Some time back my pet Ukipper on Facebook and I had a disagreement that would sadly end our connection. She was a fairly “random add” initially as I had seen her discuss a serious housing issue with her very prominent Lib Dem MP on Facebook and I smelt a story that would not eventually arise… Her politics intrigued me and I kept her on my list, interested in the psychology of someone who could be in such firm support of such a vile party.
These are some of my thoughts around UKIP having watched an unreconstructed acolyte of the party. As a liberal (small l, never again to be a capital L) I hope you’ll agree with some of my observations and perhaps how to tackle them.
Casual bigotry
Over the years I have seen an age and environment divide between close minded bigots and the open minded liberals. Very broadly those brought up before Idi Amin threw out all his Asian residents and ships brought Afro Caribbeans to help with our acute labour shortage, will say things that are embarrassing in polite conversation, but if you are aware that they were brought up in a predominantly white Anglo Saxon society, their viewpoint might be understood if not entirely accepted.
Immigration still hits large cities harder than it does provincial towns. Dorset is a particularly white county, where on my street in Luton I’d be surprised if there are more than 10 white Anglo Saxon families among the 80 houses.
Casual bigotry belongs also to the middle classes. In some cases their petty egos allow them to lash out at someone lower in the pecking order than them.
This is not to say that everyone who is middle class, over 50 and from Dorset is a racist, UKIP or BNP supporting pig – I am only describing an age and environment stratification where this is more likely. Though there is a very large non British population in Luton, we are embarrassed to say the English Defence League is based in the working class Farley Hill. Racist pigs are not only in the countryside.
I am going to say that in the case of my pet Ukipper, she used to live in south east Somerset and now lives in north Dorset, where the sight of an Asian run corner shop is all some need to believe that the ‘country is being over run’. North Dorset will be one of the last Tory strongholds if ever it was thrashed by the press to the level the Lib Dems had been in this Coalition. It will forever be a corner of Little England.
Simple messages
During the Yes to Fairer Votes campaign, the Dorset organisation was one of the best organised in the country. I was at the vanguard of the group, and routinely hit a major problem in selling the idea of a fairer voting system to a deeply conservative public. It was incredibly hard to sell it in a simple message. The other issue was that the intelligent geeks ran amok and used polysyllabic words in conjunction with huge mathematical calculations that would honestly scare the shit out of the average intelligence voting public.
UKIP have two messages that have the older voting public eating out of their hands:
1. Get out of the EU and bring back the Empire
2. The blacks are to blame for your children not getting work.
This appals the politically literate for all sorts of reasons you know already. But Ukippers, as they get talking beyond will say that gays should be cured, we’ll send all EU migrants home, disabled people should be sterilised, and there should be no welfare state or NHS…
All of these issues appeal to basest dreams of making Britain what it used to be in the 50’s as it clambered out of post war austerity and boomed. Yes, the code breaker who enabled Bletchley Park defeat Hitler committed suicide because of anti gay legislation, life was very short after retirement at 60, and Londoners frequently had to breathe pea souper fogs. Dorset was a good half day’s drive from London…
Ferguson
You were probably aware of Michael Brown being shot by a policeman in Ferguson, USA. Protests erupted soon after, with peaceful people throwing up their hands and saying “Don’t shoot!” every time a policeman came near. The peacefulness really annoyed the police with some screaming abuse and threatening to shoot anyway. These protests really showed up white middle class policing over black working class America. Sadly when the policeman wasn’t charged, the protests played into the police’s hands by descending into anarchy and violence. The police got to pull their triggers and not many criticised the brutal response.
Policing is about property. In Weymouth I lived next door to a Co Op. There was a pedestrian crossing with zigzag lines past my driveway. The penalty for parking on a zigzag line is 6 points on your license and a £100 fine, yet this was never enforced because policing property comes before public safety. I even called the police to ask whether I could take my wife (of the time) to church one Sunday as someone had double parked me in to buy a 4 pack of beer. Needless to say no one came.
I have lived in America twice, and in some pretty dodgy places including a Latino crack ghetto with one of the highest per capita murder rates in the US at the time. Policing in an Anglo Saxon dominated country will favour Anglos. I was told I could jump a red light at night for my own safety in Black Rock. A Latino wouldn’t have such a privilege.
Ukipper talks of Ferguson
My pet Ukipper and I would part ways over Ferguson. She said she wouldn’t let her son leave the house with a gun, the kids should all get jobs and work, stop taking drugs and put up with the police harassment.
Brown didn’t have a gun. He is said to have abused the (white middle class) policeman – no doubt because he’s grown up being stopped in the street on a regular basis.
Having lived in all sorts of places, from towns where being a white boy is dangerous to others where someone can say “I’m the only Asian in the village” I have a fair understanding of the social issues that come with deprivation. Rubbish schools, high unemployment and a culture of us-and-them between residents and authority are just some of the issues that put a very low glass ceiling in the way of kids trying to get out of the ghetto.
When I explained to my pet Ukipper I’m not surprised Ferguson exploded and I’d be in the protests if I was there, this was just too much for her – white middle class police oppression is something unseen in north Dorset to your average resident.
As shown earlier, UKIP sends impossibly simple messages that people of average intelligence can understand. They posit simple solutions to massive problems. These problems, whether our economy, crime rates and social problems, or membership of the EU can’t be fixed by simply chucking the fuzzy wuzzies out. You can’t tell a normal kid in Ferguson to get a job because the odds are there won’t be one good enough out there to get him out of the ghetto.
Rioting isn’t the solution either. The best outcome would have probably been Don’t Shoot protests until a policeman did shoot with hostile witnesses. Why? The police who started this would have patently been in the wrong on shooting an innocent protestor. They would have been forced to change – and the smouldering social issues would have started to be tackled by complex state intervention at a range of levels.
Simply put?
If the world was simply sorted society would be as drab and dull as North Korea. People there abide by repressive laws, and the elite live in comfort – not unlike parts of the UK and the US – but you don’t get shot for watching a Hollywood movie – not, sadly, unlike parts of the US depending on the colour of your skin.
How we combat the simple messages of the drunk fag smoking city trader whose name rhymes with garage is still up for debate. What is clear is that he cannot fix the world by simple means. This is where Ukippers and me will never see eye to eye.
Richard Shrubb
