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Angry White People: Coming Face-to-Face with the British Far Right
'An enlightening, thoughtful and intelligent study.'
The Independent
There is a new anger brewing in Britain. In the pubs and estates, the cafes and football stadiums, the mood is unsettled. People kick back increasingly against whoever or whatever is presented as the latest scapegoat.
Delving deep into the day-to-day of a marginalized section of the working class, Angry White People offers an unparalleled survey of this anxious, uncertain, febrile Britain. From the English Defence League (EDL) to UKIP activists, Hsiao-Hung Pai conducts a fantastically daring investigation. Amongst those she follows are Darren, a Lutonian who helped found the EDL but is now a dedicated anti-racist Labour activist, and Tommy Robinson, infamous founder of the EDL, whom Pai observes changing from a young, foul-mouthed kid to a suited-and-booted Oxford Union guest speaker and hate preacher.
Uncovering disturbing levels of racism in our society which must be confronted, Pai also identifies concerns arising from exclusion and inequality in a post-industrial economy. Angry White People is the essential account of social discontent in Britain today.
The Independent
There is a new anger brewing in Britain. In the pubs and estates, the cafes and football stadiums, the mood is unsettled. People kick back increasingly against whoever or whatever is presented as the latest scapegoat.
Delving deep into the day-to-day of a marginalized section of the working class, Angry White People offers an unparalleled survey of this anxious, uncertain, febrile Britain. From the English Defence League (EDL) to UKIP activists, Hsiao-Hung Pai conducts a fantastically daring investigation. Amongst those she follows are Darren, a Lutonian who helped found the EDL but is now a dedicated anti-racist Labour activist, and Tommy Robinson, infamous founder of the EDL, whom Pai observes changing from a young, foul-mouthed kid to a suited-and-booted Oxford Union guest speaker and hate preacher.
Uncovering disturbing levels of racism in our society which must be confronted, Pai also identifies concerns arising from exclusion and inequality in a post-industrial economy. Angry White People is the essential account of social discontent in Britain today.
- GenresNonfictionPolitics
400 pages, Paperback
First published February 15, 2016
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About the author
Hsiao-Hung Pai
10 books29 followersHsiao-Hung Pai is a journalist and author of Chinese Whispers: The True Story Behind Britain’s Hidden Army of Labour (2008), shortlisted for the Orwell Book Prize 2009; Scattered Sand: The Story of China’s Rural Migrants, (2012), winner of the Bread and Roses Award 2013, Invisible (2013), Angry White People (2016), Bordered Lives (2018) and Ciao Ousmane (2021). She has written for the Guardian and many Chinese publications worldwide.
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December 7, 2016
Early in 2016 a piece appeared in the Spectator by Rod Liddle titled: What makes the white working class angry? Twits like Hsiao-Hung Pai.
The piece was a review of Pai’s new book, Angry White People. Pai, a journalist who sometimes writes for the Guardian, had been in Luton and elsewhere talking to members of the anti-Muslim English Defence League (EDL), trying to find out what had driven them to towards this controversial group – why, in fact, they were “angry”.
Her efforts did not impress Liddle, who decided that Pai was the worst kind of ‘liberal’ – anti-English, patronizing, with a closed mind. The reason why white working people were angry, he said, was because of people like Pai: “bone-headed, arrogant, absolutist liberals who insist to them — contrary to the evidence — that their fears are utterly baseless and should not be taken seriously.”
I’ve got some serious concerns of my own about Angry White People, of which more below. But Pai does not seem “bone-headed” or arrogant, and in general this is a much better book than Liddle would have you believe.
Pai was born in Taiwan but moved to England in 1991, in her early 20s. She studied journalism and went on to write several books, including Chinese Whispers: The True Story Behind Britain's Hidden Army of Labour (2012) and Invisible: Britain's Migrant Sex Workers (2013). She worked undercover to research both, which may have taken quite serious balls. She began her research for Angry White People in Luton, where the EDL emerged in 2009 as a response to Islamicist preacher Anjem Choudary, who wishes to see Shari’a law in the UK, and had organized a demonstration at the Royal Anglian Regiment’s homecoming parade after service in Helmand Province. Choudary’s demonstration caused widespread anger. In Luton, football fans formed United People of Luton, which developed into the EDL.
