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WORLD CITIZEN LETTER: 514
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WCL 514 April 2006
Searchlight on Britain
The anti-Nazi group Searchlight is currently engaged on a full-scale campaign to protect British voters from the whiles of racists in the British National Party. The forthcoming local elections are due next this in most parts of the United Kingdom. All very right and proper to work for this end, a worthy aim and a chance of some success at a time when the BNP and the UKIP (UK Independence Party) have been attracting a good deal of attention.
There may always be a core of support for extreme parties and in a country as right-wing and self-satisfied as Britain has usually been, it is no surprise to find fluctuating waves of support for the BNP. But it is worth examining what the alternative is offered to the voters. And here come signs of weakness. Because the two big parties, Labour and Conservative, offer diluted versions of an old-fashioned nationalism that is ill-tuned to the needs of the 21st century.
A possibly unpalatable lesson for the left-wing opponents of the BNP (and the Iraq war) is the need to be use the example of Europe to build something better, rather than seeking to turn back to a dead past, which may have had better features but is gone forever and has to be replaced. The third possible party to support, the Liberal Democrats, do have better things on offer, for example, federalism. They also show their recognition that building a strong and peaceful Europe is a priority, in sharp contrast to the Prime Minister’s lip-service to this. But the Lib Dem campaigning does not usually indicate the conviction that needs to accompany whole-hearted declarations of support for policies of global integration and world citizenship.
Because that is where the only hope for building a firm opposition to the racist groups can lie. Without a full understanding and acceptance that this little island is now fully part of the emerging global community there is no way to produce a satisfactory answer to the BNP. It may not be easy to convince disillusioned working-class voters, seeing signs of unemployment, social break-down and urban dereliction, that they need to accept a changed world, but it will have to be done. True, those unwelcome symptoms of changing times have to be alleviated, but that is only the first task.
Regrettably, the economic prosperity enjoyed in the past nine years of ‘New’ Labour rule has increased the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest in British society, something that militates against acceptance of the changes in position in the world. And the Labour government’s supposedly working-class sympathies have often been obscured by the Prime Minister’s infatuation with wealth and the rich among his friends and acquaintances.
Another problem area: political leaders in Britain and elsewhere have to stop accepting Bush administration's right to order the world by virtue of supreme American military power. They needs to join the rest of the world in creating democratic global institutions. This must include abandoning the pretence that the US and its allies can act as the world’s policemen. For that task American leaders are not elected, are unsuited and are illegitimate. They too, have to join the human race, not dictate to it.
The task for Searchlight and other anti-racist groups is to oppose the BNP, not by a half-hearted attempts at an outdated paternalistic nationalism, as CND risked doing when it tried to have Britain opt out of the world with an isolationist non-nuclear policy. Peace and anti-racialism have to be based on something more positive. That, in the modern world, needs to revolve around world citizenship. Harking back to the days of fighting fascists is not enough. Instead we have to work to enlarge sympathies, accepting that we are all members of one or more minorities. We may not be Muslim, but we should be able to appreciate that Islam holds profound lessons in how to create a world community of believers. And the northern European Protestant ethic should not be used to obscure the long and determined opposition to nuclear weapons that characterised the leadership of the Catholic church under the last Pope.
Britain needs to be an example to the world of a country that can accommodate a wide variety of peoples, giving space to them to live, but with a basic culture of humanity which is essentially that of the world citizen. Multi-culturalism is only valid if it means that its basic beliefs can accept a variety of cultures. There is really no alternative, because the world has to outgrow its past of war, fighting, competition and violence. Britain has to show the way, or it will not survive as a viable society.
John Roberts
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