p 7). In fact, Great Britain has ‘witnessed the fastest increase in the number of people claiming working-​age social security benefits … since records began’ (Edmiston et al, 2020, p 2).1 Compared to pre-​pandemic times, the cohort of COVID-​19 benefit claimants is ‘atypical’ (Edmiston et al, 2020, pp 3, 18) in that new claimants are more likely to be younger,

1

Black, Asian and minority ethnic groups ‘have been disproportionately impacted by job loss and a reduction in their hours or pay as a result of COVID-​19’ (Edmiston et al, 2020, p 3). 169

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university graduates and owner-​occupiers (Edmiston et al, 2020). In effect, COVID-​19 has disrupted the labour market to such an extent that it brought about a ‘considerable change in the socio-​economic profile’ (Edmiston et al, 2020, p 14) of benefit claimers. Although not immediately concerned with the COVID-​19 pandemic, the films I, Daniel Blake (2016), winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and Sorry We Missed You (2019), by the long-​standing collaborators director Ken Loach and scriptwriter Paul Laverty, are very topical, making for a viable case study to investigate divisions in contemporary Great Britain. Bearing in mind that social realist cinema is strongly interrelated with the societal and historical contexts from which it emerges, the films provide a ‘nuanced, troubling and provocative state-​of-​the-​nation address’ (Johnston, 2019), as Trevor Johnston puts it in Sight & Sound. Creating vignette narratives of the everyday realities among the underprivileged in northern England, the films give screen time to those who feel left behind in austerity Britain (see Chapters 4 and 7, this volume). Exposing the ways in which the British welfare state fails those whom it is essentially meant to support, the protagonist in I, Daniel Blake is pitted against the bureaucratic rules and procedures of social services that seem designed to put off potential benefit claimers. Emphasising the scenario’s uncanny and menacing qualities, Claudia Lillge characterises it as Kafkaesque (see Lillge, 2018, p 3). While Sorry We Missed You focuses on the private sector, the outlook is similar in that it takes issue with the competition and iniquity characteristic of the gig economy. On their story levels, the films contrast ‘the system’ of neoliberalism and global capitalism with kindness, solidarity and a sense of community among those affected by and suffering from disrespectful, condescending and alienating treatment. Methodologically speaking, this chapter is informed by the concept of affective polarisation, according to which political divisions intersect with a rising emotional in-​g roup attachment and out-​group animosity. While first designed to discuss partisan identities in the US (see Iyengar et al, 2012, 2019), the concept has since been adapted to other contexts such as the Brexit referendum (see Hobolt et al, 2020) and the COVID-​19 pandemic (see Jungkunz, 2021). Debates about the future of social welfare in the UK have gained urgency during the COVID-​19 crisis, not least because it might change the ways in which the general public respond to issues of social benefits and how they view claimants. COVID-​19 seemed to be a moment where support for social security would rise: a time of apparent increased solidarity in the face of a collective crisis; of clearly ‘deserving’ claimants with no control over their need; of positive and prominent public discourses about social security; and of increases in direct experiences of the benefits system, 170

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particularly from social groups that were previously unlikely to claim. (de Vries et al, 2021, p 5) Reimagining social security can also result in rethinking issues of participation, concerning, for example, the ways in which people with ‘the expertise of experience’ (Kaufman and Patrick, 2021) of living on a low income can become involved in policy discussions and decisions.2 Such proposals might prove productive because ‘a well-​functioning democracy requires that citizens and politicians are willing to engage respectfully with each other, even on controversial topics’ (Hobolt et al, 2020, p 1). Social division and antipathy, by comparison, impair critical dialogue, collaboration, compromise and trust in decision-​making processes (see Hobolt et al, 2020, pp 1, 3). The concept of affective polarisation is here adapted to British cultural studies as a means for studying filmic representations of austerity Britain and, more specifically, for analysing the construction of in-​and out-​groups in I, Daniel Blake and Sorry We Missed You. What divisions become evident in the films? To what extent do Ken Loach and Paul Laverty present British society as polarised over questions of social welfare and the economy? In what ways do these filmic representations gain in significance and meaning during the COVID-​19 crisis? Before investigating the films along the lines of affective polarisation as seen on screen, I will turn first to the politics and ethics of representation to make evident a central social divide inherent in British social realist cinema. Films classified as British social realism run against the conventions of mainstream Hollywood cinema (see Krämer, 2020, p 48), not least because they privilege the portrayal of the working classes, resist straightforward cause-​and-​effect plotlines, and do not offer resolutions (see Lay, 2002, pp 8, 20–​1).3 Form 2

3

Funded by the Nuffield Foundation, the research programme COVID-​19 Realities (https://​COVID-​19re​alit​ies.org/​) brings together parents and carers living on a low income, members of the Child Poverty Action Group and social scientists from the universities of York and Birmingham. Compared to other cinema traditions in Europe, British cinema stands out for its continuous focus on the working classes (compare Lillge, 2018, p 3). Still, British social realist films privilege the White, English, working-​class male (compare Lay, 2002, p 18). The lack of on-​screen diversity is another topic that could be explored along the lines of affective polarisation: ‘British social realism’s sense of social extension is, in a multicultural, multi-​faith Britain, as deplorable and damning an indictment as its lack of working-​class characters seemed to [the ‘New Wave’ film-​maker Lindsay] Anderson and his contemporaries in the 1950s. Furthermore, Britain has a largely invisible and shifting population of refugees, asylum seekers and illegal workers who are also rarely featured on British screens beyond news bulletins and documentaries’ (Lay, 2002, p 18). In his weekly column in The Guardian, film critic Steve Rose asks: ‘Why is British cinema so reluctant to tackle immigration?’ and goes on to state that ‘[e]‌ven Ken Loach, our social realist laureate, has rarely dealt with the issue’ (Rose, 2021). Almost two decades after the 171

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and style, in turn, leave their imprint on marketing, circulation and (target) audiences. Compared to more obviously entertaining, commercial and mass-​oriented films, social realism tends to be restricted to an arthouse niche market (see Lay, 2002, p 103; Krämer, 2020, pp 48, 54). Audience size and ticket sales are, of course, key to the film industry but what deserves closer attention here is the social make-​up of the cinema-​goers. Social realist films ‘are consumed predominantly by a mostly bourgeois international arthouse-​ cinema audience’ (Krämer, 2020, p 48), thus running the risk of ‘Othering that lurks in representations of working-​class characters for a predominantly middle-​class audience’ (Krämer, 2020, p 57). Reading the distribution of British social realist films in terms of affective polarisation draws attention to the social gap between characters and viewers. The films trigger and further all kinds of emotions, including entertainment, curiosity, fascination and voyeurism, pity, paternalism, and possibly also aversion towards working-​class realities.4 Paying attention to the complexity of Ken Loach’s films, Claudia Lillge convincingly argues that the plot and character design address the erosion of solidarity in British society, but, on the level of reception, the films promote recognition, respect, community and cooperation (see Lillge, 2018, p 6). In keeping with this line of reasoning, media scholars Julia Hallam and Margaret Marshment state that social realist films ‘seek audiences willing to engage critically with the contradictions and difficulties of contemporary life’ (Hallam and Marshment, 2000, p 195). Yet, regarding the question whether films can mitigate social discord, Ken Loach cautiously states, ‘We shouldn’t have any illusions about what film can do. I mean, it’s just a film, and when all is said and done, everybody gets up and walks out of the cinema’ (Cardullo, 2011, pp 83–​4). He goes on to argue that, at best, a film might ‘leave people with a question or … a sense of disquiet … a sense of solidarity with the characters, a sense of “that’s my world, I’m part of it, they’re part of me” ’ (Loach in Cardullo, 2011, p 84). Loach’s very use of pronouns –​first-​person singular and third-​person plural –​shows how polarisation works along the lines of ‘self versus other’ and

4

release of Last Resort (directed by Pawel Pawlikowski, 2000), In this World (directed by Michael Winterbottom, 2002) and Ae Fond Kiss (directed by Ken Loach, 2004), some recent films broach the topic of immigration. Ben Sharrock’s 2021 film, tellingly entitled Limbo, shows asylum seekers, mostly refugees from Syria like the protagonist Omar, waiting for their applications to be processed in Scotland (see Bradshaw, 2021). In His House (2020), writer-​director Remi Weekes adopts the haunted house genre to address refugee predicaments in Britain (see Lee, 2020). In an interview, Ken Loach takes issue with evaluations like ‘gritty’, omnipresent in film reviews, media coverage and scholarship, because this classification shapes the audience’s expectations: ‘You want an audience to come in without preconceptions and just enjoy what’s there, without being prejudiced by a stereotypical image’ (Loach in Cardullo, 2011, p 94). 172

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‘individual versus community’. While cinema can prove a popular ‘medium for consciousness-​raising’ (Cardullo, 2011, p 83), ‘films are more than wanting to set out to make a political statement’ (Loach in Cardullo, 2011, p 83).

I, Daniel Blake (2016) and Sorry We Missed You (2019) With Ken Loach and Paul Laverty, cinema serves as a powerful medium to address pertinent social, economic and political divisions in contemporary Britain. A predominantly bourgeois audience is exposed to the everyday lives of the underprivileged, unemployed, dispossessed and poor. I, Daniel Blake (2016) builds its plot around the central line of conflict between ‘the system’ and the protagonist Daniel Blake, a widowed and ailing joiner who struggles with the bureaucracy of the benefits services. After suffering from a major heart attack, Daniel is found too ill to work by his doctors and instructed to rest. Yet, looking for temporary financial support, he is caught up in the administrative machinery. After having undergone a lengthy application process, he is ultimately deemed ineligible for Employment and Support Allowance because, in what comes across as an arbitrary score system, he does not gain enough points in his medical assessment. The procedure of appealing against this decision turns out to be equally rigid and (over-​)regulated so that Daniel keeps going around in circles. Told to apply for Jobseeker’s Allowance instead, he starts searching for jobs which he would not be able to accept anyway due to his heart condition. In effect, the film is a polemical indictment of the absurd, inefficient, impersonal and dehumanising procedures of the welfare state in austerity Britain. The rules and regulations seem designed to code applicants into the machinery of the institutions so that these, in turn, can run smoothly and efficiently in terms of time and money. There is no room for individual cases or special circumstances. In this regard, the film’s beginning is very telling. I, Daniel Blake opens with a black screen and a voice-​over dialogue in which Daniel Blake answers a set of standard questions about his physical (in)capabilities. Following routine procedures, the questions are not filtered to fit his medical condition after the heart attack. They are read out automaton-​like by a female ‘healthcare professional’ –​a jargon that masks the political ideology inherent in the process. The woman introduces herself as ‘Amanda’ but, being invisible, she remains a voice and faceless entity standing in for the Department of Work and Pensions or, to be more precise, a private company appointed by the British government to establish the applicant’s eligibility for Employment and Support Allowance. Amanda has internalised the company’s group identity in this regime of power and domination, speaking in the first-​person plural of ‘us’: “Mister Blake, if you continue to speak to us like that, that’s not going to be very helpful for your assessment.” 173

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The confrontational but also surprisingly humorous and playful opening sets the tone for the entire film. It becomes evident straightaway how Daniel Blake is pitted against ‘the system’. Yet, ‘the system’ is too vague and abstract to be visualised on screen; it is represented symbolically: via the questionnaire of the medical examination process and the voice of the healthcare professional, via repeated references to ‘the decision-​maker’, via the repetitive clip of Vivaldi’s Spring as hold music of the Department of Work and Pensions, via the Jobcentre’s building, entrance lobby, waiting room, cubicles, desks, staff and security personnel, and via all kinds of official forms and letters. The enumeration indicates how complex and heterogeneous ‘the system’ is; and the neoliberal managerial strategy of outsourcing makes it yet more unwieldy, especially when operating on a global scale. In the opening scene, Daniel Blake confronts Amanda with rumours circulating in the waiting room, namely that the healthcare professionals are employed by a US-​American company. Feeling misunderstood, misrepresented and mistreated by the administrative machinery, Daniel Blake writes a powerful statement in preparation of his appeal date. I am not a client, a customer, nor a service user. I am not a shirker, a scrounger, a beggar nor a thief. I am not a national insurance number. … I don’t accept or seek charity. My name is Daniel Blake, I am a man, not a dog. As such I demand my rights. I demand you treat me with respect. I, Daniel Blake, am a citizen, nothing more, nothing less. Thank you. Taking issue with the ways in which ‘the system’ derides benefit seekers like himself, Daniel draws on the long-​standing differentiation between the ‘deserving’ und ‘undeserving’ poor: while the former have been treated as ‘victims’ of circumstance and are therefore considered to be in need of support and public attention, the latter have been held responsible for their own miserable socioeconomic conditions, primarily because they will not work, as Henry Mayhew famously put it in London Labour and the London Poor (see also Chapters 2 and 5, this volume). With its lean, sequential style of narration, the film lays bare that although Daniel Blake is recuperating from a heart attack, he falls through the safety net of social welfare. In an act of dramatic irony, if not sarcasm and cynicism, Daniel is shown to suffer another and fatal heart attack just before he can deliver his speech during his appeal. The statement is read out, instead, at his funeral in one of the film’s final scenes. During the COVID-​19 pandemic, the issue of benefit claimants ‘deserving’ public support came to the fore again with renewed force. While the COVID-​19 crisis spotlights gaps in the social safety net and recognises a new cohort 174

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of claimants, it has not contributed to countering polarisation. Studying social solidarity and welfare generosity among the British, investigators of the national research programme ‘Welfare at a (Social) Distance’ conclude that the pandemic ‘has not engendered a meaningful increase in general solidarity with welfare claimants in the UK. Welfare attitudes did appear to soften during the first and second waves of the pandemic –​but attitudes rebounded … with only small changes being sustained’ (de Vries et al, 2021, p 26). Compared to pre-​pandemic claimants –​as represented on screen by Daniel Blake, ‘COVID-​19 claimants were more likely to be seen as genuinely in need and deserving of help than pre-​pandemic claimants, and were considered much less blameworthy (whether for losing their jobs or for being unable to find a job and leave benefits)’ (de Vries et al, 2021, p 26). Researchers discuss these findings in terms of ‘COVID-​19 exceptio­ nalism’: those who began claiming benefits during the pandemic ‘are seen as exceptional, and are mentally bracketed away from other benefit claimants’ (de Vries et al, 2021, p 26). This attitude corresponds to the demographics of the ‘atypical’ cohort of COVID-​19 benefit claimants. In effect, ‘support for more generous benefits is higher if this is framed as COVID-​19-​related’ (de Vries et al, 2021, p 25). So, although the COVID-​19 pandemic triggers critical debate and some reforms to social welfare, it does not reverse current trends in social division. Rather than changing the public perception of benefit seekers and acknowledging their legitimate claims, COVID-​19 ‘exceptionalism’ reproduces the lines of difference with which the film I, Daniel Blake takes issue. In I, Daniel Blake, the protagonist is let down by the benefit system and denied a citizen’s legitimate rights; yet he is not left to fend for himself. Constructed as an amiable character, Daniel is supported by former colleagues, neighbours and others on an individual basis. Still, the informal network does not undermine the film’s anger because any such individualist option does not amend the social ills and injustices inherent in the deficient benefits and social welfare system. With Katie, a young single mother of two whom Daniel meets at the Jobcentre, the film demonstrates further failures of the welfare system. After losing their London flat and staying in a hostel for two years for want of affordable social housing, Katie and her children have been moved to Newcastle. Arriving too late for her first appointment at the local Jobcentre because, unsurprisingly, she cannot yet find her way around the city, Katie has to face sanctions. She has parts of her benefits frozen and is thus left without money to pay for electricity, clothes and food. While Ken Loach has frequently been criticised for a supposedly nostalgic take on an ‘old’ working-​class community and solidarity, reading the films closely makes evident that what is at stake here is not so much an issue of nostalgia but of class politics. With his films, Loach confronts the dominant neoliberal claim that class is ‘outdated’ and therefore ‘inappropriate’ 175

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for discussing society in contemporary Britain. Foregrounding various underprivileged characters, the films underscore that the working classes continue to be a central socioeconomic group and political force to be reckoned with. Summarising the abominable circumstances in which Daniel and Katie find themselves, Mark Kermode states in the Guardian: ‘Both are doing all they can to make the best of a bleak situation, retaining their hope and dignity in the face of insurmountable odds. Yet both are falling through the cracks of a cruel system that pushes those caught up in its cogs to breaking point’ (Kermode, 2016). Kermode’s film review, with the telling subtitle ‘A battle cry for the dispossessed’, identifies the central line of conflict between ‘a cruel system’ and the poor, unemployed, dispossessed, underprivileged who are –​ due to untoward circumstances –​in need of (temporary) support. In effect, the film establishes and challenges the binary opposition ‘us versus them’ by exposing it as a simplistic and populist frame of reference. What the film does is draw attention to the intricacies and inconsistencies of everyday life in which clear-​cut divides do not and cannot hold true. Although Amanda is introduced in the opening scene as part of ‘the system’, her character conception is more complex because, like Geordie Daniel Blake himself, she is cast as a dialect-​speaker and thus constructed as also belonging to the local Newcastle community. Moreover, the staff representing ‘the system’ do not necessarily act in as homogeneous and politically opportune a way as expected or demanded by their superiors. Ann, one of the Jobcentre consultants, is characterised as willing to help claimants even if it means going beyond standardised operating procedures. She is not personally invested in Daniel Blake’s case but generally feels for those frequenting the Jobcentre. Judging by the reaction of the floor manager, Ann has done so repeatedly, which is why she is told off for ‘setting a precedent’. Bearing in mind the competitive politics of deregulation and outsourcing, the scene makes evident to what extent those working in ‘the system’ are under pressure to ‘perform’ well. Despite the complex portrayal of in-​g roups and out-​groups, script and cinematography leave no doubt about the film’s political position and viewpoint: it clearly sides with Daniel Blake. After more than two minutes of black screen, the opening scene ends with a close-​up of Daniel looking directly at and speaking to Amanda situated outside the frame. Daniel Blake is individualised, first acoustically via his voice, intonation, statements and exclamations, and then also visually via his face and facial expression. Filmed against the background of a white, nondescript office wall, there is nothing to draw attention away from him. This focus on the individual is perpetuated in the next shot: as Daniel walks home through a street with red-​brick terraced houses, the film’s title, I, Daniel Blake, is superimposed onto the image, in a font imitating handwriting. The film also goes beyond the individual, thus 176

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displaying a central characteristic of social realist cinema: ‘Despite their focus on individuals, the way in which social realist films position them within their environment … always evokes a bigger picture of social injustice and struggle’ (Krämer, 2020, p 56). Rather than prying into the life of a benefit claimant, I, Daniel Blake is filmed unobtrusively, with a camera keeping its distance and minimising the risk of a voyeuristic gaze. Robbie Ryan’s cinematography can thus be read as an aesthetic means of working against affective polarisation. Sorry We Missed You (2019) serves as a ‘companion piece’ (Kermode, 2019) to I, Daniel Blake insofar as it explores comparable hardships in contemporary British society. Foregrounding the service economy, the film focuses on two sectors that are particularly prone to exploitation, poor pay, and long, hard and irregular working hours: nursing and deliveries. In times of the COVID-​19 pandemic, services like these have proven essential, albeit in different ways, to upholding the status quo. In economic, social and political terms, they are too big to fail because a collapse would have disastrous consequences for society at large. Ricky Turner, who lost his job as a construction worker in Newcastle as well as his savings during the economic crash of 2008, starts working as a driver on a freelance basis for a large delivery company. In the initial ‘onboarding’ conversation, the company manager Maloney excels himself in his use of the neoliberal diction that re-​classifies workers as independent contractors: “You don’t get hired here. … You don’t work for us; you work with us. You don’t drive for us; you perform services. There’s no employment contracts, there’s no wages, but fees. No clocking on. You become available.” Initially willing to ‘buy’ into the company’s philosophy about freedom and choice, Ricky comes to realise that the gig economy is only free from basic workers’ rights and the advantages of conventional employment like annual leave, insurance and sickness benefits. Rather than being independent, Ricky races to meet deadlines and is answerable to a hand-​held scanning device, metaphorically conceptualised as a ‘gun’ that ‘decides who lives and dies’. In the course of the film, several basically unconnected scenes illustrate the dynamics of Ricky’s physically demanding and nerve-​racking job: loading all the packages and parcels into his van, being stuck in traffic jams, trying to find parking space, almost receiving a parking ticket, searching for the correct address, collecting customer signatures and, in the end, Ricky is mugged and finds himself financially responsible for the stolen goods and the damaged scanner. His wife’s employment as a contract nurse is equally central to the film. Working long hours in changing shifts, Abby takes care of the elderly, disabled and infirm. The everyday interactions with her clients are simultaneously repetitive and unpredictable. As with Ricky, the vignettes of care work do not so much propel the plot but are indicative of the working 177

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conditions: underpaid, understaffed, working against the clock on a zero-​ hours contract. Moreover, they characterise Abby as an empathic woman who aims at taking care of her patients as if every single one of them was “my own mum”. This does not, however, mean that Abby forgets the economics of her care work. She bargains with her supervisor over the phone about extra money for the extra time she spent cleaning up one of the clients. The tight schedule allows neither for any such unexpected incidents nor for the administrative side of healthcare, which is why Abby makes the phone call at a bus stop in-​between appointments. Time and again in the episodic representation of Ricky and Abby’s jobs, the screen fades into black. While visually ending each of the scenes, the black screen provides no sense of closure; the struggles and conflicts continue to linger ‘in the dark’. The film thus makes a case for exposing and criticising the exploitative working conditions by way of exemplary cases and incidents that make, in Laurent Berlant’s terms, for ‘a situation’: A situation is a state of things in which something that will perhaps matter is unfolding amid the usual activity of life. It is a state of animated and animating suspension that forces itself on consciousness, that produces a sense of the emergence of something in the present that may become an event. (Berlant, 2011, p 5, emphasis in original) The film is driven by a strong sense of apprehension from the beginning, when Ricky argues with Abby that they must sell her car to afford the down payment for his delivery van. Entertaining high hopes that “in a year we can have a franchise”, as Ricky puts it, he is immune to his son’s biting remark, “Oh great, dad, a McDonalds?” Likewise, he remains comparatively unimpressed by his wife’s worries. “But we will never see each other; you will work 12 hours a day, six days a week. You won’t see the kids, or me.” It is in scenes like this that a situation unfolds –​and the film’s audience are in the privileged outsider position to anticipate and critically reflect on the subsequent plot and character development already laid out here. Compared to I, Daniel Blake, the film does not zoom in onto an individual, albeit representative of larger social structures, but sets a family in conflict and competition with the service industry. Alongside and against their job realities, Ricky and Abby work hard to manage their own family life as parents of two children, 11-​year-​old Liza Jane and her teenage brother Sebastian. During the time she spends commuting by bus from patient to patient, Abby leaves her children voice messages with parental instructions about food, school and homework. Cinematographically, the notion of family is realised via the living room with a dining table seating four, and framed photographs that line the wall in the hallway. The driver’s cab of Ricky’s van also features a family photo and Liza’s affectionate, self-​made notes, ‘Love 178

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u Dad’ and ‘Good Luck’. Still, the film does not perpetuate a naïve take on the bourgeois concept of a nuclear family. The Turners’ entrance area features a small shelf for keys which make evident the presence, or rather the absence, of family members. Repeatedly, Liza is seen coming home to an empty key rack, as she is the first and only one to return to what is supposed to be a ‘family home’. Read against this context, a poignant scene of father–​daughter bonding stands out from the film. When Liza accompanies Ricky for a day on his tours, they turn deliveries into a playful competition of who can run the fastest and be the first to arrive at the customer’s front door. The scene uncannily echoes the words of the company’s manager who belittles the very demanding deliveries job as “child’s play”. However, any such playfulness remains an exception because, in what is most likely a response to customer complaints, Ricky is later told off for letting his daughter accompany him. The family spend the tip money the daughter earned during the day on an Indian takeaway, making for a relaxed and enjoyable Saturday night at home. Yet even this brief moment of on-​screen quality time is interrupted when one of Abby’s patients calls, desperately in need of help. While addressing the polarisation of family versus service economy, the film is as nuanced as I, Daniel Blake in its compelling dialogue and dramatically varied character development. For example, the film documents the impasse in which Maloney, the manager of the courier company, finds himself because service companies are driven by the market logic of competition and profit. As Maloney puts it, his business is in competition with all the other delivery companies. “I want Apple, Amazon, Samsung, Zara here for my drivers and your families. This depot is a gold mine.” The metaphor of the gold mine underscores the extent to which Maloney benefits from this business model, accumulating private profits at the expense of his workforce. His use of possessive pronouns shows that he claims authority over “my drivers” but has no sense of obligation towards “your families”. Still, the film does not offer premature conclusions about Maloney as accountable for the circumstances of Ricky and the other drivers. Maloney personifies the abstract forces of a free market economy. Viewers, in turn, are invited to ponder on consumer practices: consumers –​be it individuals, groups or organisations –​who order, purchase, use or dispose of products and services are complicit in the situations that come across as so appalling and abusive when seen on screen.

