Akala: "The battle of Britishness in the age of Brexit"

get off the new ladies and gently house it wrong treating good day so far cool let me just have a sit for this war so because I'm not used to speaking for a short amount of time I've written something because anyone that knows me while I was trying to get me to 6 or 15 minutes is there one impossible so I've written something that I have entitled the battle of Britishness in the age of brexit and the title of the essay comes from a brilliant book by Tony Kushner the examines the waves of migration to Britain from the 17th century up until the 1950s I suggest everyone read it to see how much depressing continuity also lack of credibility there is around contemporary debates about migration I would like to talk about remembrance and again before we get into my analysis I would like to make some what should hopefully be obvious observations but analyzing the role that narrow nationalism xenophobia and often outright racism played in the brexit campaign we of course not suggesting that everyone what we'd leave is akin to the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan nor that remain voters are a homogenous group of revolutionary anti-racists this should be so obvious it should hardly mean Staton I've met black socialists that were we'd leave I've met absolute xenophobe voted remain and everything in between the ruling class was of course itself massively divided on the issue with the Murdoch press and Tony Blair usually in such sublime agreement when it comes to waging war occupying opposite camps I myself and they will remain nor leave per se as I wrote at the time I think there are valid reasons to leave the EU and there are to remain but I was driven to a remain position by a the xenophobic tone of the leave campaign though the intellectual quality on both sides was absolutely shocking and be an assessment of Britain's current political landscape so whilst there are obviously multiple motivations around such a complex issue what I do wish to emphasize as a few other scholars have is the role that raised xenophobia anti-intellectualism and a historical analyses played in the brexit campaign popular perceptions of it and thus arguably its outcome but first Britain's racial history 101 our project of national forgetting and selective remembrance has been so successful that we often like to believe that race is what happens elsewhere in the USA paps but Britain built an entire global empire nourished in no small part by the assumption that white humans were superior to all others people that were non-white came to be seen and treated not just as a lower class of humans but often as non-human this ideology was created not by poor people this is important and has relevance today to today as often poor people are painted as the most or even the only racists which is classist nonsense race raava was codified by some of the greatest thinkers educated the top universities of the modern age can to Linnaeus bloom embarked to human and the idea of race was used by a pan-european ruling class to devastate infect for example Winston Churchill often voted Britain's favorite person could be found describing the Palestinians as dogs or claiming that the extermination of the red man of America or the black man of Australia was as he put it no great crime at all he also blamed Indians for breeding like rabbits when millions of them were starved to death during British rule yet sections of our political class worshipped this man we put him on banknotes and perhaps expect those of us whose extermination he would call no great crime to say nothing at all of course Britain then as now was not a monolith and this philosophy sat on easily or wrestled with profound social movements such as the abolitionists the choice the campaign to end child labour the vote for women or for poor people and interestingly for me the Pan Africanist movement its first conferences were not in America the Caribbean or Africa but right here in the heart of empire in the years since 1945 independence movements the returning to preeminence of Asian economies the technological superiority of Japan and a whole host of other global trends have served to make the philosophy of an eight European supremacy you lose all serious intellectual credibility why is this important you may ask well as many scholars have decisively shown race has played a determinant role in much of Britain's entire post-war migration policy for example as boom in decay Bamburgh rights the BNA British Nationality Act was passed in light of India gaining her independence in 1947 and the white settler Dominion colonies of Canada New Zealand and Australia set to become fully independent in 1948 as Britain was still an imperial state despite these losses the form of citizenship outlined in the BNA was shared across the UK its colonies its former colonies and its Dominion territories these were citizens of the UK and its colonies and Commonwealth citizens all those from the former colony colonies and dominions such as India Canada and Australia etc were eligible there was no separate or distinct category of citizenship for people in Britain at the point of setting out the BNA in 1948 then British citizenship together with the right to live and work in Britain was afforded to in excess of 850 million people albeit within the white Dominion why it's only immigration policies excluded fellow British subjects this movement of British citizens from darker countries as was their right under the 1948 British Nationality Act was thrown into relief by a much greater movement of people to Britain who did not have British citizenship about whom very little was written then always even discussed now in the five years after the end of the Second World War close to 100,000 Eastern