Pai begins with an account of meeting Anjem Choudary, which infuriates Liddle. “So credulous is this woman that, reading her interview with the incendiary Muslim hate-monger Anjem Choudary, you’d think him absolutely charming, twinkly-eyed and lovable,” he says. In fact Pai seems to have met Choudary only briefly; she records that he is polite and beyond that says little about him. It’s the angry white people she wants to talk to. Her main contact seems to have been Darren, a relative of EDL organizers Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll. Darren was once involved in the EDL; he regrets it. Pai devotes a lot of space to tracing Darren’s upbringing, his social milieu and how he was led (mainly via football) into the EDL. She does it well, and was clearly listening. She also tries to talk to white people on the Luton estates and understand their views. Here she’s only partially successful; not everyone really wants to talk. But bit by bit she starts to build up a picture of them. They seem to her to be bitterly disadvantaged, their traditional jobs at the Vauxhall plant gone; what work there is to be had, they tell her, is being funnelled to outsiders. They are wary of other communities (including Muslims), who they say do not “integrate”.
From this she constructs her thesis: that white working-class people have been fooled into blaming migrants and Muslims for their troubles instead of the real culprits, the Tories and the rich. This argument might not impress Liddle, but I think she puts it well. As Benjamin Zephaniah says in his introduction to Angry White People: “The political elite has neglected the white working class. ...[T]hey live in terrible housing conditions, their traditional industries have been destroyed.” In London, Pai talks to a Cockney who tells her, “If you look around here, you’ll see everyone’s angry ... These days, a lot of white people around here ... support ...groups like the EDL ...because they direct their anger the wrong way.” Pai’s view (and Zephaniah’s) is that struggling working people of all backgrounds, including white ones, need to confront their real enemies, not each other. I think she’s right.
However, I have some problems with this book. One is simply some sloppy use of figures. Pai quotes research saying that 83 percent of Muslims are “proud to be British” and that 77 percent of Muslims identify strongly with Britain while only 50 percent of the wider population do. She says these figures come from “a research paper entitled Understanding Society, by the University of Essex”. Actually Understanding Society is not a paper but a large research programme with multiple outputs (including papers) over a period of years, and I can’t trace this one. That doesn’t mean the figures are wrong. But since Angry White People was published in early 2016, a Channel 4 poll has appeared that is said to demonstrate that Muslims do not feel they belong in Britain, and do not share its values. This poll has been bitterly refuted by some, possibly with good reason. We are on contested ground, and Pai should have quoted her source properly. She also gives figures for the different types and numbers of Roma/Traveller people in Britain, but does not say where she got them – and they appear to be way out.
My second problem with this book is more fundamental. It is that Pai seems to have gone into her research already armed with a basic thesis; the rich are dividing us; we must forget race and religion, and act together. As I have said, I agree with this. But it’s only part of the picture, and Pai doesn’t talk about the other part: the way the right (including the “moderate” right) exploits a threatened sense of identity.
Pai talks to a single mother on a Luton estate who tells her that she has no problem with her Muslim neighbours, and she’s not fond of the EDL. But she adds that since a mosque and school were recently built, “there’s been many more Turkish people ...and Pakistani people around here. Also, there’s quite a few Polish people coming in ...I don’t know any of them. Each group is separate from each other.” A chip-shop owner, himself originally from Cyprus, tells Pai that the Muslims don’t want to integrate (others echo this message). Pai asks him how they can be expected to, when the EDL wants to close down mosques. She does not record his reply. Neither does she ask him how he would like them to integrate. Has Pai understood what he is actually saying? Could it be that this man actually wants to know these people better? In Hampshire, Pai meets a middle-aged man who has had long stretches of unemployment. Recently he has managed to get some agency work. “When I went into the common room to have my sandwich, not a world of English was being spoken in there ...They were all Polish.” He does not feel intimidated, but he does feel uncomfortable, and goes to eat somewhere else. None of these people tell Pai that they dislike Muslims, or Poles. What they hate is feeling like strangers in their own land.
Pai does not get to grips with this. In fact, she calls one of her chapters “Defending the imaginary nation”, the implication being that there isn’t, in her view, an English identity. At one point she challenges former EDL leader Tommy Robinson to define it. He doesn’t do it well – but would a German or a French person do any better with theirs?
