@battleforeurope Thanks for this. My apologies for a slow response, I’ve been off Twitter for a few days. And as this has become a battle of the long threads, here’s another (very) long thread in response… 1/
@battleforeurope Before I get on to your substantive points, let me say that the problem isn’t that I ‘feel’ misrepresented. I was misrepresented and deliberately so. You say that apart for passing off a headline a quote from me ‘the rest of my thread is a fair analysis of the article itself’. 2/
@battleforeurope So, let me ask you the same questions that I asked previously and which you have not addressed. You claimed that I ‘deny’ that ‘immigration is perceived as problem’ (). Can you provide any evidence for this ‘fair analysis’? 3/
@battleforeurope You claimed that I ‘equate opposition to immigration – and more in general “conservatism” – with racism’ – apparently a ‘left-Pavlovian response’ (). Can you provide any evidence for this ‘fair analysis’? 4/
@battleforeurope You write that ‘To consider national identity intrinsically fascistic is absurd.’ ( ) You’re right, it is. But can you provide any evidence that I have said anything of the sort? 5/
@battleforeurope There are more examples of such egregious misquotes, and misrepresentations. You write ‘I think it’s fair game to criticise an article (and exposing what one may perceive to be as fallacies and inconsistencies) without having read all the author’s previous articles.’ 6/
@battleforeurope I don’t expect you to have read all my previous articles. I do expect you not to deliberately misquote or misrepresent. That you still think that what you produced was ‘fair analysis’ suggests that you don’t know what constitutes a ‘fair analysis’. 7/
@battleforeurope Be that as it may, let’s deal with your more substantive points. In your initial thread the main issues seemed to be arguments about nationalism, national identity and the social conservatism of the working class, all which I challenged. 8/
@battleforeurope In this thread, you’ve ignored all those issues, and talk solely about the question of immigration, so let’s deal with that. 9/
@battleforeurope You write that ‘the top-down class war waged on workers over the past four decades is by far the main cause of the deterioration of workers’ lives in the UK and throughout the West – in both material and immaterial terms.’ 10/
@battleforeurope You then write, ‘immigration, though not the main cause – obviously – of the impoverishment and marginalisation of native workers, can easily become a real, not “symbolic”, co-factor.’ 11/
@battleforeurope First, by making such an issue of immigration as responsible for the precariousness of working class lives, you deflect from the ‘by far main cause of the deterioration of workers’ lives in the UK and throughout the West’.12/
@battleforeurope That’s precisely how the panic over immigration has been used – to help create a sense that it’s immigration that has been responsible for job losses, stagnating wages, lack of housing, lack of resources in the NHS, etc. 13/
@battleforeurope It’s people like you who also promote this mantra, even though you acknowledge that ‘by far the main cause of the deterioration of workers’ lives’ lies elsewhere that must bear at least part of the responsibility for the argument having become entrenched. 14/
@battleforeurope You write that ‘free movement of labour, in a context of weak unions and neoliberal anti-workers’ policies, used by the capitalist class to drive down wages…’ 15/
@battleforeurope Most studies show that free movement for workers from the EU has not had a negative impact on wages: cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/… cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/… stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_… 16/
@battleforeurope Some studies show that some workers at the bottom of the labour market may suffer a small decrease in wages. But the impact is small, and the benefits for even for the least well-paid workers outweighs the disadvantages: niesr.ac.uk/blog/how-small… 17/
@battleforeurope But the real problem with your argument is not empirical but political. When women started entering the labour in large numbers, many at that time also claimed that employers would use them to drive wages down. 18/
@battleforeurope I doubt whether you would have supported that argument or called for restrictions on women entering the labour market. Employers have always sought to drive down wages through exploiting reserve armies of labour - migrants, women, the young, the old, the unemployed, etc. 19/
@battleforeurope Our response should not be to say ‘we must exclude these groups from the labour market’ but to organize to ensure wages and conditions are maintained for all. I assume you’d make this argument with respect to women and the young, so why not also with respect to migrants? 20/
@battleforeurope When you write that you make you argument ‘in a context of weak unions and neoliberal anti-workers’ policies’, what you are implying is that little can be done about weak unions and anti-worker policies, and so it’s necessary to target immigrants. 21/
@battleforeurope I take the opposite view: that only labour movement organization will protect working class rights and, even if immigration was reduced to zero, employers would still seek to take advantage of ‘weak unions and neoliberal anti-workers’ policies’ to hammer wages and conditions. 22/