European refugee workers from displaced person camps in Italy Germany and Austria were recruited directly to work in Britain those who passed the medical examination were transported to Britain and allocated three years state-directed employment accommodation social welfare and education they were then permitted to naturalize incidentally European Jews were explicitly prohibited from the scheme in addition approximately 128 thousand people Polish origin specifically Polish armed forces in exile in Britain along with their dependents settled permanently in Britain under the terms of the Polish resettlement Act of 1947 close quotes what does this mean it means that even though far more migrants came from Europe in the postwar years than did people from say the Caribbean and even though they were not British citizens nor English speakers they are faded into obscurity and become official citizens of the UK whose status as recent immigrants is largely unknown by contrast those of us whose grandparents were British citizens and English speakers are still often seen and referred to as immigrants clearly the culture is not the issue here the presence of massive European migration in the postwar years did not elicit a keep britain anglo-saxon campaign i've heard it mentioned that the british people were not consulted about this post-war migration many times during the brexit campaign but simply this ignores the fact that people that came from the commonwealth were already british this was put paid to them as Adam Elliot Cooper from Oxford University notes the 1962 immigration Commonwealth Act repealed the free movement of subjects of the British Empire migrated into the mother country British imperial subjects now had to prove that they had a grandparent with a British passport the fully intended consequence of this was to halt the migration to Britain by people of African or Asian heritage with those from the white settler colonies South Africa Australia etc being the only colonial citizens who could satisfy the criteria the last Commonwealth Act was passed in 1971 foreign subsequently joined the EU Europeans who spoke entirely different languages came from countries that Britain had in living memory gone to war with had been prioritized for his citizenship over people whose land labor and resources literally built the country my point is as stated not to claim that race and bigotry are the only factors in British politics but rather to show as should be obvious that they have been and remain key factors in allocating space treatment before the law in ship and perceived status and rights as really British we've heard it said repeatedly that leaving the EU will allow Britain to stop neglecting the Commonwealth but those of us to actually come from the Commonwealth countries tend to shudder when we hear this why what have we seen to reflect this newfound love for the Commonwealth in recent years immigrant go home vans trawling the streets of Tower Hamlets I wonder who they're looking for anyone who's been to Tower Hamlets knows that they certainly we're not looking for Swedish people or white New Zealanders in 2015 David Cameron announced that the UK would be building a 25 million pound prison in Jamaica to rehearse Jamaican nationals currently in Britain's prisons the problems with this were multifaceted first there are more Irish and Polish nationals in Britain's prisons than there are Jamaicans someone may ask legitimately why the focus on Jamaica - there were only 700 - makin Nationals in the UK's prisons at the time so one may equally ask if that's really worth 25 million pounds and 3 perhaps the worst of all the the Jamaican government responded by saying that what was being reported with inaccurate and no such deal had been signed rather just that discussions had been opened more recently we have seen charter planes full of Jamaican nationals Kenyans Nigerians ghanians and others from Commonwealth countries many of whom had spent decades in Britain indeed most of their lives had British children and British partners and even those without criminal records being sent back to countries that some of them had not visited since childhood there will be no planes full of Australians Swedes or Germans I can promise you that if the British government was serious about wanting to engage for the first time in a mutually beneficial relationship with the non-white parts of the Commonwealth this is a strange way to go about it furthermore there are now millions of Indian Ghanaian and Jamaican Brits who could to any logical government serve as natural mediators trade partners and facilitators with their countries of origin to my knowledge our expertise insight and ties to our nations of origin has not been sought out by these would be common walk lovers when Farraj unveiled that poster he chose not to show a bunch of French or Germans hopping across the channel at whim despite Britain centuries and imperial rivalry and world wars with France in Germany he chose to show face of dusky poverty that could apparently sneak into Britain via the EU when one examines the data around brexit voting patterns and how they relate to geographic location age ethnicity and party Allegiance some interesting patterns emerge I can't see how sociologists could fail to examine according to the Lord Ashe cross poll data for example 96% of you Kipp voters voted leave hardly surprising control of immigration was cited as the second most important reason for voting leave though many many legal experts cited that the EU was not indeed in control of this immigration to bring of the people that thought multiculturalism was until 81% o it leave of the people that for immigration was until 80 percent voted leave of the people that fought feminism was a forceful 71 percent voted leave the