It would be easy to conclude that Pai simply doesn’t like the English; after all, many English-born middle-class liberals don’t, despising the food and weather and wishing they were Italian. But they are just class snobs. Pai, I think, is someone more interesting, and more honest. Towards the end of the book she says she is uncomfortable with having a Chinese ‘identity’, not least because of what she has seen of Chinese treatment of the Uighurs. My guess is that Pai’s intellectual convictions simply reject the concept of nationality. This is an honourable position. But it may be not be helpful. Globalization, migration and refugee movements have reduced people’s feeling of being “at home” in their own countries, and brought identity politics to life across Europe. The last time they were so strong was after the dislocation of 1919, and that presaged fascism.
Pai doesn’t face this. I wonder, too, if she pays too little attention to the democratic deficit in modern Britain (and especially modern England). She’s aware of it; she quotes someone as saying “elections don’t do nothing for you” and quotes other writers as saying that many blue-collar voters have been left behind as political parties chase middle-class swing votes. Yet she mentions all this only in passing. In fact, it’s desperately important in Britain, where the skewed electoral system means that the current government has an absolute majority with only 24% of the electorate’s votes. Is it surprising that real politics gets pushed outside the system?
Finally, though Pai isn’t “bone-headed” or arrogant, I do sometimes sense prejudice. At one point she attempts to meet a possible EDL sympathizer, but he cancels by text – and she reproduces the text and all its spelling mistakes. This is pointless unless she wants to tell us what an ignorant git he is. When one (rather weird) activist tells her he thinks it’s “illegal to be English”, she writes “I couldn’t help sneering at the idea”. I hope not. If you really want to know how people think and feel, you do not sneer at them. Ever. I also wondered if she should have zeroed in on the white working class quite so much. At one point, she comments that Tommy Robinson sounds more Daily Mail than traditional far-right. Indeed. If she wants to meet hardcore bigots, she’ll find as many in suburban golf clubs and saloon bars as she will in working-class Luton. Is English racism really the preserve of the white working class, or are they just a handy target for middle-class liberals?
This book left me with some mixed feelings. Pai did have preconceptions, and they show. I also disliked her careless use of figures. Most seriously, she underestimates people’s feelings about identity. But she has done well to trace the roots of the EDL, and has made valuable points about the way the disadvantaged are being “divided and ruled” in modern Britain. She has also been out to talk to people. She has done this for other books, and it is surely more useful than writing editorials for the Spectator (or New Statesman).
And if Pai is not always dispassionate, perhaps she shouldn’t be. I do believe there’s a sinister racist undertone in Britain that isn’t always visible if, like me, you’re white and middle-class. I was reminded of this in September 2008 when a man was fatally beaten at a cab rank in Norwich after trying to stop a Lithuanian man and his girlfriend being attacked. The incident happened a hundred yards from the flat where I had lived until five weeks earlier. The Institute of Race Relations says that in 2013/14, police recorded 47,571 ‘racist incidents’ in England and Wales – about 130 incidents per day.
In his introduction to Angry White People, Zephaniah describes how, as a child, he was clobbered from behind with a brick just for being black. In the book, Pai describes visiting Wolverhampton and passing youths yelling “Mail-order bride” at her. One wonders how it feels to be a woman with multiple degrees and several books to your credit, and to realize that because of your race, some people still see you as nothing. As Zephaniah says, racism is personal. Angry White People is not a perfect book, but it may be a better one than we all deserve.
The piece was a review of Pai’s new book, Angry White People. Pai, a journalist who sometimes writes for the Guardian, had been in Luton and elsewhere talking to members of the anti-Muslim English Defence League (EDL), trying to find out what had driven them to towards this controversial group – why, in fact, they were “angry”.
Her efforts did not impress Liddle, who decided that Pai was the worst kind of ‘liberal’ – anti-English, patronizing, with a closed mind. The reason why white working people were angry, he said, was because of people like Pai: “bone-headed, arrogant, absolutist liberals who insist to them — contrary to the evidence — that their fears are utterly baseless and should not be taken seriously.”
I’ve got some serious concerns of my own about Angry White People, of which more below. But Pai does not seem “bone-headed” or arrogant, and in general this is a much better book than Liddle would have you believe.