@battleforeurope Blaming immigrants for the problems facing working class people is to weaken the ability of the working class to resist further attacks on jobs, living standards and organizations. 23/
@battleforeurope You also write that ‘a too-rapid inflow of immigrants with very different cultural and social norms can further erode – again, in real, not symbolic, terms – those “intangible aspects” of workers’ lives’. 24/
@battleforeurope First, it’s an argument that’s been made throughout the past century in response to every wave of immigration. When Jewish refugees fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe started coming to Britain at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries, there was an anti-Jewish backlash… 25/
@battleforeurope …leading to the setting up of the 1903 Royal Commission on Alien Immigration. ‘There is no end to them in Whitechapel and Mile End. These areas of London might be called Jerusalem’, claimed one witness giving evidence to the commission. 26/
@battleforeurope Would you have suggested in 1903 that the left must adopt this view about ‘immigrants with very different cultural and social norms’ to make itself electable? 27/
@battleforeurope Would you have supported the 1905 Aliens Act, Britain’s first immigration controls, aimed primarily at stopping the influx of Jews? If not why not, given the fears about ‘eroding cultural and social norms’, the same fears as you are expressing now? 28/
@battleforeurope In the postwar years the same fears were expressed about South Asians and West Indians, leading to Thatcher’s infamous interview in 1978 when she claimed that ‘people are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture.’ 29/
@battleforeurope Would you have said then that the left must adopt Thatcherite views about immigration to win back the working class? If not why not, given that the fears she expressed are not that different from fears you are expressing now? 30/
@battleforeurope The irony is that today many critics of immigration (including the likes of Nigel Farage) point to the 1970s and 1980s as the period when immigration was under control and argue that Britain needs to return to those levels of immigration. 31/
@battleforeurope The trouble is, when we had those levels of immigration, the then-equivalents of Farage and Blue Labour were insisting the levels were too high… 32/
@battleforeurope …and expressing the same fears as you are now about ‘immigrants with very different cultural and social norms further erod[ing]…those “intangible aspects” of workers’ lives’ 33/
@battleforeurope The argument you are making about cultural erosion has been made throughout immigration history, whatever the numbers, and whoever the migrants might be. 34/
@battleforeurope The second problem with your argument is that you assert that, but don’t show how, immigrants ‘with very different cultural and social norms can further erode… those “intangible aspects” of workers’ lives’. It ‘can’ erode, but in what way has it? 35/
@battleforeurope Is the problem of the erosion of the intangible aspects of workers lives the fact that too many mosques have been built or that there too many shops selling Polish produce? 36/
@battleforeurope Or is it the erosion of the organizations, institutions and social networks that once defined working class lives? From squeezing of trade unions to the closure of pubs and clubs to the physical destruction of communities built round factories and pits that have gone? 37/
@battleforeurope And that new workplaces and working practices no longer help inculcate such bonds of solidarity? And that the very sense of being part of the working class has fragmented? And, if this so, why blame migrants for all this? 38/
@battleforeurope You ask: ‘if anti-immigration sentiments (both materially and immaterially grounded) are largely the result of the precariousness caused by neoliberalism, why talk about immigration at all?’ 39/
@battleforeurope First, because anti-migrant hostility obscures the real roots of the social problems facing the working class. And, second, because migrants are human beings, many are part of the working class, and their rights, lives and dignity should be important to anyone on the left. 40/
@battleforeurope You write: ‘in order to solve the root cause of working class alienation… one needs to, well, get elected’ and that means ‘acknowledging working class demands, even if they may be unpalatable, for example re: immigration’. 41/
@battleforeurope That is at least honest if breathtakingly cynical. ‘I know that ‘neoliberal policies’, not migrants, are ‘by far the main cause of the deterioration of workers’ lives’, but I will promote ‘unpalatable’ policies about migrants because otherwise I won’t win votes.’ 42/
@battleforeurope Have you ever thought that it’s the cynicism of people like you, and your unwillingness to challenge myths about immigration, that is responsible for maintaining those myths? 43/
@battleforeurope Have you ever thought that had people like you actually challenged those myths from the beginning, that we might be living in a different political climate today? 44/
@battleforeurope You ask: ‘How about trying to break the cycle?’ Indeed. 45/
