"My government will bring forward a bill that further reforms Britain’s immigration system. The bill will ensure that this country attracts people who will contribute and deters those who will not." (Queen’s Speech, 07/05/13)
The decline of the Conservative
Party in the recent local elections in Britain reflects the general decline in
support for traditional moderate governments throughout Europe. New parties
have emerged, usually more conservative than the traditional parties. They are
attracting large swaths of the electorate in their desire to capture an
imagined idyllic past – through which they are defining themselves usually by
their dislike of others, rather than by what they like about themselves. The
rise of these new political parties and their attraction arises from the
powerlessness many people are experiencing due to the failure of the economy
experienced by them in bleak high streets and
neighbourhoods bereft of hope. The centralisation of power has made
local government administration impotent.
Also, since the inauguration of
the European Union people feel further distant from the centres of power. The
architects of the European Union had a greater sense of participation in mind
for the people of Europe. However, individual member governments, European
institutions and those appointed to manage the European project have failed to
connect with the citizens of Europe. Over the years political leaders have consistently
assured the public that they wish to be at the heart of Europe. However, when
failure looms on the horizon of individual states, national politicians use the
European Union as a whipping boy for these failures. As a result, there are
huge vacuums in people’s lives in that they find it hard to identify with any
meaningful signs and symbols that are assuring and comforting. Actually, people
don’t know who to believe anymore and in that situation look for scapegoats to
vent their frustrations on.
Emerging political parties fill
these vacuums of fear and hope by pointing the finger of blame at the weaker
and vulnerable sections of societies that usually do not have a voice. Worse
still, the mainstream political parties compete for popularity not by offering
alternate policies but by depicting themselves as equally extreme as their
opponents. In post-election government formation, mainstream parties are
forming coalitions with extreme parties. In doing so the mainstream party has
to compromise many of its principles of toleration, respect for diversity and
protection of the weak.
Immigrants are the new weak, the
new enemy. One economic publication in the recent past went so far as to blame
immigrants for the banking crisis. One of the basic tenets of the European Union
guarantees the free movement of people. Yet, so many citizens are ignorant of
that fact. They resent the presence of other nationals working in their
neighbourhoods yet see no contradiction in their own sons and daughters
emigrating to seek work abroad. Their political leaders are slow in correcting
misinformation among their constituents regarding the presence of immigrants
and the contribution they make in local economies and their economies at home.
Aspirants in emerging political parties latch onto perceived grievances among
the population and exploit them for their own advancement. Extreme structural
solutions are offered to deter immigrants such as withdrawal from the European
Union and other international agreements.
Respecting the equality of difference
These attitudes by political
leaders feed into racism that is so rampant throughout Europe. When
anti-immigrant atrocities are committed blame is put on the perpetrators and
rightly so. But the perpetrators of such atrocities have been listening to and
are affirmed in their extremism by the comments of politicians and policies of
their governments. Equally, it is evident in some situations of anti-immigrant
violence that law and order institutions are slow to bring charges and convict
such people. There are instances of such procrastination throughout Europe in
the recent past – and presently in Germany – to bring people who have committed
crimes against immigrants to justice. The remnants of ethnic inequality are
deep-seated in European colonial culture. Justice for indigenous populations
was not central in European imperial rule. It takes a determined effort for
Europeans to respect the equality of difference and treat it accordingly.
Many European governments are
gestating new immigration legislation in the face of the disastrous effects of
their economic policies. Again, highlighting the need to reform immigration
policy is a diversion from real issues of unemployment, housing shortage and
health services. It serves a purpose in that it feeds populist neo-fascism,
creating an atmosphere of fear in immigrant communities and slowing the process
of integration. Young immigrants who feel excluded from the mainstream tend to
identify with global extremist movements that compete with neo-fascism.
The Queen’s Speech at the opening
of the British parliament last week mentioned “a fair society that rewards
people who work hard…a society where people are properly
rewarded…reforming the benefits system…a fairer society where aspiration and
responsibility are rewarded…a bill that further reforms immigration…will ensure
that this country attracts people who will contribute and deter those who will
not.” Has nobody woken up to the fact that immigrants globally remitted $500 billion
last year to their home nations? That kind of money was not generated by people
who want to be on the dole or unemployed. Even Britain was a net winner in the
remittance merry-go-round, having received $8 billion.