Pai was born in Taiwan but moved to England in 1991, in her early 20s. She studied journalism and went on to write several books, including Chinese Whispers: The True Story Behind Britain's Hidden Army of Labour (2012) and Invisible: Britain's Migrant Sex Workers (2013). She worked undercover to research both, which may have taken quite serious balls. She began her research for Angry White People in Luton, where the EDL emerged in 2009 as a response to Islamicist preacher Anjem Choudary, who wishes to see Shari’a law in the UK, and had organized a demonstration at the Royal Anglian Regiment’s homecoming parade after service in Helmand Province. Choudary’s demonstration caused widespread anger. In Luton, football fans formed United People of Luton, which developed into the EDL.
Pai begins with an account of meeting Anjem Choudary, which infuriates Liddle. “So credulous is this woman that, reading her interview with the incendiary Muslim hate-monger Anjem Choudary, you’d think him absolutely charming, twinkly-eyed and lovable,” he says. In fact Pai seems to have met Choudary only briefly; she records that he is polite and beyond that says little about him. It’s the angry white people she wants to talk to. Her main contact seems to have been Darren, a relative of EDL organizers Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll. Darren was once involved in the EDL; he regrets it. Pai devotes a lot of space to tracing Darren’s upbringing, his social milieu and how he was led (mainly via football) into the EDL. She does it well, and was clearly listening. She also tries to talk to white people on the Luton estates and understand their views. Here she’s only partially successful; not everyone really wants to talk. But bit by bit she starts to build up a picture of them. They seem to her to be bitterly disadvantaged, their traditional jobs at the Vauxhall plant gone; what work there is to be had, they tell her, is being funnelled to outsiders. They are wary of other communities (including Muslims), who they say do not “integrate”.
From this she constructs her thesis: that white working-class people have been fooled into blaming migrants and Muslims for their troubles instead of the real culprits, the Tories and the rich. This argument might not impress Liddle, but I think she puts it well. As Benjamin Zephaniah says in his introduction to Angry White People: “The political elite has neglected the white working class. ...[T]hey live in terrible housing conditions, their traditional industries have been destroyed.” In London, Pai talks to a Cockney who tells her, “If you look around here, you’ll see everyone’s angry ... These days, a lot of white people around here ... support ...groups like the EDL ...because they direct their anger the wrong way.” Pai’s view (and Zephaniah’s) is that struggling working people of all backgrounds, including white ones, need to confront their real enemies, not each other. I think she’s right.
However, I have some problems with this book. One is simply some sloppy use of figures. Pai quotes research saying that 83 percent of Muslims are “proud to be British” and that 77 percent of Muslims identify strongly with Britain while only 50 percent of the wider population do. She says these figures come from “a research paper entitled Understanding Society, by the University of Essex”. Actually Understanding Society is not a paper but a large research programme with multiple outputs (including papers) over a period of years, and I can’t trace this one. That doesn’t mean the figures are wrong. But since Angry White People was published in early 2016, a Channel 4 poll has appeared that is said to demonstrate that Muslims do not feel they belong in Britain, and do not share its values. This poll has been bitterly refuted by some, possibly with good reason. We are on contested ground, and Pai should have quoted her source properly. She also gives figures for the different types and numbers of Roma/Traveller people in Britain, but does not say where she got them – and they appear to be way out.
My second problem with this book is more fundamental. It is that Pai seems to have gone into her research already armed with a basic thesis; the rich are dividing us; we must forget race and religion, and act together. As I have said, I agree with this. But it’s only part of the picture, and Pai doesn’t talk about the other part: the way the right (including the “moderate” right) exploits a threatened sense of identity.
Pai talks to a single mother on a Luton estate who tells her that she has no problem with her Muslim neighbours, and she’s not fond of the EDL. But she adds that since a mosque and school were recently built, “there’s been many more Turkish people ...and Pakistani people around here. Also, there’s quite a few Polish people coming in ...I don’t know any of them. Each group is separate from each other.” A chip-shop owner, himself originally from Cyprus, tells Pai that the Muslims don’t want to integrate (others echo this message). Pai asks him how they can be expected to, when the EDL wants to close down mosques. She does not record his reply. Neither does she ask him how he would like them to integrate. Has Pai understood what he is actually saying? Could it be that this man actually wants to know these people better? In Hampshire, Pai meets a middle-aged man who has had long stretches of unemployment. Recently he has managed to get some agency work. “When I went into the common room to have my sandwich, not a world of English was being spoken in there ...They were all Polish.” He does not feel intimidated, but he does feel uncomfortable, and goes to eat somewhere else. None of these people tell Pai that they dislike Muslims, or Poles. What they hate is feeling like strangers in their own land.
