Kenan Malik
BY Kenan Malik
There has recently been built in Merton in south London a “mega mosque” that has inevitably become the focus of much controversy. In his book The British Dream, David Goodhart takes the mosque as symbolic of the unacceptable change that immigration has wrought upon the nation.
The mosque, he writes, “replaced an Express Dairies bottling plant which provided a few hundred jobs for local people and lots of milk bottles – an icon of an earlier, more homogenised age.”
There was, in fact, a seven-year gap between the closing of the dairy in 1992 and building work beginning on the mosque. In those seven years the abandoned dairy was, according to local accounts, turned into a crack den.
So, one story we could tell is that of economic forces closing down an unprofitable dairy, with the loss of several hundred jobs, and of local Muslims subsequently rescuing the abandoned, crime-infested site, creating new jobs and in the process transforming Merton for the better. Critics of immigration want, however, to tell a different story.
The mosque, in their eyes, is symbolic not of the rescue of a site from abandonment and crime, but of the original closure of the dairy and of the transformation of Merton’s old way of life.
The story of the Merton mosque, and the retelling of that story as a narrative of cultural loss, gets to the heart of the contemporary debate about immigration.
Immigration is clearly one of the most fiercely debated and toxic issues of today. The debate is, however, less about the facts than about the existential impact.
Immigration has become symbolic of the disruption of communities, the undermining of identities, the fraying of the sense of belongingness, the promotion of unacceptable change. The roots of The British Dream lie in Goodhart’s 2004 essay in Prospect magazine, of which he was then editor, called Too Diverse?
Liberals, he suggested, had to face up to a “progressive dilemma”. Too much immigration undermined social solidarity, particularly in a welfare state. We had to choose between the two. The essay caused considerable controversy, but the idea that too much immigration undermines social solidarity has over the past decade become almost common sense.
The sense that Jewish immigration was uncontrolled and that “we’ve lost this place to other cultures” was palpable in the discussions.
“There is no end to them in Whitechapel and Mile End,” claimed one witness giving evidence to the 1903 Royal Commission. “These areas of London might be called Jerusalem.” The Conservative MP Major Sir William Eden Evans-Gordon expressed the same sentiment through a quite extraordinary metaphor.
The current debate takes place, however, in a new context. When Balfour warned of the impact of Jewish immigrants, there existed a strong sense of British identity, rooted primarily in the concepts of race and empire. Hostility to immigration was part of a racialised defence of national identity.
There lies also the breakdown of traditional political mechanisms, the growing chasm between the elite and the public, and the abandonment by mainstream parties of their traditional working-class constituencies.
The transformation of working-class life, the erosion of the sense of working-class identity, the breaking of bonds of solidarity, the marginalisation of labour as a political voice – all are real phenomena.
But all have roots not in mass immigration but in broader economic and political changes.
When the first wave of postwar immigrants arrived in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, it was a period of full employment, an expanding welfare state and strong trade unions. Today, Britain’s manufacturing base has all but disappeared, working class communities have disintegrated and the welfare state has begun to crumble.
Trade unions have been neutered, the Labour party has largely cut its roots with its working-class base, and the very idea of class-based politics is derided. All this has helped erode the bonds of solidarity that once shaped working-class communities, leaving many feeling voiceless and detached from the political process.
Immigration has played almost no part in fostering these changes. It has, however, come to be a means through which many perceive these changes.
Partly this is a consequence of the way that the public discussion has been framed, with politicians at both ends of the spectrum presenting immigrants as a problem, even a threat.
Partly also it is because the forces of globalisation, or the internal wrangling of the Labour party, are difficult to conceptualise. One’s Bangladeshi or Jamaican neighbour is easy to see.
Almost inevitably, immigration has come to be viewed by many not as something that has enriched their lives, but as something that has diminished them.
So bedazzled have we become by the existential fear of immigration that migrants have come to be seen less as living, breathing human beings than as so much flotsam and jetsam to be swept away from Europe’s beaches. Fortress Europe has created not only a physical barrier around the continent but an emotional one, too, around Europe’s sense of humanity. THE GUARDIAN
BY Kenan Malik
There has recently been built in Merton in south London a “mega mosque” that has inevitably become the focus of much controversy. In his book The British Dream, David Goodhart takes the mosque as symbolic of the unacceptable change that immigration has wrought upon the nation.