Cruel optimism I, Daniel Blake and Sorry We Missed You show characters struggling to survive in a society shaped by neoliberalism and global capitalism. What keeps them going is a dissatisfaction with their ways of life, their anger at the status 179

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quo, and a sense of injustice. The characters showcase a belief system that questions the market logic according to which value and (self-​)worth are determined by the forces of supply and demand. Judging by their comments and behaviour, the characters subscribe to the idea they might bring about change and achieve their aims, if only they persevere, insist, work and try hard enough. Indeed, both films feature moments in which it looks as if Daniel or Katie, Ricky and Abby might be able to make it against all odds. Yet what hopes of fulfilment are there for the aged, the ill, the underprivileged, the precariously employed or the unemployed? After all, the film has Daniel Blake die mere minutes before his appeal date. A similar question can be raised about the realities during the COVID-​19 pandemic. In what ways can those affected by the socioeconomic repercussions of the virus be optimistic, especially when bearing in mind that there is no evidence of sustainable change in social solidarity and attitudes towards welfare? Due to their comparatively high levels of education and professional status, the new COVID-​19 benefit claimants seem ‘atypical’ and might ‘find it easier to “bounce back” ’ (Edmiston et al, 2020, p 17). Still, this is not to disregard or belittle the challenges they face because, after all, the achievement of their hopes, goals and ambitions depends heavily on ‘the health of the sectors to which they intend to return (or move into)’ (Edmiston et al, 2020, p 18). Using ‘health’ metaphorically in this very context underscores how complicated, unpredictable and potentially hazardous the pandemic might prove to be for the economy and society in the UK. Calling on policy makers, social scientists therefore sound a note of caution and point out that ‘further attention is needed on the distinctive income, employment and support needs of new claimants’ (Edmiston et al, 2020, p 18). Yet, ‘old’ claimants are not to be forgotten either. The scenarios in I, Daniel Blake and even more so in Sorry We Missed You can be framed productively in Lauren Berlant’s concept of ‘cruel optimism’. Investigating what she calls the ‘good-​life fantasy and its systematic failures’ (Berlant, 2011, p 10), Berlant explores dominant master narratives of upward mobility, job security, social equality or reciprocity in couples and families and exposes them as false hopes because ‘evidence of their instability, fragility, and dear cost abounds’ (Berlant, 2011, p 2). Starting from this incongruency, she defines cruel optimism as a ‘cluster of promises’ (Berlant, 2011, p 23) in which ‘something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing’ (Berlant, 2011, p 1). As evident in the term ‘good-​life fantasies’, the various ‘kinds of optimistic relation are not inherently cruel. They become cruel only when the object that draws your attachment actively impedes the aim that brought you to it initially’ (Berlant, 2011, p 1). Berlant goes on to caution that ‘attachments do not all feel optimistic. … But being drawn to return to the scene where the object hovers in its potentialities is the operation of optimism as an affective form’ (Berlant, 2011, p 24, emphasis in original). 180

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Applied to the societal and cultural specifics of I, Daniel Blake and Sorry We Missed You, Berlant’s concept helps to make visible the characters’ aims and ambitions. Despite the numerous ways in which neoliberalism has worn out good-​life fantasies, Daniel Blake continues to believe in what Berlant calls the ‘traditional infrastructures for reproducing life’ (Berlant, 2011, p 5). In his case, cruel optimism translates into Daniel Blake’s trust. Although losing his patience with inefficient and dehumanising bureaucracy, he remains confident that eventually his case will be set right, and the Department of Work and Pensions will find him eligible for Employment and Support Allowance. Confronting the Jobcentre consultant with his situation, he states, “It’s a monumental farce, isn’t it? You sitting there with your friendly name tag on your chest, Ann, opposite a sick man looking for non-​existent jobs, that I can’t take anyway. Wasting my time, employers’ time, your time”. His comment shows his anger and frustration; and his reference to the genre of a ‘farce’ adds an element of performance, exaggeration and ridicule: Daniel Blake feels tricked and exposed for the entertainment of others. Read through the lens of affective polarisation, it becomes evident how the film confronts the construction and marginalisation of out-​groups. While the social gap between the characters and bourgeois audiences in social realist cinema might trigger some sense of paternalism and voyeurism, scenes like these promote mutual recognition and respect. In Sorry We Missed You, Ricky upholds the ideal of upward mobility, at least for his children, if not for Abby and himself. In a conversation with his son, he states: “I want it better for you and for Liza.” Ricky’s actions suggest that he believes his efforts will be ‘rewarded’, provided he works hard enough to achieve a more privileged and comfortable position in society. What is cruel about his optimism is that he is so absorbed by his good-​life fantasy of financial security that he is unable to take stock of how this fantasy pushes him and his family to breaking point. From the very beginning, the film invites viewers to become aware of the false promises inherent in the neoliberal environment of global capitalism. Reading the film against the COVID-​19 pandemic with its devastating impact on workers providing essential services like deliveries and nursing adds to the cruelty of Ricky’s and Abby’s circumstances. Invested in his children’s future prospects, Ricky’s aims and ambitions come across as cruel optimism when taking into account that the pandemic has changed the demographic profile of benefit claimants which is currently more likely to include university graduates and owner-​occupiers. Approaching Ken Loach’s films through the lens of cruel optimism opens up new ways of reading affective polarisation in terms of opinion-​, emotion-​and ideology-​based groups. Cruel optimism complicates the social, economic and cultural divisions that shape social-​realist cinema insofar as it triggers difficult questions about good-​life fantasies as false hopes. Zooming in on the White working classes in northern England, Loach explicates the lived realities of 181

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those in precarious working and living conditions (see also Chapter 7, this volume). On their story levels, I, Daniel Blake and Sorry We Missed You do not address Brexit or the COVID-​19 pandemic; and yet, on the level of reception, they have much to offer because they highlight social divisions and problems which have resulted from a decade of Conservative politics (see also Chapters 2 and 3, this volume). The films provide opportunities for critical debate about contemporary Britain –​also in times of Brexit and the COVID-​19 pandemic, both of which have laid bare and exacerbated the weaknesses of the social security system. In his Guardian review of Sorry We Missed You, Peter Bradshaw points out how much workers in Great Britain stand to lose with Brexit because ‘the European Union is the modern-​day nursery of employment rights, and outside it is where working people will find more cynicism, more cruelty, more exploitation, more economic isolation and more poverty’ (Bradshaw, 2019). During the COVID-​19 pandemic, established social inequalities have been consolidated in the welfare system as women, Black, Asian and minority ethnic groups, people with health issues and disabilities continue to be disproportionately disadvantaged (see Edmiston et al, 2020, p 17). Concurrently, demographic changes in COVID-​19 claimants expose further gaps in the provision and coverage of financial benefits currently available. And yet, judging by research in the social sciences, these crises have not triggered a sustainable transformation in attitudes to social solidarity and welfare. In this environment, social realist films like I, Daniel Blake and Sorry We Missed You remain very topical because they foreground and take issue with the severely constrained options that far too many (have to) face in contemporary Britain. References Berlant, L. (2011) Cruel Optimism, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bradshaw, P. (2019) ‘Sorry We Missed You review: Ken Loach’s superb swipe at zero-h ​ ours Britain’ The Guardian, [online] 16 May, Available from: https://​ www.theg​uard​ian.com/​film/​2019/​may/​16/​sorry-​we-​mis​sed-​you-​rev​iew-​ ken-​loach [Accessed 5 May 2022]. Bradshaw, P. (2021) ‘Limbo review: Heart-​rending portrait of refugees stranded in Scotland’, The Guardian, [online] 31 July, Available from: https://​ www.theg​uard​ian.com/​film/​2020/​sep/​11/​limbo-​rev​iew-​ben-​sharr​ock [Accessed 5 May 2022]. Cardullo, B. (2011) ‘A cinema of social conscience: An interview with Ken Loach’, Minnesota Review, 76(1): 81–​96. de Vries, R., Baumberg Geiger, B., Scullion, L.C., Summers, K., Edmiston, D., Ingold, J., Robertshaw, D. and Young, D. (2021) ‘Solidarity in a crisis? Trends in attitudes to benefits during COVID-​19’, Welfare at a (Social) Distance –​Project Report, [online] September, Available from: http://​usir. salf​ord.ac.uk/​id/​epr​int/​62045/​ [Accessed 5 May 2022]. 182

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Edmiston, D., Baumberg Geiger, B., de Vries, R., Scullion, L., Summers, K., Ingold, J., Robertshaw, D., Gibbons, A. and Karagiannaki, E. (2020) ‘Who are the new COVID-​19 cohort of benefit claimants?’, Welfare at a (Social) Distance –​Rapid Report, [online] September, Available from: WaSD-​ Rapid-​Report-​2-​New-​COVID-​19-​claimants.pdf (salford.ac.uk) [Accessed 5 May 2022]. Hallam, J. and Marshment, M. (2000) Realism and Popular Cinema, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Hobolt, S.B., Leeper, T.J. and Tilley, J. (2020) ‘Divided by the vote: Affective polarization in the wake of the Brexit referendum’, British Journal of Political Science, 51(4): 1476–​93. I, Daniel Blake (2016) Directed by Ken Loach. [Feature film]. London: Entertainment One UK Ltd. Iyengar, S., Lelkes, Y. and Sood, G. (2012) ‘Affect, not ideology: A social identity perspective on polarization’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 76(3): 405–​31. Iyengar, S., Lelkes, Y., Levendusky, M., Malhotra, N. and Westwood, S.J. (2019) ‘The origins and consequences of affective polarization in the United States’, Annual Review of Political Science, 22(1): 1–​18. Johnston, T. (2019) ‘Sorry We Missed You review: Ken Loach counts the cost of striving in austerity Britain’, BFI: Sight and Sound, [online] 31 October, Available from: https://​www2.bfi.org.uk/​news-​opin​ion/​sight-​sound-​ magaz​ine/​revi​ews-​reco​mmen​dati​ons/​sorry-​we-​mis​sed-​you-​ken-​loach-​ gig-​econ​omy-​paul-​lave​rty [Accessed 5 May 2022]. Jungkunz, S. (2021) ‘Political polarization during the COVID-​19 pandemic’, Frontiers in Political Science, 3(1): 1–​8. Kaufman, J. and Patrick, R. (2021) ‘What would a post-​COVID-​19 social security system look like, and how might it be built? Now is the time to explore alternative ways forward’, LSE British Politics and Policy, [online] 18 June, Available from: https://​blogs.lse.ac.uk/​politi​csan​dpol​icy/​post​covi​d19-​soc​ial-​secur​ity/​ [Accessed 5 May 2022]. Kermode, M. (2016) ‘I, Daniel Blake review –​a battle cry for the dispossessed’, The Guardian, [online] 23 October, Available from: https://​www.theg​ uard​ian.com/​film/​2016/​oct/​23/​i-​dan​iel-​blake-​ken-​loach-​rev​iew-​mark​kerm​ode [Accessed 5 May 2022]. Kermode, M. (2019) ‘Sorry We Missed You review –​a gruelling stint in the gig economy’, The Guardian, [online] 3 November, Available from: https://​ www.thegu ​ ardi​ an.com/fi ​ lm/2​ 019/n ​ ov/0​ 3/s​ orry-w ​ e-m ​ iss​ ed-y​ ou-r​ evi​ ew-​ ken-​loach [Accessed 5 May 2022]. Krämer, L. (2020) ‘Social realist film in the British cultural studies classroom’, in J. Kramer and B. Lenz (eds) How to Do Cultural Studies: Ideas, Approaches, Scenarios, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, pp 47–​72. Lay, S. (2002) British Social Realism: From Documentary to Brit Grit, London and New York: Wallflower. 183

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Lee, B. (2020) ‘His House review –​effective haunted house horror with timely spin’, The Guardian, [online] 30 January, Available from: https://​ www.theg​uard​ian.com/​film/​2020/​jan/​30/​his-​house-​rev​iew-​effect​ive-​ haun​ted-​house-​hor​ror-​with-​tim​ely-​spin [Accessed 5 May 2022]. Lillge, C. (2018) ‘Vorwort’, in C. Lillge (ed) Ken Loach (Film-​Konzepte 49), München: Edition Text & Kritik, pp 3–​7. Rose, S. (2021) ‘Why is British cinema so reluctant to tackle immigration?’, The Guardian, [online] 26 July, Available from: https://​www.theg​uard​ian. com/​film/​2021/​jul/​26/​why-​is-​brit​ish-​cin​ema-​so-​reluct​ant-​to-​tac​kle-​ immi​grat​ion [Accessed 5 May 2022]. Sorry We Missed You (2019) Directed by Ken Loach. [Feature film]. London: Entertainment One UK Ltd.

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9

Cloaking Class: Making the Working Class Visible Lisa Mckenzie

Introduction Since the 1970s, wealth inequality in the UK has been rising year on year with the only exception being the early 2000s when the Blair Labour government made a few tweaks through their tax credit policy, slowing down the rapid widening of the wealth gap for a few short years. The Conservative/​Liberal Democrat coalition government’s austerity measures in 2010 speeded the process up to such an extent that by 2014 the gap between the wealthy and the poor had never been greater (Hills, 2014). Consequently, it should come as no surprise that in the country where the Industrial Revolution began –​and, as E.P. Thompson chronicled, the English working class were made –​the vertical class system that capitalism needs to function is in great shape. There has been a redistribution of wealth from the poorest upwards since 2010 (ONS, 2021). The divisions between the rich and the poor both in the UK and in Europe have never been greater in modern times, and there is now a full body of work from academics studying economics, sociology, anthropology and urbanism, focusing on the elites and the ever-​ growing wealth gaps particularly in the UK and within Europe (Savage, 2010, 2015, 2021; Picketty, 2014; Atkinson et al, 2017). However, the narrative of a solution to the widening wealth gap has focused somewhat on social mobility and meritocracy. To an extent, these concepts acknowledge the structured nature of inequality within capitalist societies, but for the most part social mobility is still seen as an individual act of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps. The social mobility narratives favoured by governments and administrations focus on shaping and introducing specific policies targeted at the bottom of society with the intention of creating ‘fairer opportunities’, 185

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with the hope that this will change the fates of some working-​class people who are ‘hardworking’, ‘naturally clever’, and who accept without complaint the dominant narratives and culture (Friedman and Laurison, 2019; Social Mobility Commission, 2021). However, these policies focusing on social mobility are not intended to change the system, nor to tackle the unfair advantages the system awards to those in the middle or at the top. The starkest example of this is that despite overwhelming evidence that a private school education is advantageous for students throughout their lives, and that it reproduces the class system, there has been no attempt by any of the political parties to abolish or even temper the private school system. The schools benefit from claiming charity status, and parents of private school students benefit from tax breaks (Reay, 2017). At their 2019 annual conference, the Labour Party discussed removing the tax loopholes that benefit fee payers in the independent sector but stopped short of abolishing or merging the independent sector (Adams and Proctor, 2019). Simultaneously, and at the other end of that social mobility narrative, is the out-​of-​control top 1 per cent who are largely to blame for the lack of social mobility and rising inequality. Although this accurately describes contemporary capitalism, which creates a class of super-​r ich people, it also obscures and cloaks the complexity of the British class system. The simple-​ to-​understand ‘1 per cent versus the 99 per cent’ narrative was made popular by the Global Occupy movement following the financial crisis of 2008. However, while it is simple to understand and easy to create a political movement from a large ‘us’ versus a small ‘them’ narrative, this overlooks the institutional and inherited advantages that are spread across the class system, through presenting the middle-​class and working-​class lived experiences as similar or even equivalent. Those who control the narratives of inequality –​ politicians, media outlets, academics and the creative industries –​choose whose plight is worthy of recognition and whose is not. What Pierre Bourdieu called ‘symbolic violence’ (1984, 1990a) is a practice by those in dominant positions with relative and actual power to keep knowledge, status and value away from or uncomfortable for those in less privileged social positions. It ensures that institutionally recognised knowledge, status, value and power can be used solely for their own class interests (Bourdieu, 1990b). I argue here, as does Pierre Bourdieu, that not all middle-​class and elite practices are conscious and deliberate, since the British class system easily smooths the path for those with institutionally recognised status and value. Therefore, they have little awareness that their everyday practices are inflicting both symbolic and actual violence on those below them. Ever since the 2008 financial crisis –​or to put it in plainer terms, when the global financial industry came close to collapse due to its own culture of speculation and gambling –​for example, taking bets on something as cruel as whether ordinary people in the US would default on their 186

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mortgages –​ bankers and traders have been betting on people losing their homes, their dreams and sometimes their lives (Schoen, 2017). The consequences of this massive failure and the reckless behaviour of a whole industry to the global economy have been profound –​yet not for the bankers, or the governments that allowed this to occur, as little has changed for them. Rather, billions of people around the world have had their lives, hopes and opportunities narrowed and ended by the debts politicians took on to save that industry, and by the subsequent austerity policies that were passed down to the poorest people (Schoen, 2017). A recent working paper for the London School of Economics by Advani and Tarrant (2022) notes that in the years 2008–​20, ‘average household wealth has risen from £402,100 to £564,300. Over the same period, the share of all wealth held by the top 10% of households has risen very slightly, from 44% to 45%’. Interestingly, this working paper is not focused on the 1 per cent known as the elites, but is looking at the top 10 per cent, which includes some of the middle class and especially those earning over £54,000 a year and those who have assets in property and in financial packages such as stocks and shares (Advani et al, 2020). They found that the share of wealth held by the top 10 per cent increased to 47 per cent of the overall wealth in the UK. Further data by the Office of National Statistics showed that, since 2019, when another global crisis hit in the form of COVID-​19, this same group in the UK further increased their wealth, as their assets –​mostly property but also stocks and shares –​started to increase in value. The housing market in the UK since 2019 has increased in value by 16 per cent, and all homeowners have seen their property increase in value. However, it is for those who live in cities throughout the UK, especially in the south-​east of the country, but also in the north-​west, that property prices are booming. The UK government’s recent and varied ‘help to buy’ schemes have been another way in which the middle class have been directly advantaged by government handouts (Proven, 2017). In spring 2022, another calamity hit the world when Russian troops invaded Ukraine, adding to the already rising inflation, unprecedented rise of energy and fuel costs, and the price of basic food items, such as pasta and butter, which in some cases have risen by over 50 per cent. These inflationary rises and the housing market boom have led to increased rents, and when little to no affordable or social housing is being built, the lived experience of Britain’s working class is grim. Although I focus on the UK, I acknowledge that the (once industrial) working classes across Europe and the Western world are experiencing similar levels of decline in wealth, status and autonomy over their own lives (Devellennes, 2001; Druckman et al, 2021). The British class system has weathered the macro political, social and economic turbulence of the last 30 years well. It remains healthy and intact, ensuring that the unearned advantages for the middle class and elites remain and yet seem invisible within the narrative of meritocratic social mobility. 187

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Therefore, the rest of this chapter focuses on the micro-​politics of how class in Britain is lived and experienced every day, relying on the testimony of working-​class people in the United Kingdom. This chapter focuses on how hierarchal class identities and the British class system not only encourage feelings of distance, superiority or inferiority, but actively promote and rely upon the effect of a polarised society. In this understanding of affective polarisation, the emphasis lies less on political allegiance than on class. I draw upon ethnographic data I have collected from my research projects, starting in 2005 with working-​class women living on a Nottingham council estate (Mckenzie, 2014) through to research collected in the East End of London that focused upon housing and community (Savage, 2015; Mckenzie, 2017a, 2017b, 2018), right up to the current research of COVID-​19 lockdown diaries of the working class in which I analysed over 40 written diaries during April and May 2020 at the beginning of the first lockdown in the UK (Mckenzie, 2022).

The fear and the loathing of and for the working class The following excerpt is taken from my research diary, 17 November 2019: Just got home from the Wetherspoon’s pub in North Nottinghamshire –​ it’s been a long day and I feel exhausted listening to seven women talking and sometimes shouting over each other trying to explain and argue passionately about the election in December –​sitting here trying to write something which makes sense and accurately represents their anger, their frustration and the fear that is undoubtedly there, not always fear for themselves although ‘Jane’ and ‘Kim’ were definitely afraid of their future both living in hostels in their 50s –​but the fear for their children, their parents and their community lay thick around the table –​it’s hard for working class women in these communities or actually anywhere to talk about or admit they are afraid –​I know only too well working class women from these communities are not allowed to be afraid, I’m thinking about my mum now and the brave face she put on everything. Now as an adult woman I now know what that ‘brave face’ looks like as I wear it myself –​I saw today how they struggled with that fear and how quickly it flashed into rage and anger. I recognised it because I do it myself –​but now after the rage and anger from around the table is gone –​I feel worn out –​I know they will too. This small excerpt from my research diary explains my feelings of exhaustion after meeting with a group of women in north Nottinghamshire a few weeks before the general election in 2019. The women were in their forties and 188

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fifties and they had all worked in the local factories making hosiery, underwear and clothing. Although this research was focused on how working-​class women had been deindustrialised, the looming general election was always on the table. Whenever we think about deindustrialisation, we always think of men, and heavy industries, which ended in the 1980s and the 1990s in north Nottinghamshire. However, at the same time millions of working-​class women’s jobs were also lost –​mostly the work went abroad to the Far East and Eastern Europe as the industrialists were looking for a better price and a cheaper workforce. All the women I met that day had started working in the factories straight out of school at 16. All of them had left the factories by the end of the 1990s, and most were now working in care homes, or in low level social sector work. I had met them as a group six times previously and had known some of them from school –​I started work at 16 in the Pretty Polly factory with some of the women I was interviewing –​although we had lost touch after the factories had closed. On this day we started to talk about the general election which was to be held in the first week of December in 2019 only a few weeks away. I should have expected the anger and frustration, but it came at me like a bullet: Kate: Lisa: Kate:

Go on then Lisa who the fuck am I supposed to vote for … I know what you are gonna say, “Don’t vote Tory”, but for fucks sake why not? I wasn’t going to say that I’m not voting at all. Well that’s what people are saying on the telly that working-​ class folks like me shouldn’t be voting Tory but it’s alright for them are they living here? I mean Lisa it’s a shithole there’s nothing open it’s like a ghost town my mam and dad are old now and they’ve got nowt thank fuck they’ve still got their council house, and our [daughter’s name] she is working in a fucking prison, and she hates it –​but the choice is the warehouse and Lisa [her voice breaks] I can’t see her go in there.