Pai does not get to grips with this. In fact, she calls one of her chapters “Defending the imaginary nation”, the implication being that there isn’t, in her view, an English identity. At one point she challenges former EDL leader Tommy Robinson to define it. He doesn’t do it well – but would a German or a French person do any better with theirs?
It would be easy to conclude that Pai simply doesn’t like the English; after all, many English-born middle-class liberals don’t, despising the food and weather and wishing they were Italian. But they are just class snobs. Pai, I think, is someone more interesting, and more honest. Towards the end of the book she says she is uncomfortable with having a Chinese ‘identity’, not least because of what she has seen of Chinese treatment of the Uighurs. My guess is that Pai’s intellectual convictions simply reject the concept of nationality. This is an honourable position. But it may be not be helpful. Globalization, migration and refugee movements have reduced people’s feeling of being “at home” in their own countries, and brought identity politics to life across Europe. The last time they were so strong was after the dislocation of 1919, and that presaged fascism.
Pai doesn’t face this. I wonder, too, if she pays too little attention to the democratic deficit in modern Britain (and especially modern England). She’s aware of it; she quotes someone as saying “elections don’t do nothing for you” and quotes other writers as saying that many blue-collar voters have been left behind as political parties chase middle-class swing votes. Yet she mentions all this only in passing. In fact, it’s desperately important in Britain, where the skewed electoral system means that the current government has an absolute majority with only 24% of the electorate’s votes. Is it surprising that real politics gets pushed outside the system?
Finally, though Pai isn’t “bone-headed” or arrogant, I do sometimes sense prejudice. At one point she attempts to meet a possible EDL sympathizer, but he cancels by text – and she reproduces the text and all its spelling mistakes. This is pointless unless she wants to tell us what an ignorant git he is. When one (rather weird) activist tells her he thinks it’s “illegal to be English”, she writes “I couldn’t help sneering at the idea”. I hope not. If you really want to know how people think and feel, you do not sneer at them. Ever. I also wondered if she should have zeroed in on the white working class quite so much. At one point, she comments that Tommy Robinson sounds more Daily Mail than traditional far-right. Indeed. If she wants to meet hardcore bigots, she’ll find as many in suburban golf clubs and saloon bars as she will in working-class Luton. Is English racism really the preserve of the white working class, or are they just a handy target for middle-class liberals?
This book left me with some mixed feelings. Pai did have preconceptions, and they show. I also disliked her careless use of figures. Most seriously, she underestimates people’s feelings about identity. But she has done well to trace the roots of the EDL, and has made valuable points about the way the disadvantaged are being “divided and ruled” in modern Britain. She has also been out to talk to people. She has done this for other books, and it is surely more useful than writing editorials for the Spectator (or New Statesman).
And if Pai is not always dispassionate, perhaps she shouldn’t be. I do believe there’s a sinister racist undertone in Britain that isn’t always visible if, like me, you’re white and middle-class. I was reminded of this in September 2008 when a man was fatally beaten at a cab rank in Norwich after trying to stop a Lithuanian man and his girlfriend being attacked. The incident happened a hundred yards from the flat where I had lived until five weeks earlier. The Institute of Race Relations says that in 2013/14, police recorded 47,571 ‘racist incidents’ in England and Wales – about 130 incidents per day.
In his introduction to Angry White People, Zephaniah describes how, as a child, he was clobbered from behind with a brick just for being black. In the book, Pai describes visiting Wolverhampton and passing youths yelling “Mail-order bride” at her. One wonders how it feels to be a woman with multiple degrees and several books to your credit, and to realize that because of your race, some people still see you as nothing. As Zephaniah says, racism is personal. Angry White People is not a perfect book, but it may be a better one than we all deserve.