The mosque, he writes, “replaced an Express Dairies bottling plant which provided a few hundred jobs for local people and lots of milk bottles – an icon of an earlier, more homogenised age.”
There was, in fact, a seven-year gap between the closing of the dairy in 1992 and building work beginning on the mosque. In those seven years the abandoned dairy was, according to local accounts, turned into a crack den.
So, one story we could tell is that of economic forces closing down an unprofitable dairy, with the loss of several hundred jobs, and of local Muslims subsequently rescuing the abandoned, crime-infested site, creating new jobs and in the process transforming Merton for the better. Critics of immigration want, however, to tell a different story.
The mosque, in their eyes, is symbolic not of the rescue of a site from abandonment and crime, but of the original closure of the dairy and of the transformation of Merton’s old way of life.
The story of the Merton mosque, and the retelling of that story as a narrative of cultural loss, gets to the heart of the contemporary debate about immigration.
Immigration is clearly one of the most fiercely debated and toxic issues of today. The debate is, however, less about the facts than about the existential impact.
Immigration has become symbolic of the disruption of communities, the undermining of identities, the fraying of the sense of belongingness, the promotion of unacceptable change. The roots of The British Dream lie in Goodhart’s 2004 essay in Prospect magazine, of which he was then editor, called Too Diverse?
Liberals, he suggested, had to face up to a “progressive dilemma”. Too much immigration undermined social solidarity, particularly in a welfare state. We had to choose between the two. The essay caused considerable controversy, but the idea that too much immigration undermines social solidarity has over the past decade become almost common sense.
The sense that Jewish immigration was uncontrolled and that “we’ve lost this place to other cultures” was palpable in the discussions.
“There is no end to them in Whitechapel and Mile End,” claimed one witness giving evidence to the 1903 Royal Commission. “These areas of London might be called Jerusalem.” The Conservative MP Major Sir William Eden Evans-Gordon expressed the same sentiment through a quite extraordinary metaphor.
The current debate takes place, however, in a new context. When Balfour warned of the impact of Jewish immigrants, there existed a strong sense of British identity, rooted primarily in the concepts of race and empire. Hostility to immigration was part of a racialised defence of national identity.
There lies also the breakdown of traditional political mechanisms, the growing chasm between the elite and the public, and the abandonment by mainstream parties of their traditional working-class constituencies.
The transformation of working-class life, the erosion of the sense of working-class identity, the breaking of bonds of solidarity, the marginalisation of labour as a political voice – all are real phenomena.
But all have roots not in mass immigration but in broader economic and political changes.
When the first wave of postwar immigrants arrived in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, it was a period of full employment, an expanding welfare state and strong trade unions. Today, Britain’s manufacturing base has all but disappeared, working class communities have disintegrated and the welfare state has begun to crumble.
Trade unions have been neutered, the Labour party has largely cut its roots with its working-class base, and the very idea of class-based politics is derided. All this has helped erode the bonds of solidarity that once shaped working-class communities, leaving many feeling voiceless and detached from the political process.
Immigration has played almost no part in fostering these changes. It has, however, come to be a means through which many perceive these changes.
Partly this is a consequence of the way that the public discussion has been framed, with politicians at both ends of the spectrum presenting immigrants as a problem, even a threat.
Partly also it is because the forces of globalisation, or the internal wrangling of the Labour party, are difficult to conceptualise. One’s Bangladeshi or Jamaican neighbour is easy to see.
Almost inevitably, immigration has come to be viewed by many not as something that has enriched their lives, but as something that has diminished them.
So bedazzled have we become by the existential fear of immigration that migrants have come to be seen less as living, breathing human beings than as so much flotsam and jetsam to be swept away from Europe’s beaches. Fortress Europe has created not only a physical barrier around the continent but an emotional one, too, around Europe’s sense of humanity. THE GUARDIAN