Why scapegoat the most vulnerable to protect the most powerful?
On reading the Queen’s speech one
could be led to think that immigrants, the unemployed and those on benefits
were the ones who brought about the present economic crisis that has devastated
the lives of so many. There is no mention of the mandarins whose policies and
practices in the banking system, the market and the media are shameful. They
are not being asked to act responsibly. Nor are they sanctioned or regulated as
to the way they disproportionately reward themselves and avoid taxes. Is it right
to make a few hundred people redundant in order to increase and maintain
executive salaries and bonuses? Is it just and ethical to recognise and condone
havens that enable tax avoidance on profits made on British, European and
American high streets? Are those who are annually paid millions because they’re
“worth it” more deserving than those who struggle on low wages because they are
immigrants, not good enough or not working hard enough? Why scapegoat the most
vulnerable to protect the most powerful?
But it is a trend at present to
cast protest groups that are highlighting inequality as irrational. These
groups are pointing the finger at feral elites who have taken control of the
corridors of power and who, by effective lobbying, tilt economic policies to
protect their interests. This is borne out by many commentators such as Ha-Joon
Chang who wrote recently:
"In Britain the coalition government constantly slags off those welfare slobs in the working class suburbs, sleeping off their hard night’s slog with Sky Sports and online casinos…In the Eurozone, many believe that its fiscal crisis can be ultimately traced back to those lazy Mediterraneans in Greece and Spain, who had lived off hard-working Germans and Dutch, spending their time sipping espresso and card games. Unless those people start working hard, it is said, the Eurozone problems cannot be fixed." (The Guardian, 29/1/13)
Others are making similar
remarks. George Monbiot writes,
"Many of those who rule us do not in their hearts belong here. They belong to a different culture, a different world, which knows as little of its own acts as it knows of those who suffer them." (The Guardian, 28/01/13)
Slavoj Zizek notes that those who
formulate the present economic policies brand all protesters as irrational:
"...the protesters know very well what they don't know; they don't pretend to have fast and easy answers; but what their instinct is telling them is nonetheless true – that those in power also don't know it. In Europe today, the blind are leading the blind." (The Guardian, 16/01/13)
Vanessa Baird refreshes our
memories when she writes:
"The political response to the 2008 financial crisis-first to bail out the banks, then to cut public spending-has produced the crowning irony of our times: those who made the mess have come out virtually unscathed while the rest of us are being punished…The corporate rich, especially those linked to finance, have governments in their pockets." (New Internationalist, January 2013)
Pope Francis too has commented on
the economic crisis;
"The financial crisis that we are experiencing makes us forget that its ultimate origin is to be found in a profound human crisis…We have created new idols. The worship of the Golden Calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacks any human goal…This imbalance results from ideologies which uphold the absolute of markets and financial speculation and thus deny the right of control to states, which are themselves charged with providing for the common good…in which human beings are now considered consumer goods…Money has to serve, not rule." (16/05/13)
An offshore reality isolated from regulation and the common good
So, the challenge that confronts
the leaders of modernity is to imagine a different future of peace, justice and
prosperity. Otherwise, ghosts of a European past in the form of protectionism,
extreme nationalism, racism, ethno-centrism and exclusion will haunt the mean
culturally-bleached, abandoned European high streets. But, the paradigm and the
construct of colonisation as described by Albert Memmi is being recycled to
justify a new era of global inequality dominated by a few who put themselves in
an offshore reality isolated from regulation and the common good.
"The mythical portrait of the colonised therefore includes an unbelievable laziness, and that of the coloniser, a virtuous taste for action. At the same time the coloniser suggests that employing the colonised is not very profitable, thereby authorising his unreasonable wages." (Albert Memmi, The Coloniser and the Colonised)
"Mankind’s responsibility cannot be left to some outside power or to a god. On the contrary, people must commit themselves in terms of their personal, individual human responsibility." (Stephane Hessel, Time for Outrage)