This exchange between myself and ‘Kate’ was extremely emotional. She was so upset, which turned into raging anger about ‘them’ who would look down on her for her decision to vote for the Conservative Party. This part of the country is what the media has called the ‘red wall’: a large section of the industrial country, starting in the East Midlands and snaking up the country to the north-​east, of solid working-​class Labour voters. Some of these seats had been Labour for a hundred years. As deindustrialisation was implemented these communities were devastated and the once all-​encompassing Labour vote became weak, until December 2019 when once ‘safe’ Labour seats turned Conservative. Turning a solid Labour seat Conservative in a part of the country that has been Labour since the Labour Party was formed over 189

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one hundred years ago seems incredible, but it was a slow process spanning 20 years. Especially in the ‘red wall’ communities, the Labour Party had been accused of using these constituents as mere voting fodder and of parachuting in their ‘bright young hopefuls’ from Oxford and Cambridge to seats they had no connection with, and to communities they never understood or engaged with. One of the worst examples of this was in the 1990s when Peter Mandelson, Tony Blair’s right-​hand man, was dropped into the safe seat of Hartlepool in the north-​east; he was so out of touch that he thought that the local delicacy of ‘mushy peas’ was guacamole. Then in the 2000s, Stoke-​on-​Trent –​once famous for its potteries –​found itself with Tristram Hunt, another Oxbridge bright thing with no connection to the community, who was foisted upon it by his Westminster chums, before leaving his political career for the directorship of the Victoria and Albert Museum in West London. The seething anger towards the Labour Party had been rising for many years in these forgotten communities, and when the referendum was called on whether the UK should leave the EU, it had the effect of a lit match on a highly flammable substance. The horrors and injustices of the British class system are never far away from British politics despite the constant attempts of politicians, media commentators and even academics to declare that class is over. The phenomenon that was the 2019 general election left the Conservative Party with an 80-​seat majority in the House of Commons, annihilating the Labour seats in over 30 of the traditional ‘red wall’ constituencies, despite the Labour Party having a left-​wing and socialist leader in Jeremy Corbyn. In 2014 I started a piece of research in Bethnal Green in East London on housing and then, in 2016, after the success of the ‘vote leave’ result in the referendum on the EU, I started interviewing people in north Nottinghamshire and in East London about the Brexit result. This is where affective polarisation as a political concept would be useful, as both Brexit and the 2019 general election were polarised along class distinctions. None of the working-​class people I spoke to from 2016 to 2019 in both communities had much trust in any politician or political party. The new socialist language and manifesto coming out of the Labour Party between 2017 and 2019 under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership were seen as either too little too late, or too middle-​class and North London elite. The East End of London respondents argued that Corbyn was ‘still Labour’, who they mostly blamed for the gentrification policies in the London boroughs. To them, the Labour Party cared more about the London middle class than its working class. In 2016, I spoke to a group of women in East London days before the referendum on the EU, and just like the women in Nottinghamshire there seemed to be growing levels of anger in how they as working-​class people were being represented through the media. They had spoken to me about the many news stories supposedly ‘speaking to and about’ how the working class would vote, 190

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and they had watched the vox pops on the evening news where they said reporters had purposefully made working-​class people “look thick”, “look racist” and “silly” when they had asked about the way they might vote in the referendum. They had also noted that middle-​class people were treated in a completely different way by reporters, and in their opinion had been given more time to discuss their reasons for their voting intentions. In one meeting in the local café, ‘Jane’, a mother and grandmother in her sixties who I had interviewed many times over the three years of the research, gave me an example: “Do they think we are thick? We can see what they are doing … [she then gives an example of how a reporter might speak, in a fake posh voice] ‘So, tell me just exactly how stupid are you’.” Of course, she knows that this is not what the reporter actually says but what ‘Jane’ is doing here is critiquing how she sees the media speaking to, and more importantly speaking down to, working-​class people. Speaking down and looking down on working-​class people has long featured in my ethnographic research over the last 20 years. Working-​class women living on a Nottingham council housing estate (Mckenzie, 2014) described themselves as being “at the bottom” and the “lowest class” not in the ways they understood themselves but in how they were treated and spoken to by those with authority. Positionality within the class system is crucial in maintaining a successful hierarchical system and enforcing class positionality comes through the everyday practice of all hierarchical societies. This is where the concept of Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘symbolic violence’ can be used to inform wider theorising on power and domination. It can be used to explain how social hierarchies and inequalities are maintained not with physical force but through forms of symbolic domination. Bourdieu (2001, p 2) defines symbolic violence as ‘exerted for the most part … through the purely symbolic channels of communication and cognition … recognition or even feeling’. Systems of symbolism and meaning are imposed on groups or classes of people in such a way that the exerted power and the domination that one group has over another is experienced as legitimate. The consequence is a gradual acceptance and also an internalisation of ideas, practices and social structures that are used to exert real and tangible hierarchical power over people and groups in their everyday lives. Yet at the same time, symbolic violence masks and obscures the underlying power relations as ordinary and presents them as natural (Bourdieu, 1977, 2001; Mckenzie, 2014). Symbolic violence and the everyday practice of class hierarchies allows dominance of one class over another as well as a ‘legitimate’ consigning of people to inferior and superior social positions (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992, pp 168, 173). Consequently, symbolic violence allows the superior group to subtly exert power and dominance, which feels like a thousand class-​based paper cuts a day as the scars build up and become visible, while the structure which allows that level of violence remains invisible. Like a magician who 191

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uses his cloak to hide his ‘as if by magic’-​process, the dominant class can use the plethora of everyday practices, rules and structures as effective tools of domination and for silencing the dominated within the system and legitimising their practices as ‘natural’. Therefore, the dominant classes fix their positions within those structures of power and engage in practices that allow themselves to maintain their own dominant position. In addition, the British middle class are exceptionally skilled in a process that I call ‘seat saving’. This means that the individuals not only benefit from the class system but they can also exploit it for their own class interests. They do so by ensuring the reproduction of the class system by ‘saving seats’ for others who are like themselves, who they feel more comfortable with being in their proximity, who fit, know the rules, and are rewarded by those unfair and unjust class advantages. Over the years and throughout all my research on class inequality in Britain my working-​class respondents have always talked about “representation”, or rather “mis-​representation” and, increasingly, “no representation”. These conversations are often framed through political representation, or the lack thereof, and through the narratives that are told about them. In 1997, Bourdieu published a slim pamphlet titled ‘Sur la télévision’ (in Bourdieu, 2001, p 246) which caused controversy in France as Bourdieu noted that television could have been a great democratiser but instead became an instrument of symbolic oppression. One could also extend this to social media, as similar claims of democratisation were made about the internet (Das and Ahmed, 2020). In 2001, Bourdieu explored how journalists frame debates and items on television using a particular language and creating particular narratives about those who are dominated, thereby strengthening the class system as if it were natural and legitimate, and rarely challenging the deeply unequal structure they operate within and benefit from. A recent report by the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre outlined both the importance of the creative industries in shining a light on how the UK sees itself, but also how it imagines itself, and also reported on the poor state of the UK creative industries regarding the lack of working-​class representation. When it comes to the arts, music production, architecture, film, TV and media, publishing, journalism, design, the fashion industry and so on, these occupations and careers are overwhelmingly held by people from high socioeconomic backgrounds. The report made it clear that more than 250,000 working-​class voices have been left out of the cultural sphere, a deficit almost equal to the growth of the industries in the last five years (Carey et al, 2021). Alarmingly, the research noted that the privileged dominated every creative sector, accounting for approximately six in ten jobs in advertising and marketing (63 per cent privileged), music, performing and visual arts (60 per cent) and publishing (59 per cent). 192

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Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology and class theory is distinct in that it focuses on the divisions and hierarchies of cultural, social and symbolic capital in addition to the economic distinctions of class. In recent years, the focus on culture in class theory is being challenged predominantly by privately educated left-​wing media personalities arguing that class should be focused on one’s economic position at any given point alone. Consequently, a wealthy student with family economic support and enormous amounts of cultural/​social and symbolic capital can be seen as working class throughout their studies because they have no earnings. While working on the Great British Class Study with Mike Savage (2015), we focused on how important inherited and shared high cultural, symbolic, social capital is for the class system to survive and be reproduced. An example of this is when privately educated journalist and self-​identified Marxist Grace Blakely used Twitter to state that there are two classes –​those that own the means of production and those that do not –​and then doubled down on her claim that class has nothing to do with: • • • • •

your accent where you live where you grew up what your parents do where you went to school.

Decades of class scholars writing and speaking from experience have made and continue to make the argument that culture and ‘taste’ are as important to class positionality as economic factors. Voices and experiences of working-​class people are dismissed by middle-​class journalists, politicians, publishers and television executives. While obviously working in their class interests, their symbolic violence goes undetected as it is considered merely ‘opinion’ or, as their class and social position implies, that they are more knowledgeable and better read. The creative industries are significant in understanding how power uses culture to maintain class inequality and the status quo, yet simultaneously denying that power when the working class cry out for representation. The cultural industries in the UK are the gatekeepers of class. They tell us whose stories are important and worth telling, and they dictate what is acceptable in matters of style, manners, accents and behaviour. The British creative industries are at the forefront of class reproduction, which is why working-​class people have difficulties being included in what we think of as British culture in any positive way that they self-​determine. In this volume (Chapter 6), Jana Gohrisch discusses the polarisation of Black authors from what is considered the ‘norm’, that is, the White middle-​class dominant and institutionalised culture. When the ‘norm’ is middle-​class and White, 193

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everything else deviates, and it is left to the ‘outsider’ to find a place within that system, by forcing an opening or working from the outside. Either way, this takes enormous amounts of effort, emotional labour and bravery that is seldom recognised by the dominant sphere and is always seen as ‘fringe’. Instead, all working-​class people are easily depicted as outside the norm and portrayed, imagined and made to disappear by middle-​class actors, authors and directors. However, more sinister than our invisibility in the creative industries, is our misrepresentation and demonisation. Throughout almost 20 years of research, my working-​class respondents –​no matter the subject –​always talk about how they are represented and misrepresented. In 2010, the women in St Ann’s (Mckenzie, 2014) in Nottingham raised the question of “why people look down on us because of what we wear” with me. A simple question, however with a complex and complicated answer that the women understood and knew instinctively but which will need unpacking here. Most of the women wore a lot of gold jewellery and big Creole earrings, and expensive and branded sportswear and trainers are important to them. The women felt a real sense of injustice that they were constantly “disrespected” because of this by those on the outside. However, it seemed that conformity, that is, not wearing the big gold earrings, not wearing their hair in particular ways, and not engaging in what they described as “St Ann’s culture” was not an option for them, as they liked where they lived and what they looked like. ‘Tanya’, a mother in her twenties, told me she could not understand why she had noticed “on the telly” that when someone was supposed to be “common” they were portrayed wearing tracksuits and large hooped gold earrings. ‘Tanya’ told me that she “knew” that some people would “look down” on her because of the amount of gold she wore. She also told me she had been followed around shops being mistaken as a thief. She thought this was because of the way she looked and dressed: “[T]‌oo much gold, tracksuit and trainers, black baby in the pram.” In 2020 I undertook research resulting in 46 working-​class people sending me their ‘Lockdown Diaries’. The diaries came from people with different stories and lives and from throughout the country, but it was the mothers’ diaries that really told the story of how working-​class people’s struggles were not seen. ‘Soraya’, a mother with four children living on one of the council estates in Nottingham, was really struggling to keep up with her children’s schoolwork: Still haven’t heard from the school and I feel frantic. My 7-​year-​old I think is dyslexic, like me but I’m still waiting for the test –​and she gets really upset over schoolwork. The youngest Dana who is 6 years old is refusing to do it and is sitting under the kitchen table hiding –​my 10-​year-​old is watching cartoons and I feel guilty –​for everyone –​and all of us ended up crying. I cry when I get stressed or when I feel like 194

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I’m not getting anywhere or backed up. I feel like I could give up and scream. (8 April 2020) Everyone is stressing it’s getting so bad everyone in the house is shouting at each other and getting angry –​I’ve got no food left in the house and the kids are eating everything. I was going to go to the shop today to get more food but I ended up not going. I just couldn’t be bothered. The kids are just watching everything on the telly they want and on their phones, they are using them that much we are running out of phone chargers and then the fighting starts and then the crying starts. It’s only eleven and now everyone is crying. (10 April 2020) ‘Soraya’s diary over the first weeks of the pandemic lockdown period was all about struggling for resources that she didn’t have, material resources such as equipment, technology and space for her children to study, but also the resources of being able to ‘teach’, and to understand what the school expected from her and her children. ‘Soraya’ talks about her own difficulties at school, her lack of self-​esteem when it comes to ‘teaching’ her children, and recognition that her children are missing out on their education, but also feels helpless to do anything about it. Instead ‘Soraya’ falls back on what she knows she is good at –​being their mum.

Conclusion In post-​COVID-​19, post-​Brexit and current cost-​of-​living crisis Britain, the British class system is as successful as it has ever been. There are clear and obvious definitions between the working class and the middle class for those of us who focus on how contemporary capitalism works and how classification is structured within the system. Cloaking class and the effect of polarised and unequal status and value have enormous penalties for those who are not ‘the norm’. At the same time, it has incredible advantages for those perceived as the norm –​the White middle class, who, as Bourdieu argues, already know the rules of the game and ‘fit’. The process which ensures the logic, practices and tools which make and maintain those definitions is not visible and, in fact, appears as ‘if natural’ and the intended polarisation is cloaked. The research that I have undertaken for almost 20 years shows consistently that working-​class people can be blamed for the disadvantages they experience because of their social class position. Simultaneously, those who are middle class and above are unfairly rewarded for their class positions. The classed relationships to culture can be as important as the classed relationships to the economy, especially as it is those with platforms and power that get to tell and create the narratives of class polarisation. Bourdieu’s theories help to explain how culture works in our society as 195

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currency in maintaining the class system, and how it cloaks class polarisation using the tools and legitimacy of symbolic violence. These practices and dominant narratives are the means by which the middle and elite classes, the cultural norms, gain undeserved advantages for themselves and inflict equally undeserved disadvantages upon working-​class people. The constant battle for any of us who research, study and argue that class inequality is still the main delineation of how a capitalist system successfully runs, must be to constantly expose how the system cloaks class inequality and legitimises a hierarchical polarisation which awards favour to the dominant and fear to the dominated. References Adams, R. and Proctor, K. (2019) ‘Labour delegates vote for plan that would abolish private schools’, The Guardian, [online] 22 September, Available from: https://​www.theg​uard​ian.com/​educat​ion/​2019/​sep/​22/​ lab​our-​delega​tes-v​ ote-i​ n-​fav​our-o ​ f-​abo​lishi​ ng-​priv​ate-​scho​ols [Accessed 15 June 2022]. Advani, A. and Tarrant, H. (2022) ‘Official statistics underestimate wealth inequality in Britain’, British Politics and Policy at LSE, [blog] 7 January, Available from: https://​blogs.lse.ac.uk/​politi​csan​dpol​icy/​ [Accessed 14 June 2022]. Advani, A., Bangham, G. and Leslie, J. (2020) ‘The UK’s wealth distribution and characteristics of high wealth households’, Resolution Foundation, [online] December, Available from: https://​www.resol​utio​nfou​ndat​ion. org/​app/​uplo​ads/​2020/​12/​The-​UKs-​wea​lth-​distr​ibut​ion.pdf [Accessed 11 September 2022]. Atkinson, R., Parker S. and Burrows, R. (2017) ‘Elite formation, power and space in contemporary London’, Theory, Culture and Society, 34(5–​6): 179–​200. Bourdieu, P. (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, London: Routledge. Bourdieu, P. (1990a) The Logic of Practice, Cambridge: Polity. Bourdieu, P. (1990b) In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology, Cambridge: Polity. Bourdieu, P. (2001) Masculine Domination, Cambridge: Polity. Bourdieu, P. and Wacquant, L. (1992) An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, Cambridge: Polity. Carey, H., O Brian, D. and Gable, O. (2021) ‘Social mobility in the creative economy: Rebuilding and levelling up?’, Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre, [online], Available from: https://​pec.ac.uk/​resea​rch-​ repo​r ts/​soc​ial-​mobil​ity-​in-​the-​creat​ive-​econ​omy-​reb​uild​ing-​and-​levell​ ing-​up [Accessed 15 June 2022]. 196

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Das, R. and Ahmed, W. (2020) ‘Despite concerns, Covid-​19 shows how social media has become an essential tool in the democratisation of knowledge’, Impact of Social Sciences, [blog] 5 June, Available from: https://​ blogs.lse.ac.uk/​imp​acto​fsoc​ials​cien​ces/​2020/​06/​05/​desp​ite-​conce​r ns-​ covid-1​ 9-s​ hows-​how-​soc​ial-​media-​has-​bec​ome-a​ n-e​ ssenti​ al-t​ ool-i​ n-t​ he-​ demo​crat​isat​ion-​of-​knowle​dge/​ [Accessed 5 June 2022]. Devellennes, C. (2001) The Gilets Jaunes and the New Social Contract, Bristol: Policy Press. Druckman, J.N., Klar, S., Krupnikov, Y., Levendusky, M. and Ryan, J.B. (2021) ‘Affective polarization, local contexts and public opinion in America’, Nature Human Behaviour, 5(1): 28–​38. Friedman, S. and Laurison, D. (2019) The Class Ceiling: Why it Pays to be Privileged, Bristol: Policy Press. Hills, J. (2014) Good Times, Bad Times: The Welfare Myth of Them and Us, Bristol: Policy Press. Mckenzie, L. (2014) Getting By: Class, Culture in Austerity Britain, Bristol: Policy Press. Mckenzie, L. (2017a) ‘The class politics of prejudice: Brexit and the land of no-​hope and glory’, The British Journal of Sociology, 68(S1): S265–​80. Mckenzie, L. (2017b) ‘“It’s not ideal”: Reconsidering “anger” and “apathy” in the Brexit vote among an invisible working class’, Competition and Change, 21(3): 199–​210. Mckenzie, L. (2018) ‘Surviving organised politics: The case of the London housing movement’, in A. Fishwick and H. Connolly (eds) Austerity and Working-​Class Resistance: Survival, Disruption and Creation in Hard Times, London: Rowman & Littlefield, pp 17–​32. Mckenzie, L. (2022) The Lockdown Diaries of the Working Class, Nottingham: Working Class Collective. ONS (2021) ‘Household income inequality, UK: Financial year ending 2021’, Office for National Statistics, [online] 28 March, Available from: https://​ www.ons.gov.uk/p​ eople​ popu ​ lati​ onan ​ dcom ​ mun​ity/​perso​nala​ndho​useh​old f​i nan​ces/​inco​meand​ weal​ th/b​ ulleti​ ns/h ​ ouseho​ldin​come​ineq​uali​tyfi​nanc​ial /​fina​ncia​lyea​rend​ing2​021 [Accessed 14 June 2022]. Picketty, T. (2014) Capital in the Twenty-​F irst Century, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Proven, B. (2017) ‘How “Help to Buy” helps mainly the privileged’, LSE British and Irish Politics and Policy [blog] 23 October, Available from: https://​ blogs.lse.ac.uk/​politi​csan​dpol​icy/​how-​help-​to-b​ uy-h ​ elps-t​ he-p​ riv​ ileg​ ed/​ [Accessed 13 June 2022]. Reay, D. (2017) Miseducation: Inequality, Education and the Working Classes, Bristol: Policy Press. Savage, M. (2010) Identities and Social Change in Britain since 1940: The Politics of Method, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 197

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Savage, M. (2015) Social Class in the 21st Century, London: Pelican Books. Savage, M. (2021) The Return of Inequality: Social Change and the Weight of the Past, Cambirdge, MA: Harvard University Press. Schoen, E.J. (2017) ‘The 2007–​2009 financial crisis: An erosion of ethics: A case study’, Journal of Business Ethics, 146(1): 805–​30. Social Mobility Commission (2021) ‘State of the nation 2021: Social mobility and the pandemic’, Crown Copyright 2021, [online] July, Available from: https://​ass​ets.pub​lish​ing.serv​ice.gov.uk/​gov​ernm​ent/​uplo​ads/ ​sys​tem/​uplo​ads/​atta​chme​nt_​d​ata/​file/​1003​977/​State_​of_​t​he_​n​atio​n_​20​ 21_​-​_​Socia​l_​mo​bili​ty_​a​nd_​t​he_​p​ande​mic.pdf [Accessed 14 June 2022].

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10

Class, Poverty and Inequality in Scotland: Independence and the Creation of Affective Polarisations Carlo Morelli and Gerry Mooney

Introduction The 2014 Scottish independence referendum and the continuing movements towards a second referendum (‘Indyref 2’) provide opportune examples for the examination of the development of affective polarisation in Scotland. The concept of opinion-​based identities as differentiated from identities of a more historic and structural form, notably class, gender, race and ethnicity, emerges from the discipline of political science. Here the focus is upon singular events, namely referenda or parliamentary elections, whereby voters are required to make binary choices, rather than being defined by the historical social and legal structures in capitalist states (Iyengar, Sood and Lelkes, 2012, Iyengar et al, 2019; Hobolt et al, 2021). As such the 2014 Scottish independence referendum and the likely Indyref 2 provide useful case studies for this approach. Nation states and nationalism represent two of the most defining features of structural forms of traditional insider and outsider identities. Emerging in the rise of capitalism, the nation state defined geographic boundaries and forms of political, social, linguistic and economic development within a unified legal framework. While modern nation states developed within the European context during the mid-​19th century’s bourgeois revolutions, the developments within Great Britain arguably have deeper roots. The 1707 Act of Union between Scotland and England, coming after the English Civil War of the 17th century, facilitated the unification of the British state 199

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and provided the basis for the economic and social developments of the 18th and 19th centuries, ensuring Britain emerged as the first industrial nation and subsequent dominant global power (Hobsbawm, 1962; Daunton, 1995; Davidson, 2012). However, the current form of the state arose later than states within continental Europe, with the retention of six of the nine counties of Ulster within a United Kingdom following the independence of the Irish state in 1921. Identification with nation and the feelings of belonging to a particular national community thus might be considered to be reflective of a traditional concept of structural identity. However, the growth of support for Scottish independence in the months prior to the 2014 independence referendum may still legitimately lead us to understand and apply the concept of opinion-​ based identities within the framework of affective polarisation. Prior to the referendum, support for Scottish nationalism was largely restricted to the areas of national identity, rather than being a political movement for national self-​determination, and it was thus mainly confined to questions of language, cultural identity and the 19th-​century invention of ‘Scottish’ traditions (Davidson, 2000). From the 1970s onwards, the Scottish National Party (SNP) had established an electoral base for a specific political manifestation of nationalism, but it nevertheless remained secondary to the dominant class-​based identity and political formation associated with the Labour Party and wider trade union movement. As a result, the SNP’s electoral fortunes were based in areas of Scotland with the least industrial concentration and were dominated by rural and agricultural interests, in contrast to Labour’s dominance in the main urban and industrial areas across Central Scotland. The introduction of devolution and the re-establishment of a Scottish Parliament in 1999 provided a distinct institutional focus for legislative functions facilitating an increased attention upon the economic, social and political aspects of Scottish nationalism. This development of a civic form of Scottish nationalism was decidedly inclusive rather than exclusive in its formation. Thus, the ability to vote in the referendum as ‘Scottish’ and in-​ group belonging as ‘Scottish’ was not identified with an exclusive notion of genetic ethnic identity or hereditary entitlement. Instead, participation was defined via an inclusive definition of those who made their home within the geographic territory of Scotland, irrespective of their ethnic origin, first language or self-​defined national identity. Thus, entitlement to vote in 2014 was based upon residing within Scotland and included recent migrants and refugees, while excluding emigrants regardless of their own identification as Scottish. Affective polarisation is then not only used to describe the rise of nationalism in Scotland but is also used for its emphasis upon the construction of an ‘in-​group’ differentiation which can be presented as undermining traditional structural divisions. However, while affective polarisation and 200

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opinion-​based affinities provide useful insights into a context-​specific notion of identity, to distinguish it fully from structural identities may be unhelpful in clarifying the wider development of such social movements. As this chapter demonstrates, affective polarisation can be more nuanced and considered in plural rather than singular form. In-​g roup formations themselves may be less homogeneous and more heterogeneous than is suggested by the concept of affective polarisation. From a longer historical perspective it is possible to identify trends leading to the development of movements influencing binary choice type voting patterns which overlay and reinforce, rather than undermine, structural notions of class, gender, race, ethnicity and so on. In the rest of this chapter we examine the deeper relationships between class and poverty in the development of Scottish nationalism, the independence referendum and the ongoing moves towards Indyref 2. The chapter highlights the role of class and its interplay and entanglement with nation in the independence referendum. The outcome of which was the transformation of a narrow exclusive movement, associated with arguments of the political centre and right, into a broad inclusive working-​class focused movement dominated by arguments appealing to social democratic and politically left traditions. In so doing, this chapter concludes that structural identities themselves, specifically around the questions of class, poverty and inequality, acted to create the affective polarisation visible within the social movement for Scottish independence. The 2014 independence referendum then provides an example of this affective polarisation but at the same time is not limited to this in-​group polarisation. As a result, the apparent homogeneous opinion-​ based identity of ‘YES’ for independence itself combined a multiplicity of differentiating and contradictory affective ‘in-​group’ polarisations which themselves also related to more traditional structural-​based identities. These polarisations within the independence movement itself can subsequently be identified through the changing electoral base for the SNP after 2014, whose membership and electoral support has shifted away from its traditional rural and agricultural geographies to the urban and industrialised centres of population, with a consequent decline in Labour’s long grip on urban working-​class communities, not least in Glasgow and West Central Scotland.

