Labour and tomorrow’s “culture wars”

Four days before the general election, Keir Starmer responded to Reform UK’s ascent in national opinion polls by warning that a Labour government would need to forestall the rise of the hard right through “deeds, not words”, to make “a material difference” to people’s lives.  He highlighted the importance of pursuing green economic growth, supplemented by stronger ethical standards at Westminster, to restore faith in British politics and counter the appeal of populist nationalism.^[i]  This approach appears to overlook a significant feature of the far right’s appeal.  Those sections of the population now drawn to them have not only suffered serious cost of living pressures and increasing job insecurity but have also felt the associated painful indignity of losing meaningful control over their own lives.  Economic hardship has been accompanied by weakening social cohesion and the hollowing out of traditional supportive communities.  The hard right explicitly promises to rectify this by offering an opportunity to join a wider perceived community sharing not just resentments but positive hope in the concrete improvements a ‘strong’ leader can seemingly deliver.  This speaks to a society pressurised by growing commercialisation and technological change, becoming less human-orientated and increasingly fragmented both at work and in people’s neighbourhoods.  

The potential contribution of genuine economic advance and proactive climate repair to reducing current widespread political apathy and disillusionment is certainly important, although achieving these objectives poses a major test for a new administration favoured by 34% of voters in a low-turnout election, inheriting a weakened economy and precariously reliant on private finance to raise the capital investment essential for growth.  “Cleaning up” Westminster politics will also be broadly welcomed, but should the new government be seen to falter and disappoint deeper public hopes, after an initial “honeymoon” period and despite its constant encouragement of lowered expectations, fresh divisive ‘culture wars’ will predictably be mounted from the Tory and Faragist right.  Faragism thrives on nationalism and nativism, articulated by a leader who constantly blames today’s problems on a vaguely defined but remote and powerful “woke elite”, attracting mainstream and social media attention.  Conscious of British cultural traditions of “fairness” and pragmatism in political and economic problem-solving, he tries to limit overblown language.  His aim, given Reform’s new electoral base and evident Tory disarray, is to construct a customised British version of the “cleaner” moderate-sounding but unrelenting anti-immigrant populism burgeoning elsewhere in Europe.  There may be limits to the growth potential of this project given the UK’s mainly tolerant and usually only mildly patriotic society, but Reform’s capacity to inflict real and lasting damage on political life by furthering social divisions and scapegoating ethnic minorities, potentially triggering more acts of violence by individual extremists and their online networks on the political fringe, is beyond doubt.  The UK’s protracted imperial history has left nationalist sentiment embedded in distinct minority sectors of the population and new “culture wars” will update the poisonous Brexit propaganda circulating since 2016. 

Facilitating Cultural Progress

Labour remains significantly vulnerable to such campaigns.  It sought to imitate the flag-waving of the right in its election materials and has narrowed its criticism of Tory immigration policy to exposing its ‘inefficiency’ rather than its inhumanity or economic illogicality, leaving existing nativist prejudices largely undisturbed if not validated.  The terms of the UK’s current immigration debate are consequently shaped almost entirely by the right.  Tony Blair recently urged Starmer to reinforce this strategy by “closing off the avenues” of the far right through maintaining tough immigration controls and introducing compulsory digital identify cards for anyone seeking welfare benefits or health services.^[ii]  

Such substantial concessions to the hard right’s agenda ignore the unique capacity of state machinery to assist the development of progressive cultural change, by thoughtfully encouraging respect for universal human rights and egalitarian principles.  Even the last Tory government’s limited and underfunded scheme to welcome and house Ukrainian war refugees in British homes following Russia’s invasion attracted substantial public support due to overt state backing and publicity.  Wider direct popular experience of organisations with democratic structures like trade unions, tenants’ associations and local community campaigns, with their capacity for individual and collective empowerment, fosters egalitarianism and central government can also help these organisations to expand membership and activity.  Real local democracy is rarely ‘pure’, it can be rough and ready and often frustrating, but provides the most effective route to a genuine voice for all and progress towards an equitable, sociable and sustainable society based on universal rights 

“Culture wars” require a considered governmental cultural counterstrategy, not pale imitation, alongside economic progress.  This needs to distinguish between the minority of hard-core racists resistant to logical argument and broader anti-immigrant prejudices based on ignorance of such contemporary economic realities as the overall positive impact of immigration on productive activity and employment levels, the UK’s ageing native-born population and the inevitability of further mass migrations to the West driven by wars, political oppression, climate change and grinding poverty.  These gaps in knowledge can at times be eroded by factual information through careful explanation, reducing the suspicions and worries highlighted by the nationalist right.  