remain most at were almost shockingly an exact inverse with 71 percent of the people that fought immigration was a net good voting remain and roughly similar numbers from what culturalism interestingly 74 percent of black Brits voted remain the highest of any ethnic group what could explain this the black Britons just love the EU I would suggest not many black Britons are well aware that European unity if not of course the EU itself was fostered in no small part by the pan-european project of racialized enslavement and the post 1884 Berlin conference the joint Scramble for Africa of the European powers so it seems rather unlikely that an undying commitment to European unity is what drove this group but more research will have to be done of the 30 areas with the most old people 27 voted leave of the 30 areas with the least university educated people 28 voted leave of the 30 areas with the most people identifying as English and not British all voted leave the young skewed remain the old leave the regions of England that are multicultural skewed those that are not skewed leave which brings us at course to the question of nationalism why did the Northern Irish and the Scots behave so differently in English in the Welsh even though their nations are much less ethnically diverse are we to claim that they're distinct and recent histories and their relationships to English power had no bearing on their attitudes I'm not romanticized in Scotland even though my mom's family come from there nor claiming that there is no racism there I am just saying that the political trajectories of the two countries and the vastly differing attitudes to a whole range of things including Britain's imperial legacies the maintenance of Trident immigration and Asylum from the two major parties in each country to me at least a rather revealing or we could contrast the BNP with the SNP or the tone of the brexit campaign would that have Scottish independence to see other cultural differences that England a country not invaded since attempt since 1066 apart from a very obscure attempt to invade from Wales by the French in 1797 so you know country not invaded very often in the last millennia can have a party name the UK independence pie when Thames percent of the national vote speaks volumes of our collective amnesia and ability to distort the facts incidentally why is election turnout so much higher in Scotland and why did you keep get less than less than 50 thousand votes north of the border these questions will also have to be examined further we know that 44 percent of Britain is proud of the Empire and we have chance of empire 2.0 from politicians to Piers Morgan it may seem that many people in England's inability to reconcile themselves to the fact that is no longer 1851 and Britannia does not all the waves what Gilroy calls post Empire melancholia has has to come to be part of any understanding of the contradictions of contemporary UK politics add to that the fact that former British colonies are now putting rockets on Mars for 10% of the cost NASA can do it and all that eight former British colonies now have greater freedoms of the press than we do and you get a rapidly changing world very unsettling for some people we've been told that sit as so much else was about class economic anxiety feelings are being ignored and there is without a doubt validity to that however to ignore that certain sections of the working class have had their poverty compounded by race or gender for that now is the very opposite to my mind of class solidarity it positions the white working class as the working class which is a strain that runs through much Eurocentric leftist scholarship in general so it's hardly surprising why it has no basis in the facts as when to resume speaks of the patriotic working class whom Jeremy Corbyn is neglecting to whom is she referring she means of course is all rulers do that those who follow me are patriotic those who do not honor she insults history as all rulers that invoke blind nationalism and patriotism do by suggesting that dissent is not patriotic this is the rhetoric of dictators as many as many you kick voters as many YouTube observers has noted it seems the Tories have stolen a large part of their philosophy or rather cn3 point nine million people vote you kick the Tories realized they could safely unleash their less PC tendencies so what is the answer in this particular regard to me at least the answer is education confrontation with difficult histories and developing an understanding of how those histories have shaped the present this is no small challenge it would include admitting that people colonized by Britain seemed to have a strangely different memory of what it was like than do the British ruling class it would mean that people in the UK are like all humans subject to irrational prejudices that have no basis in fact of course large sections of the press depend on this very rationality for their existence it would mean creating a new transnational intellectual culture all of these strains of doing and being have had and have their place in the UK society but they have never yet become dominant and maybe never will but that won't stop us from trying thanks [Applause] [Music]

Channel: The Convention

Views: 202,279

Rating: 4.7315121 out of 5

Keywords: Akala, Britishness, Brexit, The Convention, United Kingdom, hip hop, Shakespeare, artist, democracy, justice, historian

Id: KDmdAkvHoaQ

Length: 17min 51sec (1071 seconds)

Published: Wed May 17 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/WoundTrack]

Been a long time fan since a friend from the UK introduced me to him. I've never heard any Akala interviews or speeches before but his natural ability with words doesn't surprise me, very intriguing lecture/lecturer, thanks for posting!