'Despised' Review: The Left and the Working Class

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

George Bernard Shaw, though a Fabian socialist, brushed aside anyone who called him a "friend of the working classes." He scoffed that he "had no other feeling for the working classes than an intense desire to abolish them and replace them by sensible people." A century ago Britain's Labour Party brought together the Fabians (who supplied the policy wonks) and the trade unions (who supplied the voters). The party had been founded to give working people a voice in politics, but gradually control passed to the university-educated, who were internationalist, technocratic and supremely confident that they could plan the future.

Then came two awful shocks. In the 2016 Brexit referendum, the Remainers won the affluent vote, but the working classes carried the Leavers to victory. And in the 2019 parliamentary election, the Tories swept depressed factory towns that had heretofore been safe for Labour. "You can't trust the people," snorted novelist Howard Jacobson. That's what happens when the rabble are "given this new confidence in their own opinions."

Paul Embery might be called a populist in America, but a more accurate label is "left conservative." A firefighter, union official and lifelong Labour activist, he writes for the resolutely unorthodox webpaper UnHerd. And in "Despised: Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class," he suggests that Bernard Shaw's enormous condescension is now the dominant ideology of the progressive intelligentsia, which embraces every subcategory of identity politics except class identity. The endless squabbling among fractious identity groups "serves only to fragment the working class and undermine what should be the primary goal of developing common bonds and building the maximum unity required to defend its interests." Somehow, "inclusivity" doesn't include the workers.

Mr. Embery protests that the British tradition of vigorous debate—deeply rooted in union halls and worker-education classes as well as in Parliament—has given way to "echo chambers, 'safe spaces' and draconian hate legislation, all of which serve the purpose of suppressing unwelcome opinions and enforcing an official orthodoxy." Arguably the stifling began when Tony Blair told the Labour Party that globalization was not open to discussion: "You might as well debate whether autumn should follow summer."

But globalization meant the dissolution of close-knit blue-collar communities, and that pains Mr. Embery profoundly. He grew up in the vast East London Becontree Estate. When it opened in the 1920s, this was a model public-housing project, miraculously offering indoor toilets, running water, front and back gardens and public libraries. Strict regulations ensured that curtains were kept clean and hedges were neatly trimmed, but residents accepted these rules because they were enforced by a democratic local government and because they reflected the thoroughly bourgeois values of the British working classes. Mr. Embery, born in 1974, still knows the names of all his old neighbors: "People looked out for each other, and there was a tangible social solidarity."

True, nearly everyone in Becontree was white. And had the 21st century brought no change other than ethnic mixing, the locals would have adjusted. (Whether the measure is accepting a foreign neighbor, racial intermarriage or electing nonwhites to the European Parliament, tolerant Britain compares favorably with other countries.) But because of globalization, all that was solid melted into air. The nearby Dagenham Ford plant had 40,000 employees in 1953; now there are just 2,000. Because the EU erased border controls, the area became overcrowded with Eastern European immigrants who placed a terrific strain on schools, day care, housing, the police and health services. The locals blamed not the migrants, but the politicians who had no plans for dealing with these shocks. Yet those who protested were “written off as racist and bigoted by a political and cultural elite who knew nothing of their lives and showed little willingness to learn.”

Traditionally, Becontree residents voted Labour. But in the 2006 local council elections the British National Party, an ultra-right fringe group, stunningly won a dozen seats. If you fail to address the legitimate concerns of working people and repetitively smear them as “white supremacists,” eventually you will drive them into the arms of real racists.

Mr. Embery seeks to revive an “early Labour tradition that spoke to the patriotic and communitarian instincts of the working class and understood that we are social and parochial beings with a profound attachment to place and a desire to belong. This will necessarily mean discussing openly issues such as globalisation, family, law and order, the nation state and national identity, immigration and welfare, and being prepared to change position.”

Uncontrolled immigration displaces low-pay workers or depresses their wages. Cambridge economist Robert Rowthorn calculated that immigration may grow the national economy in the long run, but new jobs created always lag behind new entrants into the labor market. Those hurt most are often immigrants who arrived earlier (which may explain why 60% of U.K. migrants and their children want to reduce immigration, and why so many Hispanics voted for   Donald Trump   ). Brexit was supported by about a third of nonwhite voters, who noticed that, under EU policy, Poles could more easily enter Britain than Jamaicans.

You probably won’t agree with all of Mr. Embery’s policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves. “Despised” makes a compelling case that “global governance” is radically incompatible with democracy, civil liberties and broadly shared prosperity. Supranational agencies like the EU inevitably concentrate power in unresponsive bureaucracies and concentrate wealth in multinational corporations. The left should have resisted their rise, but conservatives too were slow to recognize that globalization subverted everything they valued: traditional communities, patriotism, religious faith, stable families, unintrusive government and personal freedom. Mr. Embery’s goal is to build a society where citizens no longer feel like colonial subjects in their own country. He reminds us that the British exited the EU due to “the desire for self-government and sovereignty”—the same reason that the Irish and the Indians exited the British Empire.

Mr. Rose, who teaches at Drew University, is the author of “The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes.”