Senior Labour officials, however, have been quoted as admitting that “it’s only now that the serious threat of Reform is something that we are looking at”^[iii].  While the projected top-down green growth initiatives represent positive steps, they will unavoidably take years to implement and are unlikely in themselves to give people back an adequate sense of real democratic influence over their fate.  Without this social glue, people focus their self-preservation on a narrowed identification with family, close friends and restricted notions of their “own people”, exploited by the hard right to foster “them and us” tensions with “others”.

Lessons from the USA

An insightful 2023 article entitled “The Death of Deliverism” in the US journal Democracy ^[iv] generated internal debate among senior Labour advisors here.  It noted that “the suite of progressive economic policies Biden enacted hasn’t made a dent in his approval ratings … delivery for people on economic issues is an important goal in itself but is not an antivenom for the snakebite of authoritarianism.”  It pointed to the day-to-day cultural issues that appear to threaten white Americans’ sense of dominant group status due to neo-liberalism’s persistent fostering of isolation, insecurity, anxiety and fear and the ongoing weakening of key institutions that strengthen society.  As social media hastens societal disintegration by encouraging individualism and opinions based on fake news, “an ethno-nationalist, patriarchal vision promises community belonging and status dominance through the support of authoritarian leaders”, offering a form of psychic release and an outlet for powerful emotions.  The article concluded that “reinvigorated organising and recruitment of new people, especially working-class people, into worker and community organisations is essential”, alongside “a compelling, energising, persuasive vision of the good life” and therefore recommended “mass-based organisations through which people share and live out those values”.  This important conclusion, however, has yet to be reflected in reports of Labour’s thinking about resisting Faragism.

Labour’s existing plans for greater devolution of central government powers over functions like employment support, adult education and skills, transport and housing to the regions of England could be extended to embrace this objective of widening popular experience of grassroots democracy, to counter the promises of national salvation by right-wing demagogues.  Within clear overall national government priorities, the anticipated regional growth plans could be specifically linked to neighbourhood growth initiatives incorporating local-level democratic discussion and decision making.  Meaningful and inclusive local community engagement takes time and effort but can positively assist the design and provision of social and affordable housing schemes, local energy efficiency initiatives, debt and welfare advice services to mitigate cost of living pressures and the launching of new cooperative and social enterprises.  

The practical impact of such forms of devolved power is predictably dependent on the availability of reliable funding at the regional and local level, which ultimately rests on the levers deployed nationally to secure new investment for sustainable growth.  Pre-election City of London talk about raising substantial private investment capital for environmentally friendly domestic UK industries under Labour included distinct reservations.  The Economist warned in May that Labour’s noteworthy caution may over time “lead it to duck planning reform and forego the chance of closer relations with Europe … Labour’s courtship of business is based on stability.  That is welcome and necessary – but it will not be sufficient.”^[v]  Similarly, the new government’s plans to extend workers’ and trade union rights are positive although limited in scope.  Even so, business remains critical of central elements of Labour’s plans to change employment laws, including the introduction of ‘day one’ rights at work.  The same Economist leader article noted “this could chip away at one of Britain’s great strengths – an open labour market.”  Private finance sector support for major government objectives will not be problem-free, yet stronger trade unions and workers’ rights are essential to the popular democratic empowerment needed to offset nationalism’s simplified allure.  

The US analysis cited above confirms lessons already drawn by progressives in the past from the devastating experience of rising authoritarian fascist movements in Europe in the 1920s and 30s.  A wealth of valuable information exists clarifying the nature of their psychological appeal.  The emergence of German Nazism was closely observed by the psychologist Wilhelm Reich who highlighted people’s growing sense of losing control over their own destiny as a key factor – “disillusionment in the liberal organisations plus economic crisis plus tremendous urge for freedom result in fascist mentality, that is in the willingness of the people to surrender to an authoritarian father figure.”^[vi]  By way of contrast, he noted the remarkable thinness of detailed Nazi ideology, glorifying fantasies of race and nation by recalling ancient mythical tales of the Nordic warrior Siegfried and other fables in the medieval Song of the Nibelungs.  Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi party’s chief propagandist, expressly defined its rise to state power as not just a political but also a cultural revolution reaching every aspect of German life.^[vii]

Labour’s Economic Focus

An over-confidence in primarily economic policies to counter the appeal of the far right reflects long-entrenched Labour Party and indeed wider UK left traditions which have underestimated the political impact of cultural factors.  Since Labour, in contrast to most European social democratic parties, was substantially founded by an already established and unified trade union movement, it has always acknowledged the importance of industrial and wider economic issues in shaping its policy programmes.  However, reflecting the broader and considerable social impact of British philosophical empiricism over long decades, it has often resisted closer engagement with deeper political theory and failed over the years to appreciate the in-depth analyses of cultural politics undertaken by prominent socialist thinkers elsewhere in Europe.  These have included the penetrative essays of several important figures from the Frankfurt School of sociology and Antonio Gramsci’s work on ‘common-sense’ prejudices and the case for building counter-hegemonic cultural initiatives and alliances.