Class, inequality and the making of Scottish nationalism The understanding of class and its formation within Scotland is imbued with an association with the specificity of Scotland’s industrial development from the mid-​19th century (Mathias, 1971; Dickson, 1980; Devine et al, 2005). Scottish industrialisation was heavily linked to the mass production industries of the first Industrial Revolution which dominated the 19th-​century 201

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economy, textiles, coal, iron and steel, and shipbuilding. Britain’s relative economic decline in the first half of the 20th century, particularly in these industries, ensured that the human impact of relative economic decline was especially concentrated in the central belt of industrial Scotland (Gallagher, 1990). The political development of the Scottish working class became strongly associated with the rise of radical class-​based and socialist ideas due to their ability to both explain the detrimental impact of this relative economic decline on the working class and to provide a guide to resisting these macro-​economic developments. While this is most notably identified with Red Clydeside and male workers in the shipbuilding and armaments industries, the role of women in the rent strike movement presaged these developments. Movements beyond Clydeside such as the industrial conflict in the mining areas of Fife and the poverty arising in Dundee in the 1930s alongside the Scottish poverty marches evidence the extensiveness and interconnectedness of these movements throughout Scotland’s industrial centres. Thus, the generalisation of the political distinctiveness within the Scottish working class by the mid-​20th century was strongly associated with class-​based structural forms of identity (Kenefick, 2007). However, this same historical understanding of the development of the working class and its class consciousness is also evident in the creation of Scotland’s ruling class. The accumulation of wealth within the Scottish ruling class equalled that of anywhere else in the world. After 1707 and the Act of Union, Scotland’s ruling class became firmly embedded within the rise of British industrialisation and empire. The transatlantic slave trade and the profits it generated in the cotton and tobacco industries not only played a key role in the rise of Glasgow as a city but also then powered the investments that made Glasgow such a centre for industrial manufacturing (Whatley, 2000). Similarly, on the east coast, Dundee’s monopoly of the Baltic trade followed by British imperial control over the Indian jute trade created a city in which, at its height, the jute industry was responsible for half of all employment and over 90 per cent of jute output in the UK (Lythe, 1955; Whatley, 2000). Profits from jute then flowed into the Dundee-​based investment trusts, powering international foreign direct investment and the rise of Scotland as a centre for financial capitalism before the First World War (Tomlinson et al, 2011). The specific formation of both the working and ruling classes led directly into the high levels of poverty and inequality in Scotland that have been a key feature of its social history. The study of Scotland’s industrial towns and cities offers a history of low wages, poor quality sub-​standard housing and extreme poverty, while its rural history is one of clearances, the creation of large landed estates and high concentration of land ownership in the hands of absentee landlords as well as the ‘gentlemanly capitalism’ of Scotland’s own industrial capitalists (Rubenstein, 1987; Whitman, 1997). 202

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Over the second half of the 20th century there were repeated, and largely failed, attempts by the UK state to diversify the Scottish economy away from heavy industry to more modern manufacturing through the attraction of foreign direct investment and, by the 21st century, business services (Johnston et al, 1971; Forsyth, 1972). The move towards more free-​market economic policies in the last quarter of the 20th century intensified these developments. The private manufacturing sector withdrew from the Scottish economy in the case of multinational enterprises, or declined completely in the case of indigenous industries facing competition from a more globalised economy. Neither deindustrialisation nor privatisation proved capable of reinvigorating the private sector, as free market ideology envisaged. The service sector failed to generate employment at the levels associated with manufacturing, nor did it match the levels of pay to replace that available in more skilled manufacturing work. The consequence for the population was rising levels of net migration out of Scotland from the 1930s through to the 1970s which, although it slowed down, still continued until the 1990s (Peat and Boyle, 1999, Charts 10 and 11, pp 21–​3). By the end of the 20th century Scotland had a demography characterised by an older workforce and higher dependence upon welfare and health services. Government played an increasingly important role in these developments first through interventionist industrial policy and regional development agencies, aimed at enticing development from the private sector (Toothill, 1961; Hood and Young, 1982), and later through the direct replacement of the private sector with the public sector (Peat and Boyle, 1999, pp 118–​ 38). Education, health and welfare services acted as a direct replacement for private sector employment. We can illustrate the scale of this change by highlighting the case of the city of Dundee. Even as late as the 1930s, a time of mass unemployment and the decline of the jute textile industry, that industry alone was still responsible for 35 per cent of total direct employment. This had declined to zero by 1999 when the last factory closed and had been replaced by a public sector which by 2007 accounted for a minimum of 35 per cent of direct employment (Tomlinson et al, 2011, Tables 2.1 and 7.4). Far from these attempts diluting the political influence of left-​wing politics within the working class, they instead reinforced a Keynesian social democratic politics such that Scotland’s industrial areas by the late 1950s were understood to be a heartland for the Labour Party’s electoral success. By the end of the 20th century Scotland’s industrial and working-​class history was one of a class consciousness in which histories of resistance, collective organisation and socialist politics were embedded and closely linked with the cultural identity that would predominate within independence debates from 2012 to 2014. Scotland can thus be recognised as an early example of what is described as ‘left behind’ in contemporary accounts of the rise of support for Brexit in the northern English urban areas. 203

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As Davidson (2000, pp 24–​46) notes, by the end of the 20th century Scottish identity was widespread but support for the political ideology of Scottish nationalism still remained static and at levels unable to provide the impetus for a mass independence movement. Devolution and the creation of the Scottish Parliament, and with it a need to differentiate Scottish legislative powers from that of the Westminster government, ensured an ideology of Scotland being more socially progressive, egalitarian and social democratic compared to the rest of the UK that was shared across the political spectrum. As a consequence, and as Law argues, a ‘new welfare nationalism emerged’ in which ‘[s]‌cope existed to implement social reforms from above, with a managerial emphasis on how reforms were implemented rather than on the nature of the reforms themselves’ (2005, p 61). Nevertheless, in the absence of an explicitly working-​class political focus for independence, this Scottish identity continued to be associated with the unionist Labour Party, rather than the pro-​independence SNP.

The 2014 independence referendum In September 2014 a referendum was held on the question of Scottish independence in which 45 per cent of voters favoured independence while 55 per cent rejected the proposal. The history of the referendum has been told from a wide variety of perspectives (Curtice, 2014b; Hassan, 2016; Fotheringham et al, 2021) which lie beyond the scope of this chapter. However, in relation to the development of opinion-​based affective polarisation and its links to structural identities of class and inequality, it is important to recognise the dynamic developments within the campaign leading to the vote. Figure 10.1 evidences the ‘deprivation gap’ highlighting the strong social gradient linking opposition to independence with higher incomes and conversely higher support for independence with lower incomes (Curtice, 2014b, Figure 3). Four local government areas, three of which formed part of Clydeside (Glasgow, North Lanarkshire and West Dunbartonshire), along with the City of Dundee, voted in a majority for independence. All four local government areas were among those local authorities with the greatest levels of social deprivation, unemployment and inequality within Scotland. While an inverse social gradient existed in the relationship between ‘YES’ to independence and income, the opposite social gradient is evidenced in turnout. While the turnout for the referendum at 84.6 per cent of the electorate marked a large increase in participation compared to parliamentary elections, the social gradient reducing participation among the lowest income areas, relative to higher income areas, was evident in that all of the four majority ‘YES’ local authorities had turnouts below the average for Scotland as a whole (Electoral Commission, 2014, Appendix 2). 204

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Figure 10.1: The Scottish independence referendum deprivation gap: percentage voting ‘YES’ by degree of neighbourhood deprivation (Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation) 70 60 50 40 30

65

57

20

47

42

Middle

Next most

36

10 0

Most deprived

Next most

Most affluent

Source: Curtice (2014b, Figure 3)

One of the main determinants of voting intention and participation in the referendum within low-​income areas was thus attitudes to social questions of poverty, inequality and the (in)effectiveness of government policy towards these questions. This can be seen in the responses to the two televised debates over independence that took place in the month prior to the referendum between the leaders of the two main campaigning organisations, namely the SNP’s Alex Salmond, MSP for the ‘Yes Scotland’ campaign, and Labour’s Alistair Darling, MP for the ‘Better Together’ campaign. The first debate focused on the question of Scottish economic autonomy from Britain, specifically around the continued use of the UK currency. In this first case the ‘Better Together’ argument proved more successful and the ‘Yes Scotland’ position failed to win further support for the independence case. However, in distinct contrast, the second of the two debates, just two weeks apart and this time focusing upon social questions and specifically that of health and the National Health Service, led to marked shifts in reported voting intentions. Support for voting ‘YES’, for the first time, now showed a majority in polls shortly before the referendum itself (Curtice, 2014a). Voters in the 2014 independence referendum clearly had a multiplicity of influences, many that cannot be explored in this chapter, impacting on and reflecting the shifting of pre-​existing identities and ideological allegiances around the question of nation and national identity. However, as we have shown, the interaction of class and nation and the importance of support for welfare cannot be discounted in the development of a ‘YES’ in-​g roup. It is also clear that these processes can be conceptualised within the framework of opinion-​based affective polarisations. To do so however requires the recognition that the form of polarisations that emerged were highly 205

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reliant upon pre-​existing structural identities, with class and inequality being two of the main determinants of this polarisation. To reinforce this conclusion, we can examine the post-​referendum experience and the institutionalisation of this polarisation into new electoral allegiances that developed as evidence of the continuation of it. As the following section highlights, this polarisation was in the plural, rather than singular sense with shifting opinion-​based polarisations negatively as well as positively impacting on the main political beneficiary of this increased support for independence, the SNP.

Post-​referendum affective polarisations The 2014 referendum’s most clearly defined legacy can be viewed in the dramatic shift in the development of both opinion-​based identities linked with independence and the cleavage of the link between working-​class identity and its political affiliation with the Labour Party in Scotland. Support for independence has remained at high levels since 2014 and by early 2023 has not fallen back to pre-​2014 levels. Indeed, some polls indicate that a consistent majority now favour independence (Bol, 2021). However, given the discrepancy between polling evidence and the outcome of the referendum itself there is still ambiguity over the extent to which a majority for independence now exists. Arguably, the greatest legacy of the 2014 independence referendum is the almost complete collapse of support for the Labour Party in its traditional heartlands in urban working-​class areas and sustained support, through repeated electoral cycles, in favour of the pro-​independence SNP. Ferguson and Mooney (2021) highlight the extent to which this transformation has taken hold at all levels of the political structures from membership of the SNP, to the numbers of local councillors, through to elected members of the Scottish Government. Of particular relevance in this shift of support for the SNP is the correlation with the collapse of the Labour Party, particularly among younger, pro-​independence voters. The SNP has shifted its electoral base from a largely older and rural electorate to a younger urban electorate. Affective polarisation is then developed within a narrative of optimism and alternative futures in contrast to the earlier narrative of pessimism routed in decline and impoverishment. While the independence referendum may have been the trigger for this reshaping of Scotland’s electoral landscape, it was nevertheless underpinned, as indicated earlier, by the importance on the one hand of the growing public and tertiary service sectors and on the other the inability of the Labour Party to prevent the developments of deindustrialisation and neoliberalism undermining traditional forms of employment. The outcome of these 206

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longer-​term developments was a sudden collapse of electoral support for the Labour Party after 2014. A second, and less well documented, transformation originating in the independence referendum has been the return of electoral success for the Tories. The Conservative and Unionist Party in Scotland was the main beneficiary of the ‘Better Together’ campaign organised by the unionist Labour, Liberal Democrat and the Conservative parties. This newly found electoral support has come to a significant degree as a result of the weakening of the SNP in its previous electoral base. The SNP’s new electoral base in the urban areas came at the expense of, not primarily in addition to, its own historic electoral base. Thus, the Tory MSPs originate in areas where the SNP previously held a dominant position, such that the Conservative Party is now the largest opposition party in the Scottish Parliament, pushing Labour into third position. The explanation for this transformation lies again in the manner in which the independence referendum facilitated construction of an in-​g roup opinion-​based identity. Primarily, the ‘YES’ to independence in-​g roup movement continues to be presented as a means of achieving far-​reaching progressive social change and specifically challenging poverty and inequality. While the ‘Better Together’ construction of an in-​group identity which emphasised continuity and conservatism led to the conclusion that there was no alternative other than being part of a unified larger state formation. The SNP’s ability to retain influence, and to continue to be the political beneficiary of the independence movement, cannot be assumed. The predominance of the public and tertiary sectors in the 21st-​century economy again connects the SNP’s longer-​term ability to retain influence within the new ‘YES’ in-​g roup with the SNP’s ability to protect and defend employment and living standards. The SNP as such faces many of the same tensions and risks that undermined the connection between labourism and the older industries. This tension can rapidly emerge, as with the Glasgow equal pay strike of women workers in 2018 which took place against an elected SNP-​led council (McCarey and Smith, 2019). Devolution within this perspective then is far from simply acting as a harbinger of alternative developmental possibilities and instead becomes the battleground in which more structural identities are refashioned and reconstructed. Finally, it would be remiss not to consider, however briefly, how two more recent events have impacted on the analysis presented in this chapter. Brexit in Scotland highlighted a markedly different pattern of voting to that of the rest of the UK, with the two other exceptions of London and Northern Ireland. Overall, this was a success for the SNP which campaigned against Brexit and acted to cement the construction of an outward-​looking and inclusive affective identity. However, the relationship between voting for independence and voting to remain in the EU was not a simple one. Many 207

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of the class factors leading to the ‘YES’ vote, most notably prospects for future funding for the National Health Service, could also be appropriated by the pro-​Brexit ‘Leave’ campaign in this different context, such that some 36 per cent of SNP voters also supported Brexit (Settle, 2016). As such, any future independence referendum risks fracturing its ‘YES’ in-​group support if it were to link Scottish independence with explicit commitments to rejoining the EU. In the case of Scottish Government’s response to the COVID-​19 pandemic, despite similar health outcomes in Scotland to the rest of the UK, the SNP have been able to present the devolved government as more interventionist through marginally earlier introduction of health mitigations as the pandemic spread. The result of this was that polls through 2020 showed increasing confidence in First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s decision-​making (rising from -​9 to +​14 from March to October 2020), compared to collapsing confidence in UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson (falling from +​14 to -​27 between March and October 2020) (YouGov, 2021). In considering the experiences of Brexit and COVID-​19 the ability to retain and extend the in-​g roup affective polarisation for independence is thus identifiable when the SNP can directly link the case for independence by contrasting actions relative to the Westminster government, as in the response to the COVID-​19 pandemic. However, in the case of binary choices where class identification, in areas such as healthcare, is less well defined, identity-​based affective polarisations can be appropriated across all sides of the debate and cannot be relied upon to remain stable.

Conclusion This chapter examined the applicability of the theoretical developments of affective polarisation to the experience of Scotland’s independence referendum in 2014. The main conclusion we draw from this application of the theory is that while newly developed in-​group identities are recognisable within such referenda, and these appear to be independent from the more structural forms of identity (specifically class in this example), we find that affective polarisation is itself linked with and complementary to forms of existing structural identity. Thus, as a theoretical framework it has its most powerful explanatory power when informing the dynamic changes within more structural forms of identity. In our example, issues of class, poverty and inequality played a determining role in the creation of the in-​group identity most associated with the ‘YES’ to independence movement. The chapter further suggests that focusing upon polarisation in the singular ignores much of the most important nuanced elements of affective in-​ group construction. As such, considering the development of polarisations in the plural rather than singular provides a more detailed analysis of the 208

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changing identities exhibited in binary-​type choice voting. In the Scottish context, the existing in-​g roup pro-​independence electoral base of the SNP proved unstable after 2014, resulting in its traditional electoral base moving towards the in-​g roup most associated with the ‘Better Together’ campaign, represented by the Conservative Party in Scotland. As a result, the SNP’s successful electoral dominance after 2014 derived primarily from the movement of the traditional, pro-​union, Labour voting electorate shifting to the pro-​independence SNP. While the most recent 2022 local council elections highlighted a dramatic fall in support for Tory candidates, these losses did not lead to a sharp rise in the SNP’s support. Rather, the gains were relatively uniformly spread across the SNP, Labour and the Liberal Democrats. A final consideration of this chapter is the extent to which these new in-​ group identities are stable over time and can act as the basis for longer-​term successful political formations. The support for a second independence referendum, Indyref 2, suggests that the success of such a referendum is inextricably linked to the extent to which the independence movement continues to provide an optimistic vision of a radically different independent Scotland. One in which social collective public provision is central to the eradication of poverty and inequality. Here the main electoral beneficiary of the 2014 referendum, the SNP, faces a significant challenge. As with the desertion of the urban working-​class electorate from the Labour Party due to its inability to provide a challenge to neoliberalist-​inspired deindustrialisation, the SNP faces a similar challenge. That these new areas of electoral support continue to be a stable basis for electoral success will only be a possibility if the SNP ensures that the issues of class exemplified by the public provision of services, retention and creation of jobs, defence of living standards, challenging poverty and inequality are understood to be defended from the politics of austerity and the cost-​of-​living crisis originating from the UK government. References Bol, D. (2021) ‘Suppor t for Scottish independence reaches 55% –​highest level in a year’, The Herald, [online] 1 December, Available from: https://w ​ ww.hera​ ldsc​ otla​ nd.com/p​ oliti​ cs/r​ efe​ rend​ umne​ ws/1​ 97546​ 80. suppo ​ rt-s​ cotti​ sh-i​ ndepe​ nden ​ ce-r​ each ​ es-5​ 5-p​ er-c​ ent--​ -​ h ​ ighe​ st-l​ evel-y​ ear/​ [Accessed 5 February 2022]. Curtice, J. (2014a) What Scotland Thinks: Poll of Polls, Scottish Centre for Social Research, [online] 12 September, Available from: https://​wha​t sco​tlan​dthi​nks.org/2​ 014/0​ 9/p​ oll-p​ olls-1​ 1-s​ eptem​ber-​upda​ted/​ [Accessed 10 September 2021]. Curtice, J. (2014b) ‘It all depends on your perspective: Economic perceptions and the demography of voting in the Scottish Independence Referendum’, Fraser of Allander Institute Economic Commentary, 38(2): 147–​52. 209

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Daunton, M.J. (1995) Progress and Poverty: An Economic and Social History of Britain 1700–​1850, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davidson, N. (2000) The Origins of Scottish Nationhood, London: Pluto Press. Davidson, N. (2012) How Revolutionary were the Bourgeois Revolutions?, Chicago: Haymarket Books. Devine, T.M., Lee, C.H. and Peden, G.C. (eds) (2005) The Transformation of Scotland: The Economy Since 1700, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Dickson, T. (ed) (1980) Scottish Capitalism: Class, State and Nation from before the Union to the Present, London: Lawrence & Wishart. Electoral Commission (2014) Scottish Independence Referendum Report on the Referendum held on 18 September 2014, London: Electoral Commission. Ferguson, I. and Mooney, G. (2021) ‘Neoliberalism with a heart? The reality of life under the SNP’, in B. Fotheringham, D. Sherry and C. Bryce (eds) Breaking up the British State: Scotland, Independence and Socialism, London: Bookmarks, pp 338–​72. Forsyth, D.J.C. (1972) US Investment in Scotland, New York: Praeger. Fotheringham, B., Sherry, D. and Bryce, C. (eds) (2021) Breaking up the British State: Scotland, Independence and Socialism, London: Bookmarks. Gallagher, W. (1990) Revolt on the Clyde, London: Lawrence & Wishart. Hassan, G. (2016) Scotland the Bold: How Our Nation Changed and Why There is No Going Back, Glasgow: Freight Books. Hobolt, S.B., Leeper, T.J. and Tilley, J. (2021) ‘Divided by the vote: Affective polarization in the wake of the Brexit referendum’, British Journal of Political Science, 51(4): 1476–​93. Hobsbawm, E.J. (1962) Age of Revolution: Europe 1789–​1848, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Hood, N. and Young, S. (1982) Multinationals in Retreat: The Scottish Experience, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Iyengar, S., Sood, G. and Lelkes, Y. (2012) ‘Affect, not ideology: A social identity perspective on polarization’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 76(3): 405–​31. Iyengar, S., Lelkes, Y., Levendusky, M., Malhotra, N. and Westwood, S.J. (2019) ‘The origins and consequences of affective polarization in the United States’, Annual Review of Political Science, 22(1): 129–​46. Johnston, T.L., Buxton, N.K. and Mair, D. (1971) The Structure and Growth of the Scottish Economy, London: Collins. Kenefick, W. (2007) Red Scotland! The Rise and Fall of the Radical Left, c. 1872 to 1932, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Law, A. (2005) ‘Welfare nationalism: Social justice and/​or entrepreneurial Scotland?’, in G. Mooney and G. Scott (eds) Exploring Social Policy in the ‘New’ Scotland, Bristol: Policy Press, pp 53–​83. Lythe, S.G.E. (1955) ‘Scottish trade with the Baltic 1550–​1650’, in J.K. Eastham (ed) Economic Essays in Commemoration of the Dundee School of Economics 1931–​55, Coupar Angus: Wm. Culross & Sons. 63–​84. 210

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Mathias, P. (1971) The First Industrial Nation: An Economic History of Britain 1700–​1914, London: Methuen & Co. McCarey, J. and Smith, B. (2019) ‘Equal pay victory how Weegie women won’, Scottish Left Review, 110(March/​April): 67, Available from: https://​ www.sco​ttis​hleft​ revi​ ew.scot/e​ qual-p​ ay-v​ icto ​ ry-​how-​wee​gie-​women-​won/​ [Accessed 21 May 2022]. Peat, J. and Boyle, S. (1999) An Illustrated Guide to the Scottish Economy, London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd. Rubenstein, W.D. (1987) Elites and the Wealthy in Modern British History, Brighton: Edward Everett. Settle, M. (2016) ‘36% of SNP and Labour supporters backed Brexit’, Herald, [online] 7 December, Available from: https://​www.her​alds​cotl​and.com/​ news/​14950​013.36-​snp-​lab​our-​sup​port​ers-​bac​ked-​bre​xit-​finds-​sur ​vey/​ [Accessed 10 May 2022]. Tomlinson, J., Morelli, C.J. and Wright, V. (2011) The Decline of Jute: Managing Industrial Change, London: Chatto & Pickering. Toothil, J.N. (1961) Inquiry into the Scottish Economy 1960–​61: Report of a Committee appointed by the Scottish Council (Development and Industry), Paisley: Scottish Council (Development and Industry). Whatley, C.A. (2000) Scottish Society 1707–​1830: Beyond Jacobitism, towards Industrialisation, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Whitman, A. (1997) Who Owns Scotland, Edinburgh: Canongate Press. YouGov (2021) YouGov Coronavirus Handling Confidence Tracker, [online], Available from: https://​docs.cdn.you​gov.com/​ixb​nz74​wqx/​YouGov​_ ​Cor​onaC​onfi​denc​e_​Tr​acke​r_​W.pdf [Accessed 10 May 2022].