December 7, 2017
The author came to England in 1991 as a young graduate from a middle class background in Taiwan to continue her education in England, and remained to build an independent life as a migrant in London. She was attracted, among other things, by the opportunity to escape from social and political conformism.
But life for a migrant is never easy; she left behind all the security of her middle class family and had to rebuild a life in London on her own resources. She makes a few cutting asides about racial discrimination in British journalism and in general she encountered the prejudice and the occasional threats of violence that mar the lives of most migrants in Britain. The casual street level violence at the hands of racists is something every migrant learns to deal with in one way or another, but this is vastly complicated because it includes the hands of racist police officers, it is amplified by the media (especially the Mail, the Sun, the Times and the Telegraph), and after 2013 it has been overtly implemented by the government with its policy of a “hostile environment for migrants” (a disgraceful policy for any democratic government to even admit to, let alone promote).
Hsiao-Hung Pai gives her own experience a context in the broad picture of racism in Britain and makes two particular observations. One is that for its victims, it entails life changing physical and psychological harm through overt violence and systematic, sustained abuse. The harm may affect individuals but also wrecks family life and harms communities. Benjamin Zephaniah’s powerful introduction reminds readers that while thoughtful debate may proceed in political circles, for its victims the reality of racism is to be punched while walking in the street. The other observation is that racism is actively promoted in Britain, by the Home Office and its agents, by political parties, by the media and by a range of political organisations and wealthy individuals.
In all of this, she is reviewing information that is in the public domain and readily available. Hsiao-Hung Pai makes her own contribution to the discussion by reporting on the attitudes of a number of people who have played an active role in the English Defence League (the EDL) during a crucial time period between about 2011 and 2015. To achieve this, she does what a journalist does best – walking up to people and entering places that others have avoided, interviewing significant people and reporting their comments in a fair and honest way. It’s perfectly clear throughout that she does not agree with their opinions, that they often disagree with each other and that this is only a selective impression of what some people think, not a scientific study of the entire political scene. It does very well what it claims to do and it does not claim to do many things that other reviewers complain it ought to do (in their opinion). Within its own constraints, it is a valid and fascinating piece of social reporting.
While Hsiao-Hung Pai disagrees with her contacts, she also respects them, and here her status as a migrant is helpful. She is not repelled by the presence of right-wing activists, despite her open affiliation to the Left; instead she is attracted to a political environment that makes it possible for ordinary citizens to organise together and express their diverse political agendas. She has spent time in other societies – China for example – where this would simply not be tolerated. As she points out, if these people achieved their political goals, a well run, strictly policed state where diversity is not tolerated any more, then they would be its first victims. For this and other reasons she finds their politics irrational. But she roundly endorses the value of hearing what they have to say. She is genuinely interested to understand their point of view and that authenticity is surely the reason so many were content to be interviewed by her.
The history of the EDL in Luton pivots around a key moment in 2009, when a parade for the return of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Anglian Regiment from a tour of duty in Iraq was spoiled by angry protests against the Iraq War by a group of young Muslim residents. To other locals, this parade celebrated the return of local lads who had served their country. It seemed appallingly unpatriotic to subject them to verbal abuse. In any case, it was traditional to blame politicians, not soldiers, for unpopular wars and Afghanistan was in fact an unpopular war in Britain. Soldiers were often seen as victims rather than perpetrators, especially those returning with serious injuries or disabilities and those of course who died on service. They were Kipling’s ‘poor bloody infantry’ and attacking them was unacceptable.
To the protestors, on the other hand, the people of Afghanistan and perhaps also Iraq were not remote strangers, bearing in mind that at least some have family links to Pakistan, that Afghanistan and Pakistan are neighbouring states and the border between them somewhat meaningless. Modern communications also meant that they would have direct contact with people who had seen what the Anglian Regiment actually did while on duty, not all of which would be as benign as the British media preferred to suggest. Finally, Luton’s Muslims already felt they were subject to intimidation and abuse in their daily lives and saw Britain’s military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of the same oppressive patterns which they experienced – a war against Islam. What ought to happen, in a democracy, is that the close, personal as well as social and religious links between British citizens and the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan would make war impossible. Instead, the impact of Blair’s wars, it turns out, has been to marginalise Muslims in Britain, legitimise Islamaphobia and give a fresh lease of life to fascists.