In addition, the thinking of parts of the British left has reflected once-popular distorted interpretations of Marxism which assumed the dominance of identifiable economic factors in interpreting the likely results of even short-term political processes.  These were sometimes deployed in the past to justify complete confidence in the ‘inevitable’ victory of socialism.  Marx himself, however, adopted a personal motto of ‘doubt everything’ and an attentive reading of the mature theoretical texts of Marx and Engels outlining epochal dialectical movements evincing contradictory forces evolving in society points to quite different thinking.  The latter noted “I bring them all together under this one law of motion, and for this very reason, I leave out of account the specific peculiarities of each individual process.  Dialectics, however, is nothing more than the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, human society and thought.”^[viii]  Human thought, imagination and culture cannot be separated from material economic developments since they constantly interact and both may be subject to unexpected immediate twists and turns.  It is worth recalling how sections of the British left supported Brexit, viewing the 2016 referendum result as principally a protest vote against the economic decline of the country’s deindustrialised regions.  This observation pinpointed an important economic consideration but was rarely accompanied by sufficient recognition from the same quarters of the anti-immigrant ‘culture war’ which dominated the right-wing nationalist agenda at the heart of the Brexit project, extended Tory rule at Westminster, damaged the national economy and gave birth to UKIP and today’s Reform UK.

Beyond these shores, the recorded history of European social democracy includes concrete examples of specific efforts to encourage progressive cultural change in addition to economic reform.  The Austrian socialist party (SDAPÖ) memorably sought to improve working class cultural as well as material life during its majority control of Vienna’s powerful municipal authority in the 1920s, despite determined opposition from nationalist politicians and the Catholic Church.  Its innovative policies attempted to raise educational standards and influence day-to-day behaviour to encourage workers, especially younger people, to become conscious and self-confident social actors.  New libraries, publications and lectures flourished, promoting democratic and egalitarian ideology; public access to theatrical, operatic and refined musical events was widened through reduced price tickets offered to members of the Social Democratic Arts Centre (Sozialdemokratische Kunststelle); and school reforms effectively extended the duration of compulsory education for all children, widened the curriculum and improved teaching methods^[ix].  These supplemented the council’s economic stimulus and job creation programmes and famous public housing and related public health schemes.  Although conceived in a different political era and climate and criticised by some for the rigid nature of its social reforms, this major urban renewal project clearly included long-term measures to develop a progressive culture, as well as shorter-term economic improvements to city life, underlining the inevitably gradual nature of any process promoting durable cultural change.

Bridget Phillipson, Labour’s new Secretary of State for Education, has emphasised the significance of her new review of the national curriculum.  Once it is finalised, all schools and academies will be required to teach a revised curriculum to age 16, intended to ensure that art, sport, music, drama and creative subjects are no longer the preserve of more privileged children, although once again the available level of funding to realise this objective will dictate the speed of progress at ground level.  This points in the right direction for improving the self-fulfilment of future generations.  Nonetheless, it is the outlook and votes of today’s adults which will determine governmental priorities over the next decade.  In a period increasingly dominated by internationalissues of armed conflicts, climate deterioration, economic uncertainty, pandemics and mass migration, Labour should make a start now to building a stronger culture of democracy, human rights and internationalism in the UK.  Otherwise, it will remain vulnerable to yet fiercer culture wars and resurgent authoritarian nationalism.

John Chowcat is the retired general secretary of the education union ASPECT. He was previously assistant general secretary of the union MSF.

Notes

^[i]  Pippa Crerar “Labour can stem the rise of populist right by improving people’s lives, says Starmer” The Guardian 1 July 2024

^[ii]  Pippa Crerar “Tony Blair urges Starmer to keep grip on immigration to tackle rise of far right” The Guardian 9 July 2024

^[iii]  Ben Quinn, Kiran Stacey and Pippa Crerar “Neil Kinnock warns Labour to heed nationalist threat posed by Nigel Farage” The Guardian 28 June 2024

^[iv]  D Bhargava, S Shams & H Hanbury “The Death of Deliverism” in Democracy, Washington DC, 22 June 2023

^[v]  “Labour’s courtship of business: the party promises stability and growth.  But businesses have worries and rightly so” Leader Article in The Economist 11-17 May 2024

^[vi]  Wilhelm Reich The Function of the Orgasm Panther Books, London 1968 (original publication date 1927)

^[vii]  Peter Jelavich Berlin Cabaret Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass, USA and London 1993

^[viii]  F Engels Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science Progress Publishers, Moscow 1947 (original publication date 1878) (emphasis added)

^[ix]  H Gruber Red Vienna: Experiment in Working-Class Culture 1919-1934 Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford 1991