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11

Language and Identity: The Taliesin Tradition Ifor ap Glyn

Introduction This chapter offers a poet’s perspective on how affective polarisation can be helpful in considering some of the conflicting interpretations of the modern history of Wales –​and how they might be reconciled. Bûm yn lliaws rith cyn bûm ddisgyfrith [I was in many forms, before I was unfettered]. (Evans, 1910, p 23) Let us begin, then, with a story: the story of Taliesin. The poet Taliesin was a historical figure, one of the earliest poets to write in Welsh, in the latter part of the 6th century. His 11 surviving poems constitute the earliest known British poetry in any language. However, it is the medieval myth surrounding his birth that describes how he accidentally acquired magic powers of shape-​shifting and turned himself successively into a hare, a salmon, a bird and then a seed, in order to evade death at the hands of a murderous assailant. It is a story that has inspired creative minds as varied as Tennyson, Deep Purple and Frank Lloyd Wright, and in 1984 it suggested the title of Emyr Humphreys’ polemical history, The Taliesin Tradition, where he argued that Wales’ survival within the UK is a Taliesin-​like constant reinvention in the face of successive threats to her identity. But what is ‘identity’? Any attempt to describe it is at best a snapshot. It changes over time. We are not the same at the age of 60 as we were at six, despite the biological continuity. And then we must factor in the variables 212

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of perception. Different biographers will capture different aspects of one personal history or ‘identity’, much as different walks can lead you to the summit of the same mountain. Welsh identity also has its own ‘biographers’ differing wildly in their interpretations. The Wales of 2022 is not the same as the Wales of 1922, much less the Wales of 922, but there is also at least a degree of continuity –​territorial perhaps, rather than biological. Our focus here will be on national and regional identity, particularly its cultural aspects –​a subject that has exercised Welsh poets ever since Taliesin. For much of Welsh history, the poets of Wales have taken on a responsibility as ‘people’s remembrancers’, or as historian Gwyn A. Williams colourfully described them, ‘the rib-​cage of the body politic … a collective memory honed for historic action’ (1986, p 19). In medieval times this meant combining poetry with genealogy and vaticination; in recent decades, poetry tours have been used to revive interest in a neglected Welsh past.1 But what of the historians of Wales? Some of the most compelling treatments of Welsh history over the last 40 years have titles that betray an existential angst: When Was Wales? (Williams, 1982), Wales: A Question for History (Smith, 1999) and Why Wales Never Was (Brooks, 2017). Do the Welsh even exist? Happily, the continuing academic research across all disciplines, into the condition of Wales both past and present, suggests that they do. And yet this uncertainty remains. What exactly is Wales? A nation? Or, as some might opine, merely a region? Are the Welsh a people? Or ‘peoples’, as journalist John Osmond has described them: Whatever the peoples of Wales are, they are not a homogeneous group. Many of them don’t know very much about one another for a start, and often lack familiarity with one another’s territory. It is probably the case, for instance, that more people in the Valleys have visited Marbella than Machynlleth. (Osmond, 1992, p 5) Now, it is probably equally true that more people in the Thames Valley have visited Marbella than say, Macclesfield, but that is beyond the scope of the present discussion. The salient point is that identity must be understood as a plural phenomenon, Welsh identity particularly so.

1

In recent years, I have been involved in ‘Syched am Sycharth’ (2000–​1) –​poems to celebrate the 600th anniversary of Glyndŵr’s proclamation as prince of an independent Wales; ‘Dal Tafod’ (2012) celebrating 50 years of Cymdeithas yr Iaith (the Welsh Language Society); and ‘Y Gadair Wag’ (2017, 2019) marking the centenary of the death of poet Hedd Wyn. 213

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This chapter will consider identity from a Welsh perspective and the role of language as a polarising element within that identity; migration and identity; and whether Wales has a head start in dealing with polarisation, and its challenges to identity. According to Raymond Williams: The long Welsh experience of a precarious and threatened identity has informed Welsh thought with problems now coming through to once dominant and assertive peoples: most evidently in our own time, the English. (1985, cited in R. Williams, 2003, p 81) Taliesin’s tale of shape-​shifting is a beguiling image for understanding the broad sweep of Welsh history and the inherent mutability of identity; however, change is rarely a uniform occurrence. Different areas of Wales, and different sections of her society, have changed at different times –​and not necessarily in the same way. So, is it possible to suggest a dominant narrative for an ever-​developing, multifaceted Welsh identity? Let us turn once more to Raymond Williams: Two truths are told, as alternative prologues to the action of modern Wales. The first draws on the continuity of Welsh language and literature. … The second draws on the turbulent experience of industrial South Wales, over the last two centuries, and its powerful political and communal formations. (1985, cited in R. Williams, 2003, p 78) Let us now look a little closer at each in turn.

A linguistic identity The Welsh language evolved from the earlier Brythonic tongue in the centuries immediately following the Roman withdrawal from Britain and has remained a key component of Welsh identity ever since. In the late medieval era and early modern period, iaith, the Welsh word for ‘language’, could also be used to convey ‘a people’ or ‘nation’, that is, people who spoke the same language. And for most of the long history of the Welsh people, this language was the sole vernacular of the inhabitants of this western part of Britain. Most immigrations to Wales, from the early movements of Irish and Saxon settlers, the later plantations centred on the Edwardian castles and walled towns, and even the first migrant labourers of the Industrial Revolution, were assimilated to the Welsh language. There were some exceptions –​for instance, the 12th-​century settlement of south Pembrokeshire and the Gower peninsula –​however the language shift to a more bilingual Wales 214

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began in earnest in Tudor times as the Welsh gentry began to adopt the English language. Following the Acts of Union between 1536 and 1542, English was established as the language of all governmental administration and law. Despite the continuing numerical dominance of Welsh speakers in Wales, there was considerable diglossia between the two languages, with the landowning and professional classes gradually adopting English as a marker of their higher status. There was, however, one important exception to the lower status of Welsh –​it was the dominant language of religion, used for public worship and preaching in Anglican churches initially and then in Nonconformist chapels as they proliferated from the 17th century onwards. Parliament had decreed in 1563 that the Bible be translated into Welsh, and church services be conducted in Welsh, to ensure that the counties west of Offa’s Dyke became reliably Protestant. As a result the two languages coexisted in the community, each having a distinct high-​status sphere; English was the language of the secular world and social advancement, Welsh the language of formal religion and personal salvation. (Awbery, 2017, p 113) Being able to read the Bible was considered important for a Protestant’s salvation, and so the Sunday School movement from the 18th century onwards promoted literacy in Welsh, which in turn facilitated a Welsh-​ language newspaper culture from the 19th century onwards. However, when compulsory state education was introduced in the late 19th century, this was almost entirely through the medium of English. The extent to which children were punished for speaking Welsh in school has been debated, and also the extent to which parents acquiesced in this policy, but that is not to deny that this was a policy that showed the state’s disregard for the Welsh language. As M. Wynn Thomas has commented: [T]‌he education system, arrogantly anglophone right up to university level … while it nurtured a stellar generation of talent in both Welsh and English (and in due course littered England with teachers) … also did more harm to the long-​term future of the Welsh language than any other single development. And it tied Wales firmly (and probably irrevocably) into modern British society but exclusively on England’s terms. (Thomas, 2021b, p 70) The Welsh language reached a peak of nearly a million speakers in 1911 (Aitchison and Carter, 1994, p 34), but this number has almost halved a century later (Welsh Government, 2012, p 1). The percentage of Welsh speakers within the total Welsh population fell from 53 per cent in 1891, to 215

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18.5 per cent in 1991 (Davies, 1990, p 421; Aitchison and Carter, 1994, p 89). However, granting Welsh legal status in a series of statutes 1967–​2011 and the spread of Welsh medium education have been two key factors in the arresting of the language’s decline, and the national percentage of Welsh speakers stood at 19.0 per cent in 2011 (Welsh Government, 2012, p 1). These numbers vary considerably at local authority level from 7.8 per cent in Blaenau Gwent, to 65.4 per cent in Gwynedd (Welsh Government, 2012, p 7), rising to 87 per cent in individual wards such as Llanrug and Caernarfon (Gwynedd Council, 2013). There is a thriving literary and television culture in the Welsh language. Series such as Y Gwyll/​Hinterland2 have raised the profile of the Welsh language among the wider UK audience and abroad. However, in Wales itself, while the Census figures record that more people understand Welsh than speak it (26.7 per cent, Welsh Government, 2012, p 4), which would suggest regular contact on their part with the language, the obverse is also true (73.3 per cent have no Welsh language skills, Welsh Government, 2012, p 4). Thus, for nearly three-​quarters of the population of Wales, the language plays little or no part in their daily lives.

An industrial identity Let us turn now to the second truth suggested by Raymond Williams, ‘the turbulent experience of industrial South Wales … and its powerful political and communal formations’ (1985, cited in R. Williams, 2003, p 78). This focuses our attention on the Wales of the last 250 years, and the demographic transformation wrought by the Industrial Revolution. The population mushroomed from 587,425 in 1801 fairly evenly distributed across Wales (Aitchison and Carter, 1994, p 32), to 2,523,500 by 1911, with the majority packed into the southern coalfield (Davies, 1990, p 385). Wales was the first country in the world with the majority of its population no longer living in agrarian communities; by 1851 three out of every five lived in industrial areas (Thomas, 1987, p 427). This transformation, according to cultural critic Daniel G. Williams, ‘was accompanied by significant cultural shifts that were the making of modern Wales, geographically from country to city; politically from Liberal to Labour; linguistically from Welsh to English’ (D.G. Williams, 2003, p 20). This seismic shift of the late 19th and early 20th centuries produced a vibrant English-​speaking culture that was nevertheless distinctly Welsh,

2

Twenty-​six episodes were produced between 2013 and 2016, for S4C, BBC and the international market, each in a Welsh language, English language and bilingual version. The bilingual version proved most popular with European broadcasters. See Y Gwyll/​ Hinterland (Wikipedia, 2021). 216

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articulated in the writings of Lewis Jones, Ron Berry and Gwyn Thomas, to name but three. More than 50 of these classics of Welsh literature in English have been republished in The Library of Wales Series over the last 15 years. Coal was king in this world, with 35 per cent of the workforce in 1914 involved in coal production (Davies, 1990, p 384); although paradoxically, as Dai Smith has shown, it was only in the 1930s when the industry had begun its long decline, that Welsh writing in English began to truly flourish. ‘Enough had already happened to require a literature for that history’ (Smith, 1986, p 134). A people had become a proletariat. This was a Wales where the Welsh language slowly became peripheral, present only in place names, and the national anthem. But it was never completely swept away; indeed, the economist Brinley Thomas argued that industrialisation was a blessing to the Welsh language, not a curse: Welsh people who had to leave the countryside did not have to emigrate to England or overseas: they were able to migrate to the rapidly expanding industrial areas of south and north Wales where they raised large families who were Welsh-​speaking. (Thomas, 1987, p 418) By 1891, 36 per cent of all Welsh speakers lived in the archetypally industrial county of Glamorgan, 34 per cent in partly industrialised counties, and only 30 per cent in the remaining rural counties (Thomas, 1987, p 421). The coal industry continued to grow up to the First World War, now requiring labour at a rate much greater than the rural hinterland could supply. The language continued to grow up to 1911, but the total population grew even faster. Then came war and the Great Depression; ‘the class war in the coalfields intensified and the clarion call was Marxist not Methodist’ (Thomas, 1987, p 437). Politics had supplanted religion as the dominant force in Welsh society and the language of discussion was increasingly English rather than Welsh. Wales became an exporter of people rather than an importer, and it took 50 years before the Welsh population recovered and passed its 1921 level (Office for National Statistics, 2001).3

A British identity These two truths regarding Welsh identity with their different emphases on a linguistic continuity and an industrial modernity are not mutually exclusive (although some of their proponents have argued their positions as if they

3

The Welsh population according to the 1921 Census: 2,656,474 and the 1971 Census: 2,731,204. 217

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were). However, there is a third truth we must consider, which overlaps with the first two: Welsh identity subsumed within British identity. In the 2011 Census, 20 to 26 per cent of the Welsh population (dependent on their age) described their identity as British or Welsh-​British (Harries et al, 2014, p 3). In a lecture given in the immediate aftermath of the 1979 referendum (in which the vote overwhelmingly rejected devolution for Wales), Gwyn A. Williams said: ‘Our survival has been a kind of miracle. What is immediately clear … is that the tiny Welsh people … have survived by being British. Welsh identity has constantly renewed itself by anchoring itself in variant forms of Britishness’ (1982, p 194). For an English person, ‘English’ and ‘British’ are often synonymous terms –​after all, as 84 per cent of the UK population lives in England, most British people are English. For a Welsh person, the differences between ‘Welsh’ and ‘British’ are more nuanced. Because of their linguistic connection with the Brythonic peoples who lived south of the Scottish Highlands 2,000 years ago, the Welsh can lay claim to having a longer ‘British’ pedigree than the other three peoples of the UK. On a more practical level, being ‘British’ allowed the Welsh, as one of Friedrich Engels’ ‘non-​historical’ peoples (Nimni, 1989, p 322), doomed by their small size never to play a major role as an independent state, to align themselves with their more powerful neighbour. From the Victorian era onwards ‘the logical trajectory to follow was one which would see the Welsh people progressively more absorbed into the British state and British Empire, both of which offered them much in the way of opportunities and progress. The trade-​off would be a steady diminution in their “difference” as a people’ (C. Williams, 2003, p 2). In his ‘Three Wales’ model (1985, pp 1–​17), Denis Balsom attempted to associate these three ‘truths’ of Welsh identity (‘linguistic’, ‘industrial’ and ‘British’) with specific geographical areas: ‘Y Fro Gymraeg’ (the predominantly Welsh speaking areas of the west); ‘Welsh Wales’ (approximating to the South Wales Coalfield); and ‘British Wales’ (the areas to the east of the first two areas; most of Pembrokeshire to the west; and lowland Glamorgan, Cardiff and Newport to the south of ‘Welsh Wales’). However, the influence of each of these three truths can be felt beyond the geographical areas assigned to them by Balsom, none more so than that of British Wales. And yet, this is the ‘truth’ that has been least discussed in Welsh academic circles, as Chris Williams has pointed out: I do not think it an exaggeration to suggest that most Welsh historical writing has focused on (in Balsom’s terminology) ‘Y Fro Gymraeg’ and ‘Welsh Wales’, and that it is the experience of those areas that stands at the centre of competing understandings of historical and contemporary ‘Welshness’. … What this selective focus does, however, is marginalise 218

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those who are seen as irrelevant to the unfolding ‘national story’. (C. Williams, 2003, p2) The narrative of the British Welsh may have been neglected, and indeed may be harder to formulate, but it certainly is not irrelevant. Where does the Welsh language sit within that identity? In many of the areas ascribed to ‘British Wales’ by Balsom (1985, p 1–​17), it is more obviously present than in many parts of his ‘Welsh Wales’. But what role (if any) does it have within the wider British identity?

Welsh as a British language Gillian Clarke, my predecessor as National Poet of Wales, once said to me that “the Welsh language is one of the treasures of Britain, not just Wales: Welsh is like the cathedrals of Britain –​we might not choose to use them, but we’d be distraught if we knew they’d been pulled down” (2016). In 1985, Raymond Williams urged the readers of the London Review of Books to read Welsh medieval classics such as the Mabinogi and the work of Dafydd ap Gwilym: ‘[I]‌t remains a scandal’, he wrote, ‘that a body of writing of this substance, composed on this island, should be so largely unknown to readers of strict literary interests’ (1985, cited in R. Williams, 2003, p 79). However, these responses are more often drowned out by the jibes of commentators such as Rod Liddle and A.A. Gill, or Jeremy Clarkson, who wrote: ‘the United Nations should start to think seriously about abolishing other languages. What’s the point of Welsh for example?’ (Clarkson, 2011). ‘Mocking the Welsh is the last permitted bigotry’, as author Jan Morris wryly observed (2009). There is a long tradition of such observations: ‘The Welsh language is the curse of Wales’ wrote the Times in 1866 (8 September, p 8); and in 2019, the Sunday Times ran a Twitter poll asking whether Welsh should still be taught in Welsh schools (cited in Nation.Cymru, 2019).4 The same prejudice, less forcefully expressed –​but why? Welsh speakers constitute a significant minority within Wales (19 per cent of the Welsh population, according to the 2011 Census, or 562,000 people); and a much smaller minority within the wider United Kingdom (approximately 1 per cent). However, after Scots (1.5 million speakers), Welsh is still the most widely spoken ‘other’ native language in the UK, ahead of Polish (546,000), Panjabi (273,000) and Urdu (269,000). Furthermore, we find that 7.7 per cent of the population of England and Wales did not speak English as their mother tongue in 2011, rising to 22.1 per cent in the

4

The tweet was subsequently deleted by the Times following protests. 219

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Greater London area and peaking at 41.4 per cent in the London Borough of Newham (Potter-​Collins, 2013). Accordingly, not speaking English as a mother tongue is a characteristic that Welsh speakers share with several million other British citizens. Which is where Wales’ long history of bilingualism might be particularly instructive. We have come a long way from the bawdy 15th-​century poem which describes in alternating Welsh and English couplets the misunderstanding between a poet and an English woman living in one of the walled towns of north Wales: ‘Dydd daed, Saesnes gyffes, gain, yr wyf i’th garu, riain’. ‘What saist, mon?’ ebe honno, ‘Ffor truthe, harde Welsman j tro.’ [‘Good day, woman, fine and handy; I shall woo you, English lady.’ ‘What’s that you say?’ says she, ‘I think, in truth, a stubborn Welshie’.] (Penllyn, 1958, p 53, author’s translation, emphasis in original) These days, the two languages coexist more amicably, a useful lesson for the whole of the multicultural UK. Bilingualism is something to celebrate, not something that makes you less British. The cognitive benefits of speaking more than one language have been proven over and over again, and yet the idea that two languages can confuse a developing mind still persists in some quarters. Less and less importance is attached to learning modern languages in the UK, as entries for French examinations at GCSE level have declined by nearly two-​thirds between 2002 and 2019; German has also fallen markedly, and only Spanish, historically the least popular of the three, is showing a modest increase (Churchward, 2019, p 69). This suggests that the dominant perception in Britain still is that ‘one language is all you need’ (as long as it is English) and that people who speak other languages are ‘odd’.5 And yet the norm in the wider world is to be bi-​or multilingual. Estimates vary, but generally concur that more than half the people of the world speak two or more languages.6 Wales, if allowed, could be setting the precedent for an increasingly pluralistic British

5

6

A personal perception perhaps, borne from my bilingual upbringing in 1970s London. My desire to study Welsh literature in college was viewed with incredulity. http:// ​ i la ​ n gua ​ g es.org/ ​ b iling ​ u al.php; https:// ​ w ww.resea​ rchg​ a te.net/​ p ost/​ W hat​ _​ is_t​ he_p​ er-c​ entage_​of_​bi​ling​ual_​peop​le_​in ​ _​th​e_​wo​rld; Thomas and Webb-​Davies (2017, pp 5, 21).

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society: that different languages can be negotiated and embraced, without constituting a ‘threat’ to one’s fellow citizens. A timely message indeed, in this, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s decade of indigenous languages.

Population shift and language The Welsh language, however, has problems of its own in its rural and small-​town heartlands, the ‘Bro Gymraeg’ of the north and west, even as it is increasingly re-​embraced in the Welsh medium schools and adult learning classes of the south and the east. Harold Carter in 1989 drew attention to ‘two associated aspects of personal mobility’ that had begun to impact significantly on Wales (1989, p 18). The first was the increase in the number of families with sufficient wealth to operate two homes: This was always the prerogative of the aristocracy and the gentry who owned both town house and country estate, but like other material benefits –​cars, telephones, the examples are numerous –​it has moved down the social scale and in so doing has become more widely spread. Two homes, the one accessible to work in the city, the other for rest and relaxation … have brought into being the phenomenon called seasonal suburbanisation. (Carter, 1989, p 18) The increasing numbers of second homes in Wales not only deplete the housing stock available for year-​round occupation, but also inflate prices in the housing market. In 2021, median gross weekly earnings in Wales were the third lowest among the 12 UK countries and English regions, and local youngsters struggle to compete with well-​heeled families from over the border (Welsh Government, 2021a). The Welsh Housing Justice Charter campaign group has reported regular calls from nurses, teachers, firefighters and those working on lifeboats who cannot afford to live near where they work and volunteer (BBC News, 2021). COVID-​1 9 has only exacerbated the problem as restrictions on foreign travel and working from home have increased interest in ‘Covid boltholes’. There were 24,423 registered second homes in Wales in 2020–​1 (Brooks, 2021, p 36), but if holiday lets and Airbnbs (which are separately registered for business rates) are also included, the number of houses in Wales which stand empty for large parts of the year is much higher. The problem is particularly acute in certain areas in the west. Second homes account for around 10 per cent of the housing stock in the counties of Gwynedd, Anglesey and Pembrokeshire (Brooks, 2021,

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p 5).7 In certain communities in Gwynedd, 46 per cent of homes in Abersoch are second homes or holiday lets, closely followed by Aberdyfi with 43 per cent and Beddgelert with 34 per cent (Brooks, 2021, p 12). It is an emotive issue, which sparked a campaign of arson attacks on second homes in the 1980s; contemporary protests have been less aggressive, in the form of rallies and marches under the slogan ‘Hawl i fyw adra’ (the right to live at home). The Welsh Government has responded to the problem by allowing local councils to levy higher rates of council tax on second homes, and also by implementing a higher rate of Land Transaction Tax on properties, which are not bought as primary residences. However, these measures do not seem to be effective in deterring purchases of second homes. Figures from the Welsh Revenue Authority show that 44 per cent of all homes sold in the Gwynedd constituency of Dwyfor Meirionnydd in 2020–​1 were subject to the higher rate of Land Transaction Tax –​that is, not purchased as primary residences (BBC News, 2021); evidently, further steps need to be taken. The second aspect of personal mobility identified by Harold Carter as having an impact on Wales was what he called ‘rural-​retreating or counter-​ urbanization’: the flow of people from the cities ‘with enough money especially after the sale of property at inflated prices, to settle in a more congenial environment at retirement age or, indeed, well below it’ (Carter, 1988, p 1819). The dynamics of mobility have always held an attraction for some. ‘Settled identity is the past, from which there must be escape to the precarious and invigorating excitement of the new’ (R. Williams, 2003, p 81). And aspiring to a different lifestyle is a two-​way process. If English city-​dwellers are attracted by the prospect of a ‘rural idyll’, young people from Welsh rural communities are similarly attracted by the ‘bright lights’ of city life. Some find it in Cardiff and the urban strip of the south-​east; some go further afield. It is the scale of the phenomenon that makes it significant. In 2011, 507,000 Welsh born people were living in England, while in Wales, 837,000 (27 per cent) were born outside the country, a turnover of 1.3 million (Office for National Statistics, 2011). Most of those who were born outside Wales, were born in England (636,000, or 21 per cent) –​ I number myself among them. However, irrespective of the countries of our birth, we are all now citizens of Wales; some are swift to embrace the host culture in its various forms, others slower. We shall return to that later, but the linguistic impact of this influx in many rural areas has been huge, leaving Welsh speakers ‘culturally deracinated, even though they remain in

7

The exact figures are: 10.76 per cent in Gwynedd, 9.15 per cent in Pembrokeshire and 8.26 per cent in Anglesey. 222

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situ in their own communities’ (Thomas, 2021a, p 310). In the county of Anglesey, for instance, the percentage of Welsh speakers fell from 75.5 per cent to 57.2 per cent between 1961 and 2011; in Ceredigion, from 74.8 per cent to 47.3 per cent (Aitchison and Carter, 1994, p 50; Stats Wales, 2012). However, what is more remarkable than the scale of this in-​migration is the almost complete silence on the subject. It is hard to imagine a population shift of this magnitude in England, or even Scotland, not being discussed. The comparable figures are 11.6 per cent born outside England and 16.7 per cent born outside Scotland (Office for National Statistics, 2020; UK Government, 2021), set against 27 per cent in Wales. To explain this silence by saying that most of the Welsh influx are merely English immigrants who have simply moved to another part of the UK is factually correct, but at the same time a denial of Welsh identity. In this matter as in others, the Welsh are the least visible of the four nations of the UK.

Welsh identity denied? A few years ago, in a poem, ‘Euro-​visions 2016’, I described Wales as a ‘vampire nation’ because usually when we look in the media mirror we see nothing reflected back. However, when Wales enjoyed a summer of footballing success at Euro 2016 that changed briefly: roedd y ffenestri’n dreigio, a’r trefi cochion yn taranu; a’n hyder newydd fel enfys wedi’r glaw. [the windows flashed with dragons, and the red towns thundered; our new confidence was a rainbow after cloud.] (Glyn, 2018, pp 246–​7) Unfortunately, it didn’t last. Wales has never developed a national newspaper culture commensurate with Scotland’s. A 2016 survey by the Cardiff School of Journalism revealed that less than 5 per cent of the Welsh public read a Welsh newspaper, and as the coverage of Welsh news in UK titles was ‘scant’, this betokened a ‘democratic deficit’ according to Stephen Cushion (BBC News, 2016). The devolution of power since 1999 has not been matched by a devolution of information. Welsh identity, however, is not sustained by a diet of news alone –​so what else is on the media menu? Again a paucity of locally sourced produce. Although the Welsh-​speaking public enjoy 20 hours a day of Welsh language radio, and over 16 hours a day of Welsh language television on S4C, the English-​speaking majority are not so well served. The provision on Radio Wales is comparable at over 19 hours a day, but the television service is only 11 hours a week, of which approximately six hours is news or current affairs, 223

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leaving five hours –​less than an hour a day –​for documentary, sport and factual entertainment (BBC Radio Wales, 2022). Welsh arts coverage, and Welsh comedy or drama in English, are annual rather than weekly offerings. Although the BBC in Cardiff has become home to a thriving television drama department, it is dominated by productions like Doctor Who and Casualty with no discernible Welsh flavour. This is a divisive situation that does not adequately recognise the cultural diversity of the English-​speaking Welsh audience. It is interesting to note that the Welsh Language Board in their 1989 response to the Conservative government’s White Paper on ‘Broadcasting in the 1990s’ supported ‘cater[ing] equally for the interests of Welsh-​speakers and non-​Welsh-​speakers’: Increasingly, a nation is becoming what television says it is. … The language cannot survive in a nation where non Welsh speakers do not continue to feel themselves to be different from the other people of the United Kingdom. Television is the prime influence in creating the cultural climate which can nurture or destroy these differences. (Osmond, 1992, p 29) Thirty years later, television has been augmented and supplanted by a plethora of online platforms, but the established public service broadcasters are still responsible for originating much of the content and driving national conversations across those various platforms.

Identity based on institutions In 1992, John Osmond and Merfyn Jones both described the Welsh as being increasingly defined not by their language, occupation, religious inheritance or political tradition, but ‘by reference to the institutions they inhabit, influence, and react to’ (Jones, 1992, p 357). Welsh nationality is ‘being propelled by a dynamic of institutions’ and at the time some 500 organisations were operating at an all-​Wales level, from further education, national library and museum, to the broadcasting institutions, and the Welsh Office (Osmond, 1992, p 11). With the evolving devolution settlement post-​ 1997, Wales is ever more defined and driven by a ‘dynamic of institutions’ and this prompted historian Chris Williams in 2003 to postulate a ‘post-​ national’ Wales where ‘the discourse of national identity’ and ‘the rhetoric of Welshness’ would be left behind as the idea of a national culture would be ‘decoupled’ from the ‘civic rights and responsibilities that go with being a citizen of Wales’ (C. Williams, 2003, p 4). In 2018, Daniel G. Williams welcomed the inherent tolerance of this post-​ national view of Wales, but maintained that this position needed ‘serious revision’ following the 2016 referendum: 224

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Surely now, after the Brexit vote, we can see that this ‘decoupling’, this marginalisation of a ‘national culture’ has been disastrous for Wales. … In failing to define our culture for ourselves, we allowed others to do so for us. A form of British anti-​European xenophobia underpinned the Leave vote in Wales, partly because the cultural base for an alternative vision was not sufficiently strong. (Williams, 2018, p 30) Nor, might we add, was it articulated strongly enough. It is not the only case of an ‘alternative vision’ being insufficiently promulgated. One of the most innovative and far-​reaching pieces of Welsh legislation has been the ‘Well-​Being of Future Generations (Wales) Act’ 2015, which ‘requires public bodies in Wales to think about the long-​term impact of their decisions, and to work better with people, communities and each other’, to prevent ‘poverty, health inequalities and climate change’ (Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, 2022). This unique legislation has attracted interest from countries around the world and has its own dedicated minister (irreverently nicknamed the ‘Minister for the Unborn’), but has received little attention from either the Welsh and British media. Once again, the devolution of power has not been matched by a devolution of information.

Identity asserted Despite 17 out of 22 areas in Wales following England in voting for Brexit in 2016, Wales remains politically distinct. Welsh constituencies have never returned a majority of Conservative MPs since the advent of universal suffrage, even in the landslide election of 2019. And as recently as 1997 and 2001, the Conservatives failed to win a single seat in Wales. Since 2011 Wales is the only nation in the UK where a Labour administration has been able to wield power, though at times in coalition with Plaid Cymru or the Liberals. ‘[T]‌he British left has traditionally been opposed to nationalism in all its forms (whilst being blind to its own national biases)’ wrote Daniel Williams in 2003 (p 16). However, although Labour have been swept away in Scotland by the Scottish National Party, Welsh Labour have been more successful in positioning themselves as a party of Wales. In 2002, First Minister Rhodri Morgan famously referred to the ‘clear red water’ between his government in Wales and the Labour government in Westminster. As his Westminster colleague, the Secretary of State for Wales Ron Davies, has remarked more than once, ‘devolution is a process, not an event’. And while Plaid Cymru have not had anything like the same electoral success as the Scottish National Party, recent polls have shown that support for independence is growing in Wales too (Nation.Cymru, 2021). 225

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Just as Welsh identity became increasingly politicised during the long years of Conservative rule between the referendums of 1979 and 1997, now the Labour administration in Cardiff chafes under Conservative restrictions from Westminster and fears a post-​Brexit power grab. It seems that Johnson has been to Yes Cymru as Thatcher was to devolution. Although COVID-​19 has dominated the headlines since 2020, First Minister Mark Drakeford’s policies have unexpectedly made Wales more visible. He has had ‘a good pandemic’, consistent in his messaging, more decisive in making interventions and more cautious in relaxing restrictions.

Identities reimagined In the aftermath of the 1979 referendum, historian Gwyn Alf Williams uttered these memorable words: ‘Wales is an artefact which the Welsh produce; the Welsh make and remake Wales day by day, year by year, generation after generation if they want to’ (1982, p 200). The ‘production process’ continues, but as we have seen the Welsh themselves are also being remade ‘day by day’ and ‘year by year’, becoming in the process a more heterogeneous people. However, (as we have also seen) this is not the first time that Wales has experienced population change on a grand scale. Can the Welsh reimagine the nation once again? The responses to a question on national identity from the 2011 Census are illuminating. People were asked ‘How would you describe your national identity?’ and then directed to ‘tick all that apply’ from a list of options. Overall, 58 per cent of the population ticked ‘Welsh’ only; and a further 7 per cent ticked ‘Welsh’ and ‘British’. However, among those who were born in Wales, 76 per cent described themselves as ‘Welsh’ only, and 9 per cent as ‘Welsh’ and ‘British’. For those born in England, 9 per cent described themselves as ‘Welsh’ or ‘Welsh’ and ‘British’; 33 per cent as ‘British’ only; and 49 per cent as ‘English’ only (Harries et al, 2014, p 4). We should of course bear in mind that such questions are at best only an indication of how much someone who has moved to Wales has integrated with the new host culture. Identifying as ‘English’ or ‘British’ does not preclude having learnt Welsh, for instance, nor is it any guide to how the individual might identify in the future after a longer period in Wales, or how any future Welsh-​born children might identify. However, although the national average for identifying as ‘Welsh’ only was 58 per cent in 2011, this rose to 70–​80 per cent in five out of the 22 local authorities, which were all situated in the former South Wales Coalfield, on an arc from Neath-​Port Talbot in the west, to Blaenau Gwent in the east. These are the same areas that saw the heaviest immigration 100–​150 years ago; now they are the most strongly Welsh-​identifying. Can history repeat itself? The Wales of a century ago was a very different world, with a strong 226

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local press, and none of the international broadcast or social media platforms with their potential to connect us to areas far outside our own; however, it is at least a precedent.

Can language play a part in melding new identities? Language is an acquired skill –​usually in infancy, but it can be acquired later in life. According to the latest Welsh Government survey of language use, published in September 2021, although 43 per cent of respondents had begun learning Welsh from their parents at home, the majority learnt outside the home: 46 per cent had begun learning in school or pre-​school, with a further 11 per cent turning to the language as adults (Welsh Government, 2021b). The take-​up of Welsh medium education has been most marked in the industrial and post-​industrial communities of the south-​east and the north-​east. Language is also a skill that can be acquired by people of any ethnic or religious background. In my own home town of Caernarfon, the young man who runs the mobile phone shop is Indian, and when my children were growing up, their swimming instructor was Chinese –​but we are all Welsh speakers. In Grangetown, Cardiff, Welsh can be learnt through the medium of Arabic, while Welsh lessons are available online through the medium of Chinese. Welsh does not have to be seen as a ‘White’ language –​and yet access to Welsh and English is not equal. Although the two languages have equal status in law, a Syrian or Afghan refugee, for instance, who wishes to learn English in Wales, can do so gratis; but if he wishes to learn Welsh, he must pay. The desire to learn, however, across all sections of society, is impressive. In 2021, Duolingo reported that nearly two million had begun learning Welsh since its launch in 2016, and during lockdown it had become one of the fastest growing languages in the UK, and seventh most popular overall, ahead of Russian, Chinese and Arabic (Watkins, 2021). This interest is borne out by the findings of a Welsh Government national survey for 2017–​18, which included questions on attitudes to the Welsh language. In a section specifically directed at those who could not speak Welsh, they were asked whether they agreed with the statement ‘I would like to be able to speak Welsh’; 62 per cent agreed, 14 per cent were undecided and 25 per cent disagreed. However, general attitudes towards the language were even more positive. Sixty-​seven per cent of all respondents (irrespective of linguistic background) thought that more effort needed to be put into supporting the language, while 86 per cent of people felt the language was something of which to be proud (Welsh Government, 2018). And in 2017 the Welsh Government announced an ambitious plan to build on this support, Cymraeg 2050, with its target of increasing the number of 227

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Welsh speakers to one million by 2050, citing their ‘vision for the Welsh language as a vibrant language, equally viable in close-​knit rural communities, dispersed social networks in urban settings, and in virtual communities reaching across geographical spaces’ (Welsh Government, 2017, p 16). But what will this mean in practical terms? It calls for something of a juggling act; on the one hand, making a strong case for the Welsh language and extending its use, without on the other hand making it appear exclusive. Speaking Welsh cannot be the sine qua non of Welsh identity while it is the language of the minority –​and destined to remain so for the foreseeable future. It also calls for a more nuanced awareness of the different perceptions of the English language, a veritable ‘trinity’ of language for speakers of Welsh –​three languages in one. It is simultaneously a Welsh language; the sole language of many of their fellow citizens, with its own unique structures and colour; and it is an international language too, a means to share ideas with millions across the world. But at the same time, it is also a colonial language and one that still poses a threat to the future of Welsh. As critic M. Wynn Thomas has stated, ‘before Wales can fully know itself for what it is, it must confront, acknowledge and carefully consider its bilateral character’ (1999, p 6). Wales must interrogate the role(s) of both languages. But these are challenges hopefully, rather than irreconcilable differences –​ and Wales has after all been dealing, in one way or another, with issues of integration for at least 500 years. In a Wales of plural identities, and within ‘the particular nexus of complexities that makes Wales distinct’ (Thomas, 2017, p 171), the Welsh language can belong to all the people of Wales, whether they speak it or not; and when perceived as part of their common heritage, it can unite rather than divide. References Aitchison, J. and Carter, H. (1994) A Geography of the Welsh Language, 1961–​1991, Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Awbery, G.M. (2017) ‘The language of remembrance: Welsh and English on First World War war memorials’, Folk Life, 55(2): 112–​36. Balsom, D. (1985) ‘The three Wales model’, in John Osmond (ed) The National Question Again: Welsh Political Identity in the 1980s, Llandysul: Gomer Press, pp 1–​17. BBC News (2016) ‘Low Welsh media consumption creates “democratic deficit”’, BBC News, [online] 7 April, Available from: https://​www.bbc. co.uk/​news/​uk-​wales-​35984​859 [Accessed 11 July 2022]. BBC News (2021) ‘Second homes: What are the issues in Wales?’, BBC News, [online] 23 November, Available from: https://​www.bbc.co.uk/​ news/​uk-​wales-​59387​455 [Accessed 23 December 2021].

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BBC Radio Wales (2022) ‘Schedules January 2022’, [online], Available from: https://​www.bbc.co.uk/​schedu​les/​p00fz​l8y/​2022/​01 [Accessed 11 July 2022]. Brooks, S. (2017) Why Wales Never Was: The Failure of Welsh Nationalism, Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Brooks, S. (2021) ‘Second homes: Developing new policies in Wales’, Welsh Government, [online], Available from: https://g​ ov.wales/s​ ites/d​ efau ​ lt/fi ​ les/​ publi​cati​ons/​2021-​03/​sec​ond-​homes-​dev​elop​ing-​new-​polic​ies-​in-​wales. pdf [Accessed 23 December 2021]. Carter, H. (1988) ‘Culture, language and territory’ (BBC Wales Annual Radio Lecture), London: British Broadcasting Corporation. Churchward, R. (2019) ‘Recent trends in modern foreign language exam entries in anglophone countries’, Ofqual, [online], Available from: https://​ www.gov.uk/​gov​ernm​ent/​publi​cati​ons/​inter-​subj​ect-​compar​abil​ity-​in-​ gcses [Accessed 11 July 2022]. Clarkson, J. (2011) ‘Stuff French … we ALL speak English’, The Sun, 3 September, p 11. Davies, J. (1990) Hanes Cymru, London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press. Evans, J.G. (ed) (1910) Facsimile & Text of the Book of Taliesin, Llanbedrog: privately published by J.G. Evans. Future Generations Commissioner for Wales (2022) ‘Well-​being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015’, [online], Available from: https://​www. future​gene​rati​ons.wales/​about-​us/​fut​ure-​gene​rati​ons-​act/​ [Accessed 11 July 2022]. Glyn, I. ap (2018) Cuddle Call?, Llanrwst: Gwasg Carreg Gwalch. Gwynedd Council (2013) ‘Language area profiles’, [online], Available from: https://w ​ ww.gwyn​edd.llyw.cymru/​en/C ​ ounc​ il/K ​ ey-s​ tat​ isti​ cs-a​ nd-​ data/​Langu​age-​area-​profi​les.aspx [Accessed 11 July 2022]. Harries, B., Byrne, B. and Lymperopoulou, K. (2014) ‘Who identifies as Welsh? National identities and ethnicity in Wales’, Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE), [online], Available from: http://​humme​dia.man​ches​ter. ac.uk/​ins​titu​tes/​code/​briefi​ngs/​dyna​mics​ofdi​vers​ity/​code-​cen​sus-​brief​ ing-​natio​nal-​ident​ity-​wales.pdf [Accessed 11 July 2022]. Jones, R.M. (1992) ‘Beyond identity? The reconstruction of the Welsh’, Journal of British Studies, 31(4): 330–​57. Morgan, R. (2002) Clear Red Water, National Centre for Public Policy, Swansea, 11 December. Morris, J. (2009) ‘Mocking the Welsh is the last permitted bigotry’, The Spectator, [online] 25 July, Available from: https://​www.specta​tor.co.uk/​ arti​cle/​mock​ing-​the-​welsh-​is-​the-​last-​permit​ted-​bigo​try [Accessed 11 July 2022].

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Nation.Cymru (2019) ‘Times criticised for “should the Welsh language be taught?” poll’, Nation.Cymru, [online] 21 January, Available from: https://​ na-t​ ion.cymru/​news/​times-​cri​tici​sed-​for-​shou ​ ld-t​ he-w ​ elsh-l​ angua​ ge-b​ e-​ tau​ght-​poll/​ [Accessed 11 July 2022]. Nation.Cymru (2021) ‘Poll shows highest support for Welsh independence ever recorded’, Nation.Cymru, [online] 3 March, Available from: https://​nati​ on.cymru/n ​ ews/p​ oll-s​ hows-​high​est-​supp​ort-​for-​welsh​indep​ende​nce-​ever-​recor​ded/​ [Accessed 11 July 2022]. Nimni, E. (1989) ‘Marx, Engels and the national question’, Science & Society, 53(3): 297–​326. Office for National Statistics (2001) ‘200 years of the Census in Wales’, [online], Available from: https://​web.arch​ive.org/w ​ eb/2​ 009​ 0319​ 2023​ 24/​ http://​www.sta​tist​ics.gov.uk/​cen​sus2​001/​bice​nten​ary/​pdfs/​wales.pdf [Accessed 11 July 2022]. Office for National Statistics (2011) ‘2011 Census: Key statistics for Wales, March 2011’, [online], Available from: https://​www.ons.gov.uk/​ peopl​epop​ulat​iona​ndco​mmun​ity/​pop​ulat​iona​ndmi​g rat​ion/​popu​lati​ones​ tima​tes/​bullet​ins/​2011​cens​uske​ysta​tist​icsf​orwa​les/​2012-​12-​11#tab-​-​-​ Usual-​reside​nts-​born-​outs​ide-​the-​UK [Accessed 11 July 2022]. Office for National Statistics (2020) ‘People born outside the UK’, GOV. UK, [online], Available from: https://​www.ethnic​ity-​f acts-​f igu​res. serv​ice.gov.uk/​uk-​pop​ulat​ion-​by-​ethnic​ity/​demog​raph​ics/​peo​ple-​born-​ outs​ide-​the-​uk/​lat​est [Accessed 11 July 2022]. Osmond, J. (1992) The Democratic Challenge, Llandysul: Gomer Press. Penllyn, T. (1958) ‘Cywydd o Hawl ac Ateb rhwng Cymro a Saesnes’, in R. Thomas, Gwaith Tudur Penllyn ac Ieuan ap Tudur Penllyn, Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Potter-​Collins, A. (2013) ‘Language in England and Wales: 2011’, Office for National Statistics, [online], Available from: https://​www.ons.gov.uk/​ peopl​epop​ulat​iona​ndco​mmun​ity/​cultu​rali​dent​ity/​langu​age/​artic​les/​ langua​gein​engl​anda​ndwa​les/​2013-​03-​04#welsh-​langu​age [Accessed 23 December 2021]. Smith, D. (1986) ‘A novel history’, in T. Curtis (ed) Wales: The Imagined Nation, Bridgend: Poetry Wales Press, pp 131–​58. Smith, D. (1999) Wales: A Question for History, Bridgend: Seren. Stats Wales (2012) ‘Welsh speakers by local authority, gender and detailed age groups, 2011 census’, Stats Wales, [online], Available from: https://​ sta​tswa​les.gov.wales/​Catalo​gue/​Welsh-​Langu​age/​Cen​sus-​Welsh-​Langu​ age/​welshs​peak​ers-​by-​loc​alau​thor ​ity-​gen​der-​detail​edag​egro​ups-​201​1cen​ sus [Accessed 11 July 2022]. Thomas, B. (1987) ‘A cauldron of rebirth: Population and the Welsh language in the 19th century’, Welsh History Review, 13(4): 418–​37.

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Thomas, E.M. and Webb-​Davies, P. (2017) ‘Agweddau ar Ddwyieithrwydd’, [online], Available from: https://​llyfrg​ell.porth.ac.uk/​View.aspx?id=​ 3001~4e~cunoK​UqT [Accessed 11 July 2022]. Thomas, M.W. (1999) Corresponding Cultures: The Two Literatures of Wales, Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Thomas, M.W. (2017) ‘Studying Wales today: A micro-​cosmopolitan approach’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 23(1): 171–​84. Thomas, M.W. (2021a) Eutopia, Studies in Cultural Euro-​Welshness, 1850–​ 1980, Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Thomas, M.W. (2021b) The History of Wales in Twelve Poems, Cardiff: University of Wales Press. UK Government (2021) ‘Country of birth’, Scotland’s Census, [online], Available from: https://​www.scot​land​scen​sus.gov.uk/​cen​sus-​resu​lts/​at-​a-​ gla​nce/​coun​try-​of-​birth/​ [Accessed 11 July 2022]. Watkins, C. (2021) ‘Duolingo: Japanese overtakes Welsh to become UK’s fastest-​growing language in 2021’, Nation.Cymru, [online] 3 December, Available from: https:// ​ n at ​ i on.cymru/ ​ c ult​ u re/​ d uoli​ n go-​ j apan​ e se-​ overta​kes-​welsh-​to-​bec​ome-​uks-​f ast​est-​g row​ing-​langu​age-​in-​2021/​ [Accessed 11 July 2022]. Welsh Government (2012) ‘2011 Census: First results on the Welsh language’, Statistical Bulletin, [online] 11 December, Available from: https://​gov.wales/​ sites/​defa​ult/​files/​sta​tist​ics-​and-​resea​rch/​2019-​03/​121211​sb11​8201​2en. pdf [Accessed 11 July 2022]. Welsh Government (2017) ‘Cymraeg 2050: A million Welsh speakers’, [online], Available from: https:// ​ g ov.wales/​ s ites/​ d efa​ u lt/​ f iles/ ​ p ubli​ c ati​ o ns/​ 2 018-​ 1 2/​ c ymr​ a eg-​ 2 050-​ welsh- ​ l angu ​ a ge- ​ s trat ​ e gy.pdf [Accessed 11 July 2022]. Welsh Government (2018) ‘National survey for Wales, 2017–​18, Welsh language: Confidence and attitudes’, Statistical Bulletin, [online] 10 October, Available from: https://g​ ov.wales/s​ ites/d​ efau ​ lt/fi ​ les/s​ tat​ isti​ cs-a​ nd-​ resea​rch/​2019-​01/​natio​nal-​sur ​vey-​wales-​welsh-​langu​age-​con​fide​nce-​ attitu​des-​2017-​18.pdf [Accessed 23 December 2021]. Welsh Government (2021a) ‘Annual survey of hours and earnings: 2021’, [online], Available from: https://​gov.wales/​ann​ual-​sur ​vey-​hours-​and​earni​ngs-​2021 [Accessed 11 July 2022]. Welsh Government (2021b) ‘Welsh language use in Wales (initial findings): July 2019 to March 2020’, [online], Available from: https://​gov. wales/​welsh-​langu​age-​use-​wales-​init​ial-​findi​ngs-​july-​2019-​march-​2020-​ html [Accessed 23 December 2021]. Wikipedia (2021) ‘Y Gwyll’, [online], Available from: https://​cy.wikipe​dia. org/​wiki/​Y_​Gw​yll#Cynh​yrch​iad [Accessed 11 July 2022].

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Williams, C. (2003) ‘A post-​national Wales’, The Welsh Agenda: Welsh by Design, winter edition: 2–​5. Williams, D.G. (2003) ‘Introduction’, in D.G. Williams (ed) Raymond Williams: Who Speaks for Wales? Nation, Culture, Identity, Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Williams, D.G. (2018) ‘Welsh keywords: Dinasyddiaeth’, Planet, 231: 28–​36. Williams, G.A. (1982) ‘When was Wales?’, in G.A. Williams (ed) The Welsh in Their History, London: Croom Helm, pp 189–​201. Williams, G.A. (1986) ‘People’s remembrancers to a Welsh republic’, Radical Wales, autumn edition: 18–​19, [online], Available from https://​www. gwyn​alfw​illi​ams.co.uk/​docume​nts/​peo​ple’s-​remem​bran​ces-​to-​a-​welsh-​ repub​lic-​(radi​cal-​wales-​aut​umn-​1986).pdf [Accessed 11 July 2022]. Williams, R. (2003) Who Speaks for Wales? Nation, Culture, Identity, Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

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Conclusion Gesa Stedman and Jana Gohrisch During the summer of 2022, in the midst of the war in Ukraine, with the obvious signs of a new crisis developing in the UK (and elsewhere) as a consequence of the war, delivery chain problems and economic upheaval in different parts of the world, the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, gave an interview to foreign newspapers, including the German broadsheet Süddeutsche Zeitung. Rather than commenting on his own political future (decided shortly afterwards) or on domestic issues, Johnson focused entirely on foreign policy and on the alleged successes of his government and the relevance of Britain in a global context (Neudecker, 2022). What sounded like a political utopia, or a deliberate refusal to face up to reality, provoked a written response in the same newspaper, penned by the writer and political satirist A.L. Kennedy (Kennedy, 2022a). In contrast to the utopian discourse of Britain’s global political and general economic power, reflecting well on the then prime minister, Kennedy develops a dystopian vision of a UK on the brink of collapse. The same discursive pattern reoccurred shortly after Liz Truss became prime minister and following the death of Queen Elizabeth II. While Liz Truss publicly insisted on tax cuts leading to economic growth, A.L. Kennedy was driven to even greater dystopian despair in her subsequent satirical take on the downward spiral which the UK seems to have taken with an ever-​deepening cost-​of-​ living crisis, political turmoil and economic uncertainty for the majority of Britons (Kennedy, 2022b). While there is good reason, according to leading economists and institutions, to fear Liz Truss’ economic policies (Partington, 2022), which make Kennedy’s satirical future look realistic rather than dystopian, meaning that the consequences of Conservative government decisions do not belong to the realm of negative fantasy, it is obvious that both the utopian and the dystopian model of Britain during a time of crisis is built on radical disparity which might, in turn, further encourage affective polarisation. While the tradition of political satire is, of course, built on pinpointing and sharpening conflict and points of difference, government policy might 233

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be expected to address not just a minority of a country’s inhabitants, but rather the majority. This does not seem to be the case any longer in Britain, with even Johnson’s seemingly ineffective ‘levelling up’ programme finally discarded by his successor. Rather than responding to the current multiple crises with a programme to help as many people as possible, the British government seems set to do the opposite. This is not left-​wing propaganda but rather the expected outcome of one of the highest rates of inflation in all of Europe. The current crisis will hit hard a welfare state already threatened by previous crises, and if the most recent COVID-​19 wave, coupled with ambulance provision dramas during the summer of 2022 is any indication, the National Health Service will find it difficult to cope with any new pressure, which might result from elderly and vulnerable people in general falling ill due to insufficient means to heat their accommodation or the inability to afford a healthy diet. The first waves of protests have begun in the UK (BBC, 2022), raising memories of similar periods of political discontent in the 1970s. The recent –​and not so recent –​past have shown that speech and thought and discourse have an effect on (affective) polarisation, whether it is voiced in political satire, during public demonstrations or in political speeches. Our book explains how both discursive patterns and policy decisions in the past and present have a mutual impact upon each other and exacerbate social inequality. What also emerges from the different chapters in this book is the discrepancy between policy makers and policies, on the one hand, and actual, lived experience on the other in terms of class, ethnicity, region/​ locality, gender, age and dis/​ability (compare Chapters 4, 5 and 9, this volume). These aspects are treated differently according to the individual focus of each chapter. Time will tell which of these aspects will be most important with regards to social inequality. Recently published research on the impact of the cost-​of-​living crisis shows it might be class which has the greatest impact (Barnard, 2022). Class, however, is an often unacknowledged category, or remains masked, as Mckenzie shows in this book (Chapter 9), and as Gohrisch argues in her chapter (Chapter 6), which, among other aspects, takes a closer look at the gatekeeping processes within the literary field that allow White and middle-​class people –​or at least those following middle-​class tropes –​access to public and published discourse while others struggle to gain similar powers (see also Saha and van Lente, 2020). Class and ethnicity overlap particularly strongly in the abjection processes at work during the COVID-​19 pandemic, which castigated and scapegoated Eastern European migrant workers, while at the same time showing how important they are to the British economy (Chapter 5, this volume; Tyler, 2013). That these processes of ‘othering’ are not only necessary aspects of neoliberal, late capitalism, but are essential to capitalism in general only becomes clear when one adopts a longue durée perspective. 234

Conclusion

For the book also shows the power of history, or rather how previous acts and a succession of crises, following on from Thatcherite and then New Labour policy, have left the UK in a weaker position in the face of the energy crisis and rising inflation, compared to some of its European counterparts. Moreover, the UK is less able, and politicians seem less willing, to help absorb the shocks. We have also been able to demonstrate the importance of language in shaping perceptions, representations and thus political expectations –​and ultimately also policies, as the wording of those policies depends on discursive patterns. Sometimes these are intentionally used (for example, in the then Home Secretary Theresa May’s ‘concept’ of hostile environments [May, 2013]) in order to incite hatred, and sometimes the process is more covert (‘the people’, see Chapter 3, this volume), but the outcome is similar. The goal posts are subtly, or not so subtly, shifted with direct consequences for those who are abjected in the political and rhetorical process. Representations in different media, which do justice to such complexities, require of course equally sophisticated concepts to analyse them. Affective polarisation is one such concept, provided it is adapted to a given national or regional context (see, for example, Chapters 4, 7 and 10, this volume), is able to move beyond the immediate present (Chapters 2 and 6, this volume) and doesn’t fall for simple explanations, as for example Grünkemeier’s, Gohrisch’s and Chiocchetti’s respective chapters show (Chapters 1, 6 and 8). Nationalism muddies the waters further, as affective polarisation plays out differently in the different nations of the UK. In times of crisis, this becomes more urgent, as the current increase of Welsh independence supporters, Scottish voices demanding a second referendum on independence, and the new generations of Irish and Northern Irish voters who advocate for a union between Northern Ireland and the Republic demonstrate. In view of recent political developments as an immediate consequence of Brexit, among other factors, it would be worth exploring affective polarisation along these lines and resisting state-​of-​the-​nation questions, which were last discussed with great urgency in the 1990s when devolution was the keyword of both British politics and British (Cultural) Studies (see, for example, Samuel, 1989). Perhaps it is not the break-​up of the political union which should concern academics (and politicians), but rather the affective break-​up and the lived experience of being abjected into poverty which is of greater concern? Centrifugal powers in the UK are gaining, or so it seems, at the time of writing this Conclusion, further strengthened by the policies of the Conservative government in power in October 2022 which explicitly set out to maintain, rather than strive to overcome, inequality. How various nationalisms, deeply entrenched inequality, a recession (ONS, 2022), and a rather woolly concept of ‘global Britain’ will allow weathering the current cost-​of-​living/​energy crisis and crises to come remains to be seen. 235

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Drastic political satire in A.L. Kennedy’s vein is perhaps one way of coping, taking strike action another. As academics we are as a majority often only privileged bystanders, but at least we can attempt to shape academic discourse in such a way that it acknowledges complexity, rather than obscuring it by applying over-​simplified and ahistorical concepts, in order to understand why Britain is once again indulging in a nostalgic post-​imperial (class) politics (Samuel, 2014; Rose Woods, 2022). References Barnard, H. (2022) ‘How might the cost of living crisis affect long-​term poverty?’, Economics Observatory, [online] 8 June, Available from: https://​ www.econo​mics​obse​r vat​ory.com/​how-​might-​the-​cost-​of-​liv​ing-​cri​sis-​ aff​ect-​long-​term-​pove​rty [Accessed 14 October 2022]. BBC (2022) ‘Workers take to London’s streets amid cost of living crisis’, BBC News, [online] 18 June, Available from: https://​www.bbc.com/​news/​ uk-​engl​and-​lon​don-​61846​871 [Accessed 14 October 2022]. Kennedy, A.L. (2022a) ‘Wie eine Fünfjährige, die gerade gegen eine Tür gelaufen ist’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, [online] 6 September, Available from: https://​www.suedd​euts​che.de/​kul​tur/​g ros​sbri​tann​ien-​liz-​truss-​ kommen​tar-​1.5651​206?redu​ced=​true [Accessed 14 October 2022]. Kennedy, A.L. (2022b) ‘Das Psychodrama unserer Eliten’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, [online] 14 September, Available from: https://​www.suedd​euts​ che.de/​kul​tur/​queen-​nation​ale-​tra​uer-​kri​tik-​1.5656​830?redu​ced=​true [Accessed 14 October 2022]. May, T. (2013) ‘Speech by Home Secretary on Second Immigration Bill’, Gov.uk, [online] 22 October, Available from: https://​www.gov.uk/​ gov​ernm​ent/​speec​hes/​spe​ech-​by-​home-​secret​ary-​on-​sec​ond-​read​ing-​of-​ immi​grat​ion-​bill [Accessed 14 October 2022]. Neudecker, M. (2022) ‘Interview with Boris Johnson: “We will continue to do things differently”’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, [online] 22 June, Available from: https://​ w ww.suedd​ e uts​ c he.de/​ p oli ​ t ik/ ​ b oris- ​ j ohn ​ s on- ​ b re ​ x it-​ ukrai​ ne-i​ nterv​iew-​1.5607​531?redu​ced=​true [Accessed 14 October 2022]. Office for National Statistics (2022) ‘GDP monthly estimate, UK: August 2022’, ONS, [online] 12 October, Available from: https://​www.ons.gov. uk/​econ​omy/​gros​sdom​esti​cpro​duct​gdp/​bullet​ins/​gdpmo​nthl​yest​imat​euk/​ aug​ust2​022 [Accessed 14 October 2022]. Partington, R. (2022) ‘UK economy grows more slowly than expected amid cost of living crisis’, The Guardian, [online] 12 September, Available from: https://​www.thegu ​ ardi​ an.com/b​ usine​ ss/2​ 022/s​ ep/1​ 2/u ​ k-e​ cono ​ my-​ grows-c​ ost-o ​ f-​liv​ing-​cri​sis-​gdp-​r ises-​inflat​ion [Accessed 14 October 2022]. Rose Woods, H. (2022) Rule, Nostalgia: A Backwards History of Britain, London: Ebury.

236

Conclusion

Saha, A. and van Lente, S. (2020) Rethinking ‘Diversity’ in Publishing, London: Goldsmiths, [online], Available from: https://​www.gold.ac.uk/​ gol​dsmi​ths-​press/​publi​cati​ons/​ret​hink​ing-​divers​ity-​in-​pub​lish​ing-​/​ [Accessed 14 October 2022]. Samuel, R. (1989) Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity, London: Routledge. Samuel, R. (2014) Theatres of Memory: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture, London: Verso. Tyler, I. (2013) Revolting Subjects: Social Resistance and Abjection in Neoliberal Britain, London: Zed Books.

237

Index References to figures appear in italic type; those in bold type refer to tables. References to footnotes show both the page number and the note number (85n1). A A8 immigration  113 abstentions  13, 17, 20, 21 Abu-​Lughod, L.  3 admin-​based income statistics (ABIS)  85n1, 87 Advani, A.  187 affective polarisation, definition of  2 age, authoritarian values  38 agricultural workers  110, 111, 118, 148, 153 Ainsley, C.  142, 150 Akala  126, 131–​2, 135, 136, 139 algorithms  48 ambivalence  69 anger  128–​32, 139 anthropology  80, 82, 94, 104 anti-​democracy  36 anti-​elitism  34, 35 anti-​establishmentarianism  28, 34, 142, 144, 157 anti-​managerialism  152 antiracism  125, 126–​7, 129 anti-​social behaviour/​crime levels  144–​6, 148–​9, 150, 151–​2, 153, 154 anti-​strike bill  46 Antonucci, L.  98 art projects  100–​1 Article 50  64 artist collectives  136 asylum seekers  46, 112 asymmetric affective polarisation  26 austerity  anthropology  80 bankers  187 blamed on workshy lower classes  111 Conservative party  4–​5 COVID-​19  2 in film  169–​84 grassroots activism  95 and immigration  114 inequality gaps  185

‘left-​behind’ areas  155 social network analysis  104 authoritarian values  15–​16, 33, 36, 42–​9, 50 autocracy  34, 36 Awbery, G.M.  215 B Badenoch, Kemi  45 Bakker, R.  13, 14, 16, 25 Balsom, D.  218 Ban, C.  114, 115, 116 banking  187 Batty, D.  50 Bauman, Z.  92 BBC  43, 48 Bellingham, Henry  153, 156 belonging  94–​5, 143 benefits  see welfare state Berlant, L.  178, 180–​1 ‘Better Together’/‘Yes Scotland’  205, 207, 209 Bhattacharyya, G.  111, 117, 120 big data  48 Big Society  154 bilingualism  220 Black activism  126–​40 Black Lives Matter (BLM)  44, 45, 125, 127 Black writers  125–​41, 193–​4 Blair, Tony  137, 149, 190 Blakely, G.  193 Bogdanor, V.  143 Bourdieu, P.  3, 80, 104, 186, 191, 192, 193, 195 Bradshaw, P.  182 Bramson, A.  24 Braverman, Suella  40, 44–​5, 47 Brexit  ‘country’ and ‘people’ in Brexit referendum speeches  60–​77 elite populism  38–​40 geography  2 identity  38

238

INDEX

inequality across four English towns  83 labour exploitation  118 ‘left-​behind’ areas  142–​3, 158 left-​leaning  20 opinion-​based polarisation  2 and race  131 Scotland  207 suspension of parliament  42–​3 Wales  225 welfare state  182 working class populations  190 see also Leave–Remain split Brexit Party  20, 21, 25 Bristol  44 Britannia Unchained (Eardley, 2022)  47 British Election Study (BES)  11, 12–​13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 23, 24, 25, 26 British National Corpus  64 British National Party (BNP)  151–​2 Brodgen, J.  38–​9 Brown, W.  37–​8, 50 Bulgarian essential workers  110, 113, 114 Business for Sterling  48 Butler, T.  82 by-​election, North Shropshire  41 C Cameron, David  154 Canovan, M.  34, 35 Cant, S.  86 capitalism  and class  185, 195–​6 free markets  37, 47, 49, 145, 179–​80, 203 I, Daniel Blake (2016)  170 individualism  138 industrialisation  144–​5 inequality gaps  185 libertarian values  37 migrant workers  110 platform capitalism  48 profit motives  179 racialised capitalism  118–​20 and racism  111, 128, 131 Scotland  202 sociological divisions  18 super-​r ich  186 workers versus owners of capital  193 see also neoliberalism capitalist realism  17 Cardiff  224 Cardullo, B.  172, 173 care workers  177–​8 Carter, H.  221, 222 ‘cash for honours’  75 Census data  85, 89, 216, 218, 226 centrist politics  Conservative party  18 election successes  18

ideological polarisation  14, 15, 24 Labour Party  28 Channel 4  43, 48 Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES)  13, 14, 16, 24, 25 Chicago School  81 citizenship  47, 174, 222 civil society  97, 105 Clarke, G.  219 Clarke, J.  38 class  Bourdieu  4, 192–​3, 195 capitalism  185, 195–​6 class divisions  2 COVID-​19  194–​5 cultural industries as gatekeepers of  193–​4 education  186 hierarchies of  119–​20, 191–​3 inequality across four English towns  88, 96–​8 intra-​class tensions  104 and neoliberalism  175–​6 othering and hierarchisation  119–​20 and race  131, 132 Romanian Essential Workers  118–​20 Scotland  199–​211 social grade measures  18–​20, 21 social mobility  136, 139, 181, 185–​6 social segregation  81–​2 sociological divisions in modern capitalism  18 visibility  185–​98 voting behaviours  20 see also middle class; upper class; working class climate protests  46 close-​knit communities  94–​5 coalition government  154–​7, 185 coercive law-​and-​order  36 cognitive linguistics  62, 65 Cohen, G.  26 Cohen, S.  26, 145 coherence  35 Coleman, S.  38–​9 collective freedoms  49 collectivisation  80 collocations, in speeches  63–​73 colonialism  45, 47, 127–​8, 131, 133, 145, 202, 228 see also postcolonialism Colston, Edward (statue)  44, 45 Common Sense Group  44 community building  94–​5, 132–​6, 170 community studies  82, 83, 86, 94 commuting  99–​100 Comparative Manifesto Project  16 Comparative National Elections Project  16 conceptual stretching  69, 74 concordance analysis  70

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connectedness  94–​5, 143 connotational meanings  65 Conservative Party  aiming to maintain inequality  235 austerity  4 authoritarian values  42–​9 corruption  41, 75, 151, 152, 154, 155 domination of right-​wing voters  17–​18 dystopia  233 ethnic minority members  44–​5 free markets  47–​8 general election 2017  64 ideological polarisation  24, 25 inequality across four English towns  83, 84, 100 ‘left-​behind’ areas  153, 154–​7 moderate right  15 neoliberalism  134 ‘Partygate’  28, 41 protest rights, curtailing of  45–​6 redistributive attitudes  16 Scotland  207 social class measures  20 social distance measures  26–​7 social grade measures  21 Wales  225–​6 White English majoritarian identity  36 working class populations  189 contractor jobs  177–​8 conviviality  92–​5, 98, 103 Cool Britannia  150 Corbyn, Jeremy  24, 27–​8, 137, 190 ‘cordon sanitaire’  82 corpus linguistics  62, 65 corruption  41, 75, 151, 152, 154, 155 cosmopolitanism  40, 150, 155 cost-​of-​living crisis  2, 158, 187, 233, 234, 235 court powers  48 COVID-​19  asylum seekers  46 deserving/​undeserving poor  174–​5 essential workers  177 ethnic minorities  1 exceptionalism  175 ‘Freedom Day’  47, 49 geography  2 inequality gaps  187 informal networks of support  95 ‘left-​behind’ areas  158 libertarian values  47 lockdown diaries  188, 194–​5 lockdown rules  40, 42 National Health Service  234 north-​south divide  2 ‘Partygate’  28, 41 populism  40 Romanian Essential Workers  111, 112, 117–​18, 121 Scotland  208

Wales  221–​2, 226 welfare state  169–​71, 174–​5, 180, 182 working class  158, 194–​5 creative arts/​industries  Ken Loach films  169–​84 Margate  100–​1 racialised affective polarisation  125–​41 Taliesin tradition  212–​32 working class visibility  192–​3 Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre  192 crime levels/​anti-​social behaviour  144–​6, 148–​9, 150, 151–​2, 153, 154 criminal justice system  45 Crossley, T.F.  1 cruel optimism  180–​2 cultural history of emotions discourse  3, 4, 79 cultural linguistics  35, 60–​77 cultural values, voters’  14, 15–​16, 20, 22, 28 culture war  36, 43–​4 Cummings, Dominic  40, 41, 42, 48 D Darling, Alistair  205 Davidson, N.  204 Davies, Ron  225 Davies, W.  38, 39–​40, 43, 47, 48, 50 De Sousa, R.  3 de Vries, R.  169, 170–​1, 175 declinist narratives  145 defacing a public memorial  45 definition of affective polarisation  2 definition of ‘polarisation’  24 definition of populism  34–​8 deindustrialisation  145, 189, 206–​7 democracy  36–​8, 40, 171 Democratic Unionist Party (DUP)  64 de-​politicisation  39, 104 deportations of immigrants  45, 46 deprivation gaps  204 deregulation  47, 48, 176 deserving/​undeserving poor  174–​5 development projects  96, 100, 148, 151, 153 devolution  5, 43, 150, 223, 224, 225, 235 disaffection with politics  38–​9 discourse strategies  61, 65 discourse/​semantic prosody  63–​73 discriminatory legalism  49 diversity management  129 donations, political  47 Döring, H.  19 Dorling, D.  84 Drakeford, Mark  226 Dundee  202, 203 E Eardley, N.  47 Eastern European migrants  97, 110–​24

240

INDEX

Ebrey, J.  86 economic polarisation  81–​3, 87–​92, 102–​3 Eddo-​Lodge, R.  125, 126, 127, 128–​9, 130–​1, 132, 133, 135, 139 Edmiston, D.  169–​70, 180, 182 Edwards, J.  94 elite-​based polarisation  79, 83, 92, 96, 100, 102–​5, 187, 202 elitism  38–​42, 47–​8 emotions  3 enemies of the people  43 Engler, W.  139 environmentalism  147 epithets  70 equal opportunities  131, 132, 134, 136, 137 see also race ethnic minorities  COVID-​19  1 habitus  4 inequality across four English towns  90–​1, 96–​7 intra-​class tensions  96–​7 populism  36 prominent right-​wing politicians  44–​5 racialised affective polarisation  125–​41 ethnographic research  82, 86–​7, 102 EU Withdrawal Agreement  42–​3, 64 Euro 2020  44 European Centre for Populism Studies  37 European identity  23 Euroscepticism  48, 142 Evans, G.  15–​16, 80 Evans, J.G.  212–​32 Evaristo, B.  126, 127, 136, 137, 138–​9 expenses scandals  151, 152 Exterminate All the Brutes! (2021)  129–​30, 132–​3 Extinction Rebellion  45 F fake news  33, 113 far left  12, 13, 14, 15, 20 far right  14, 152 Farage, Nigel  35, 113, 114 fascism  50 fatigue, political  38–​9 feeling rules  3 fiction  126–​7, 132–​6 Fieldhouse, E.  11, 13, 21, 22, 23, 25 film  129–​30, 133–​4, 140, 169–​84 financial crash 2008  5, 47, 114, 151, 154, 186 Finlayson, A.  48 first-​past-​the-​post systems  16, 143 Fisher, Mark  151, 152 Flinders, M.  39 focus groups  86 foodbanks  95 ‘for the many not the few’  137–​8

Ford, R.  142 Forkert, K.  33, 35, 43, 45 free markets  37, 47, 49, 145, 179–​80, 203 fruit picking jobs  97, 111 G Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority Report  110, 118 gender and community building  132–​6 gender self-​ID  43 general election 2017  27, 64 general election 2019  11–​32, 39, 188–​9, 190 gentrification  82, 102, 190 geographical inequality  78–​109 gesture politics  44 Gidron, H.  2 gig economy  177 Gilroy, P.  38, 127, 128, 129 Gini co-​efficient  81 Girl, Woman, Other (Evaristo, 2019)  126, 136, 138–​9 globalisation  anonymisation  135 and elitism  38 ‘global Britain’  235 ‘left-​behind’ areas  142, 147, 149 and local social systems  82 ‘losers of globalisation’  20 Scotland  203 Glucksberg, L.  86 Goffman, E.  60 Gohrisch, J.  3, 65, 79 Goodwill, Robert  151 Goodwin, M.  142 Goos, M.  81 grassroots activism  92–​5, 103–​4 Great British Class Study  193 Great Depression  144–​5, 217 Great Recession  27 Green Party  far left  15 ideological polarisation  25 partisan divisions in the left  18, 19 redistributive attitudes  16 social grade measures  21 Guderjan, M.  33, 35, 42 Gunther, R.  16 H habitus  3–​4 Hale, M.  130n2, 134 Hall, S.  36, 37, 47, 50 Hallam, J.  172 Hancock, Matt  43 hedge funds  47 ‘help to buy’  187 heritage  94 heroic narratives  75

241

AFFECTIVE POLARISATION

high income households  88 see also elite-​based polarisation high-​speed rail  156 Hirsch, A.  126, 127, 131, 132, 133, 135 historical analysis  142–​68, 213, 235 Hobolt, S.  2–​3, 12, 24, 38, 42, 112n3, 144, 170, 171, 199 Hoey, M.  62 Home Secretaries  44 House of Lords  46 household income  85, 87, 88, 98–​9, 155, 204 housing  100, 102, 103, 139, 153, 187, 221–​2 housing estates  93, 95, 151–​2 Human Rights Act  48 human trafficking  46 Humphreys, E.  212 Hunt, Tristram  155–​6, 190

Interfaith Forum  97, 103 International Monetary Fund  115 intersectionality  111n1, 125, 132 interview methods  86–​7 Iyengar, S.  2, 24, 26, 170, 199

I I, Daniel Blake (2016)  169–​84 identity  in-​groups  26–​7, 170, 176–​7, 199, 200–​1, 207, 209 hyphenated  135 inequality across four English towns  80 and language  212–​32 national identities  23, 75, 150, 199–​200, 204, 205–​6 populism  38, 44 racialised affective polarisation  140 as term  3–​4 White  128 ideological polarisation in the UK  23–​7 immigration  see migration income distribution statistics  85, 87, 88, 98–​9, 155, 204 income inequality gaps  88 independence referendum Scotland  43, 199, 204–​6, 209 Index of Dissimilarity  85, 90–​2 Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD)  85, 90, 91, 205 individualism  libertarian values  38, 49 lockdown rules  42 neoliberalism  126 self-​improvement  138 social media  48 social mobility  185 industrialisation  94, 144–​7, 185, 200–​2, 216–​17 Indyref 2  199, 201, 209 inequality across four English towns  78–​109 inequality gaps  88, 155, 156, 185–​6, 187, 202 inflation  187 informal networks of support  95 in-​groups  26–​7, 170, 176–​7, 199, 200–​1, 207, 209 institutional racism  44, 47

J Javid, Sajid  45 Jayne, M.  152 Jefferson, G.  60 Jennings, W.  40 Johnson, Boris  approval ratings  33–​4 authoritarian values  42–​3 ‘country’ and ‘people’ in Brexit referendum speeches  63–​73 COVID-​19  40, 41–​2 exceptionalism  40–​1 ideological polarisation  27, 28 Leave–Remain split  23 ‘levelling up’  234 political funding  47 populism  33–​4, 39 resignation  50 Scotland  208 speeches  35 Ukraine  233 Wales  226 Johnson, L.K.  135, 136 Johnston, Trevor  170 ‘just-​about-​managing’  98 K Kaltwasser, C.R.  74 Kaufman, J.  169, 171 Kaufmann, E.  142–​3 Kennedy, A.L.  233, 236 Kermode, M.  176, 177 keyword approaches  65 King’s Lynn  142–​68 Klingemann, H.-​D.  16 knowledge economy  150 Koch, I.  80, 86, 104, 105 Kramer, L.  172 Kwarteng, Kwasi  28, 45, 47 L labour  gig economy  177 labour market polarisation  81 labour precariousness  92, 116–​17, 177–​9 low paid jobs  111, 115, 116, 118, 148, 177 low-​skill jobs  81, 110, 118, 148, 156 workers’ rights  177 zero-​hours contracts  177–​8 see also unemployment Labour Party  Brexit  27–​8, 64 election successes  18

242

INDEX

far left  15 Great Recession  27 ideological divisions  20, 22 ideological polarisation  24, 25 immigration  97 inequality across four English towns  83, 100 and local business elites  96 New Labour  137, 139, 149–​54 New Labour’s Third Way  36 partisan divisions in the left  18, 19, 27 private education  186 redistributive attitudes  16 Scotland  23, 200, 203, 204, 206–​7, 209 social class measures  20 social distance measures  26–​7 social grade measures  21 Wales  225–​6 working class populations  104, 189–​90, 206 Langacker, R.W.  62, 65 language  Boris Johnson’s  39 ‘country’ and ‘people’ in Brexit referendum speeches  60–​77 Welsh identity  212–​32 Laverty, Paul  170, 173 law-​and-​order politics  36 Leadsom, Andrea  41 Leave–Remain split  ‘country’ and ‘people’ in Brexit referendum speeches  60–​77 divided left  20, 28 inequality across four English towns  83, 84 ‘left-​behind’ areas  142–​3, 158 political trust  40 Scotland  207–​8 left, the  divided left  11–​32 far left  12, 13, 14, 15, 20 left-​r ight divide  12, 24–​5, 36 populism  36 radical left  18, 19, 20, 23 ‘left-​behind’ areas  82, 83–​4, 102, 142–​68, 203 left-​leaning parties  15 left-​leaning politics  ideological divisions  12, 20, 22 national identities  23 social grade measures  20, 21 socioeconomic values, voters’  28 ‘levelling up’  234 Levitsky, S.  33, 36–​7, 50 lexical priming  62–​3 Lexit  28 Liberal Democrats  Brexit  64 centrist politics  15 election successes  18 ideological polarisation  24, 25

North Shropshire by-​election  41 partisan divisions in the left  18, 19 Scotland  209 social class measures  20 social grade measures  21 liberal values  39–​40, 43, 143 libertarian values  15–​16, 34, 36, 37, 42–​9 Lillge, Claudia  170, 172 linguistic markers of affective polarity  63 literature  125–​41 lived experience  132, 144, 186, 234 Loach, Ken  169–​84 local collectivisation  80 local elections  50 ‘local enterprise zones’  156 Local Government Association  143 local intermediaries  80, 104–​5 local neighbourhoods, attachment to 94–​5, 143 local politics  50, 143 localism  154 lockdown rules  40, 42, 47 London  82, 145, 148, 150, 155, 156, 190–​1, 207, 220 low paid jobs  111, 115, 116, 118, 148, 177 ‘Lower Super Output Areas’ (LSOA)  85, 88–​9, 91 low-​skill jobs  81, 110, 118, 148, 156 Lutz, C.  3 M Maastricht Treaty  64 Macey, J.  37, 38 Major, John  50 Malik, N.  43, 45 managerialism  150, 152 managerial/​professional occupational classes  88, 89, 92 Mandelson, Peter  190 Mangrove Nine  133 Manning, A.  81 Manow, P.  19 manual workers  88, 89 Marcuse, P.  81, 98 Margate  79–​105 marginalised populations  de-​politicisation  104 populism  36 relational polarisation  92–​5 Romanian Essential Workers  116 see also ethnic minorities markets  see capitalism; free markets Marshment, M.  172 Martin, Tony  153 Marx, K.  18, 127, 131, 193 May, Theresa  63–​73, 235 Mayhew, H.  174 Mckenzie, L.  80, 188, 191, 194 McQueen, S.  133, 138, 140

243

AFFECTIVE POLARISATION

media  antiracism  127 Black writers  126–​40 Cummings relationship with  48 exclusive government access  43 fear of immigration  113, 114 fuelling fears about crime  146 populism  35 portrayal of Romanian workers  113, 114, 116, 117, 120 portrayals of difference class groups  190–​1 social media  35, 48–​9, 192 symbolic violence  192 Welsh language  216, 223–​4 mental health  147–​8 Meredith, Mark  152 meritocracy  104, 131, 138, 185 metropolitan elites  48, 145 Michaels, B.  134 middle class  class privilege  186, 195–​6 enclaves  82 housing  139 individualism  135 inequality across four English towns  79–​80 inequality gaps  187 in the media  191 as ‘the norm’  193–​4 political affiliations  20 publishing industry  138 ‘seat saving’  192 ‘squeezed middle’  79, 80, 86, 98–​9, 103 migration  A8 immigration  113 anti-​migrant sentiments  96 asylum seekers  46, 112 authoritarian values  43–​4 Black writers  127 deportations of immigrants  45, 46 Eastern European migrants  97, 110–​24 illegal immigration  46 inequality across four English towns  97–​8 ‘left-​behind’ areas  148 Nationality and Borders Bill  46–​7 neoliberalism  37, 111 as political issue  113–​14 populism  36 refugees  46, 112 Romanian Essential Workers  110–​24 Scotland  203 Wales  214–​15, 217, 221–​2, 223 working class populations  135 xenophobia  45 misinformation  34, 39, 114 mis-​recognition  80, 104 missing middle  81, 82, 88, 98–​102, 103 mixed methods approaches  79, 81–​92 moral ownership of areas  93 moral panics  47, 145, 149

Morgan, Nicky  43 Morgan, Rhodri  225 Morlicchio, E.  83 Mouffe, C.  34, 35 Mudde, C.  74 Müller, J.W.  33, 36, 49, 69, 73 multiculturalism  139, 150, 220 Murthy, Akshata  42 N national identities  23, 75, 199–​200, 204, 205–​6 National Readership Survey (NSR)  18 National Statistics Socio-​Economic Classification (NS-​SEC)  85 National Statistics Socio-​Economic Classification (NS-​SEC)  88 nationalism  18, 47–​8, 50, 84, 199–​200, 201–​4, 235 Nationality and Borders Bill  46 neighbourhood studies  82, 85, 88 neo-​Blairism  28 neo-​conservatism  37 neoliberalism  anger  139 and class  175–​6 diversity management  129 ex-​communist countries  115 flexible labour markets  117 free markets  37, 47, 49, 145, 179–​80, 203 gig economy  177 I, Daniel Blake (2016)  170 individualism  126 intra-​community tensions  80 labour providers versus owners of capital  18, 134 libertarian values  37 and migrant workers  111, 116 New Labour  150 othering  119 and racism  127, 129, 132 radical neoliberalism  37 redistributive attitudes  17 Scotland  206–​7 and Whiteness  118–​20 working class populations  135   see also capitalism New Frontiers Foundation  48 New Labour  137, 139, 149–​54 Newman, J.  38 News on the Web-​corpus  64 North Shropshire by-​election  41 Northern Health Alliance  2 Northern Ireland  Brexit  207 devolution  43, 150 general election 2019  13 nationalism  235 Northern Irish identity  23

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INDEX

north-​south divide  2, 4 nostalgia  38, 49, 149, 175, 236 Nottingham  188–​95 nouns, comparison of  65 O occupational class data  81, 84–​5, 88, 89, 92 Occupy movement  186 Office for National Statistics (ONS)  85, 87, 89, 91, 185, 187, 235 Oldham  79–​105 oligarchy  34, 145 Olusoga, D.  126–​7, 135, 138 opinion-​based polarisation  2 Organisation for Economic Co-​operation and Development (OECD)  155 O’Rourke, K.  142 Osborne, George  156 Osmond, J.  213 othering  capitalism  234 in film  172–​3 Ken Loach films  172 racialised affective polarisation  131 relational polarisation  93 Romanian Essential Workers  112, 117, 119–​20 speeches  61 O’Toole, Fintan  39 out-​groups  26–​7, 170, 176–​7, 207 outsiders  35–​6, 43, 47, 194, 199 ‘overspill’ towns  148 Oxford  79–​105 P paradigm scenarios  3 Paraschivescu, C.  118, 119 parliament, suspension of  42–​3 Parliamentary Standards Commission  40–​1 partisan divisions in the left  17–​23, 19, 27 party ideologies  13–​15, 24 party switching  26 party voters’ ideology  14, 15 ‘Partygate’  28, 41 passive voice, in speeches  72–​3 Patel, Priti  44–​5, 47 paternalism  93, 104 Paterson, Owen  40–​1 Patrick, R.  169, 171 patriotism  45, 47 Peck, R.  129–​30, 132–​4, 138 ‘people’ as term in political speeches  60–​77 performance politics  35 Phillips, C.  135–​6 Pitts, J.  126, 135–​6 Plaid Cymru  ideological polarisation  25 left-​leaning  15 partisan divisions in the left  18, 19 political power  225

redistributive attitudes  16 social grade measures  21 Welsh identity  23 platform capitalism  48 ‘plutocratic authoritarian liberalism’  38 polarisation, definition of  24 polarisation in Western democracies generally  23–​4 Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill  45 police powers  45, 46 Polish migrant workers  113 political affiliations  2 political funding  47, 75 political performance tactics  35 political representation  192 populism  33–​58 authoritarian populism  36–​7 definition of populism  4, 34–​8 discourse/​semantic prosody  74 linguistic constructs of ‘country’ and ‘people’  61 ‘losers of globalisation’  20 postcolonialism  38, 128 postideology  37 post-​industrial areas  142–​68 post-​racial society  136 post-​truth  33 poverty-​based polarisation  79, 83, 88, 92, 102–​5 power  class privilege  186 elitism  38–​42 hierarchies of  191–​3 White, patriarchal authority  38, 40 White privilege  128–​32 White supremacy  131 pragmatics  34, 68 Pratschke, J.  83 precariat (precarious labour)  92, 116–​17, 177–​9 privatisation  145 progressive alliances  28 property development  96 property prices  100, 102, 103, 187 Propp, V.  75 prorogation of parliament  42–​3 protest  45–​6, 50, 234 psychic privilege  38 public nuisance  45 Public Order Bill  46 public service broadcasters  43 publishing industry  127, 137–​8 Q quantitative methods  84–​5 Quinn, Lawries  150–​1 R Raab, Dominic  47 race  inequality across four English towns  90–​1 racial capitalism  80, 95, 96–​7, 116, 117, 118–​20

245

AFFECTIVE POLARISATION

racialised affective polarisation  125–​41 stigmatisation  93 racism  and anger  128–​32 and capitalism  111, 128, 131 inequality across four English towns  97 institutional racism  44, 47 ‘left-​behind’ areas  156–​7 populism  36, 44, 47 Romanian Essential Workers  113 self-​help manuals  129 structural racism  128, 130–​1 White privilege  128 see also antiracism radical left  18, 19, 20, 23 radical neoliberalism  37 Rai, S.  35, 45 Ramsey, A.  44 rap  131 recession post-​2008  5, 47, 114, 151, 154, 186 ‘red wall voters’  2, 27, 158, 189–​90 redistributive attitudes  14, 16–​17, 20, 22, 24, 25, 26 Rees-​Mogg, Jacob  41 Refugee Council  46 refugees  46, 112 regeneration  95, 96, 100, 153 relational polarisation  81–​3, 92–​103 religious organisations  97, 215 Rentoul, J.  41 RESPECT  18 rewriting the rules of politics  36 Rhodes, J.  84 right, the  far right  14, 152 left-​r ight divide  12, 24–​5, 36 libertarian values  37 populism  36 right of assembly  45 right-​leaning  21, 28 right-​leaning politics  14 Roberts, S.  98 Robson, G.  82 Roma and Traveller communities  46, 97, 119 Romanian Essential Workers  110–​24 Romocea, O.  112, 113 rule-​breaking  40, 41 Runnymede Trust  1 rural-​retreating  222 Russel-​Hochschild, A.  3 Rwanda, deportation of refugees to  47 S Sacks, H.  60 Saha, A.  127, 137 Salmond, Alex  205 Saunders, P.  82 Savage, M.  80, 81, 82, 86, 188, 193 Sawyers, P.  129

Sayal, R.  40 scapegoating  36, 46, 97, 111 Scarborough  142–​68 schemas  60–​2, 63, 69, 70, 72–​4, 75 Schulze, R.  42, 65 Scotland  anti-​metropolitanism  145 class, poverty and inequality  199–​211 devolution  43, 150 independence referenda  43, 199–​211 Rishi Sunak  43 Scottish identity  23, 204 welfare state  203, 204 Scots  219 Scottish Gender Reform Act  43 Scottish National Party (SNP)  Brexit  64 democratic mandate  43 ideological polarisation  25 independence referenda  201 left-​leaning  15 nationalism  200 partisan divisions in the left  18, 19, 27 post-​referendum  206–​8, 209 redistributive attitudes  16 Scottish identity  204 social grade measures  21 Scottish Parliament  200, 204, 207 Scottish Socialist Party  18 second homes  221–​2 segregation, social  81 self-​help manuals  129, 138 semantic associations  62–​3 ‘sense of loss’  38 service economy  147, 177–​9, 203 sexuality  139 Shared Prosperity Fund  43 Shelley, P.B.  137 Sinn Fein  18, 19, 23 Skeggs, B.  92 slavery  202 Small Axe (2020)  133, 135, 138 Smith, D.  217 social class  see class social closure  24 social cohesion  79, 149, 153 social collectives  3–​4, 104 social construction  73 social democracy  203 Social Democratic Party  18 social deprivation measures  85, 87–​92, 102 social distance measures  26 social grade measures  18–​20 social media  35, 48–​9, 192 social mobility  136, 139, 181, 185–​6 social network analysis  80, 94, 104 social polarisation  24, 79, 81–​92 social realist cinema  170, 171–​2, 177 social solidarity  37

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INDEX

socioeconomic values, voters’  14, 15, 20, 22, 28 sociology  24, 80, 81 socio-​professional status  18–​20, 21 solidarity  37, 49, 80, 103, 111, 116–​17, 135, 170, 175 Sorry We Missed You (2019)  169–​84 sovereignty  37 spatial polarisation  81–​3, 85, 87–​92, 102–​3 Stacey, M.  82 standard wave weights  13 Standing, G.  116, 117, 118 Starmer, Kier  28 statecraft  39 statues  44, 45 Stedman, G.  3, 79, 137n4 Stegemann, B.  130 Stenning, A.  98 stigmatisation  92, 93, 95 Stoke-​on-​Trent  142–​68, 190 Stone, Kathryn  40–​1 strikes  46, 202, 207, 236 structural racism  128, 130–​1 Sturgeon, Nicola  208 Sunak, Rishi  40, 42, 43, 44, 45, 75 Supreme Court  43 Surridge, P.  38 suspension of parliament  42–​3 symbolic devaluation  92, 104 symbolic violence  186, 191–​2, 196 T tactical voting  16 Taggart, P.  34, 35 ‘taking the knee’  44 Taliesin tradition  212–​32 Tarrant, H.  187 tech industry  48, 145, 150 Teleleu  114, 116, 117 Thatcher, Margaret  36, 37, 47, 78, 139, 145 them and us  61, 73, 95, 112, 120, 134, 186 There Is No Alternative (TINA)  17 ‘thin-​centred’ ideologies  34 think tanks  48 Third Way  36 Thomas, B.  217 Thomas, M.W.  215, 228 Thompson, E.P.  185 Tilley, J.  18, 38, 42, 80 tourism  94, 146 trade unions  28, 152 trans rights  43 Traveller communities  46, 148, 153 trespass laws  45–​6 Trilling, S.  43–​4, 47 trivialisation of important matters  39 Trump, Donald  23, 131 Truss, Liz  40, 47, 75, 233 trust  33, 40, 48, 50, 86, 105, 190

Tunbridge Wells  79–​105 Turner, George  153 Tyler, I.  92 U Uberoi, E.  11, 14 Udrea, A.  116 UK Internal Market Act  43 UKIP (UK Independence Party)  18, 25, 103, 153 Ukraine  2, 187, 233 UN Convention on Refugees  46 underclass  146 unemployment  affective polarisation in areas of high  2 as driver for immigration  114 ‘left-​behind’ areas  146, 148, 151, 152, 153, 154 ‘red wall voters’  189–​90 UNESCO  221 United States  authoritarian values  50 financial crash 2008  186–​7 geographical polarisation  81–​2 Trump  23, 131 Universal Credit  95 upper class  political affiliations  20 Scotland  202 sociological divisions in modern capitalism  18 upper crust populism  39 Wales  221   see also elite-​based polarisation urban anthropology  80 urban planning  95, 96 us/​them  61, 73, 95, 112, 120, 134, 186 V van Lente, S.  127, 137 Vanderbeck, R.  153 voter turnout  143, 156 voting intentions  205 W Wacquant, L.  82, 98, 191 Wales  anti-​metropolitanism  145 devolution  43, 150 Taliesin tradition  212–​32 Warde, A.  81 wealth inequality  185–​6, 202 Weaver, C.  42 Wedgwood, Josiah  147 welfare state  2, 146–​7, 154–​5, 169–​84, 203, 204 ‘Well-​Being of Future Generations (Wales) Act’ 2015  225 Welsh Housing Justice Charter  221

247

AFFECTIVE POLARISATION

Welsh identity  23, 212–​32 White, patriarchal authority  38, 40 White privilege  90–​1, 128–​32, 193–​4 White supremacy  128, 131 Whiteness and Romanian Essential Workers  118–​20 Wilding, A.  33, 35, 42 Williams, C.  218–​19, 224 Williams, D.G.  224–​5 Williams, G.A.  213, 218, 226 Williams, R.  214, 216, 219, 222 Windrush scandal  96, 110 ‘wokeism’  43 Wolfson, David  41 women  189, 194, 202, 207 working class  abstentions  17 blamed for economic failures  116, 117 community life  135 Conservative party  189 COVID-​19  158, 194–​5 fear and loathing of  188–​95 grassroots activism  100 housing  139, 187 inequality across four English towns  79, 80, 93, 95, 97, 101, 103 Ken Loach films  169–​84 Leave–Remain split  38 ‘left-​behind’ areas  149, 150, 152, 157 local intermediaries  105

lockdown diaries  194–​5 in the media  191 mis/​no-​representation  192–​3, 194 neoliberalism  135, 176 New Labour  150 nostalgia  149, 175 pride  94 race  95, 97, 135 and Romanian migrant workers  116–​17 Scotland  202, 206 social realist cinema  171–​2 sociological divisions in modern capitalism  18 stigmatisation  93, 95 Thatcher period  145 underclass  146 visibility  185–​98 women  189 World Bank  115 Wutkultur (2021)  130 X xenophobia  35, 43, 44, 45, 113 Y Young, J.  82 Z zero-​hours contracts  177–​8 Ziblatt, D.  33, 36–​7, 50

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