Hsiao-Hung Pai is especially interested in the emergence of Islamaphobia as a focus for far right activism. Not only has this given street activists fresh targets, but the media love it and it has also been picked up with enthusiasm by the British Government, under the label of anti-extremism. It provides a much needed narrative to link foreign wars with local social and political concerns. While protesting at the alleged failure of Muslims to “integrate” with the cultural values of the wider community, everything in the hostile environment conspires to drive Muslims back on each other for support and protection, despite their best efforts to remain accepted in the wider community. It takes only a handful of real incidents to ignite the tension and the murder of Lee Rigby in 2013 was a significant event in the history of Luton’s EDL. Hsiao-Hung Pai’s EDL contacts rely on allegations and blatant smears which are validated by reports not only in red top papers but even the BBC, notably Panorama, with endorsement from mainstream elected politicians. Hsiao-Hung Pai frequently inserts into her text the factual refutations which are so widely ignored.
Nevertheless, the reality is that these sweeping claims about Muslims are not borne out in the personal experience of those interviewed for this book. Indeed, her questions drive her sources to rely on [falsifiable] media reports, or to qualify that their objections are not to all Muslims, only to “extremists,” and they turn out to have largely positive impressions of Muslims they do know, though in some towns there are virtually none. When her sources do address their personal experiences, they refer instead to the impact on their lives of cuts to public services, removal of community resources, and the collapse of industrial employment. The loss of secure employment and secure housing has ruined their lives and robbed their children of prospects. The large scale attacks on working conditions and undercutting of wages, including the use of cheap labour from other parts of the UK and from Europe, have had a terrible effect on working class communities. Nothing in the policies of the major parties, including Labour at that time, indicates the least desire to address this crisis. The banal witticism that “we are all middle class now” is actually a message that the working class have been abandoned.
This widespread despair will never be expressed only in apathy. These are industrious and energetic people, accustomed to collective self help, and it is both inevitable and appropriate that they turn to political activity to demand a hearing and a remedy for their grievances. When the main parties fail to offer a vehicle, they will develop their own. In the case of the EDL the objective was to protest at the evident abandonment of the white working class and the method was to march. Many of the complaints expressed by the EDL were shared for example by the Left, and concerned the loss of industrial employment, loss of economic security and loss of public services, but the EDL also gave expression to anger about alleged Muslim extremism based on the slanderous misinformation put forward in the mainstream media, including the BBC, and in mainstream politics, including Government policy under both the Coalition and the later Cameron government. The EDL did not accept the argument that Islamaphobia was simply a variant of racism, and while many racist or neo-Nazi groups took part in their marches, the EDL itself disowned them. The reality, as set out by Hsiao-Hung Pai, is that this mix of complaints and arguments and the method adopted to present them was irrational and internally inconsistent and she presents some evidence that leaders within the EDL came to recognise this in time, and looked for ways to evolve into something more effective.
Hsiao-Hung Pai describes the efforts made by agents on the far right to infiltrate and even take control over the EDL or to promote a unification of far right organisations and suggests that they were not successful, partly because far right politics is so inherently unstable and the differences between groups on the right are too great when put to the test. There is an obvious constituency of angry white working class men to whom political parties have the opportunity to appeal. Her book only reaches up to the general election of 2016, when she discussed the extent to which UKIP was the party best equipped to win these votes. The Conservative appeal to racism and to Islamaphobia is certainly also a factor, but many of her interviews indicate an alienation from middle class values of the type promoted by the Tories and a search for a more authentic, working class politics. Nothing in Blair’s Labour Party held any appeal whatsoever on any aspect of their concerns. However, while it is obvious that no Labour Party manifestation will ever tolerate the more racist and fascist aspects of the far right, the book does demonstrate that a Labour Party committed to the true interests of the working class in Britain would draw in disenchanted voters who have been alienated for too long and could draw them away from the poisonous attractions of the neo fascist right.
The author has been accused of painting her subjects as “Low IQ Knuckledragger Types.” On the contrary, she starts out by recognising this popular image of the EDL, which is indeed implied in the cover of the book, then proceeds to give her subjects a voice which demonstrates this is far from the case. The whole point of the book is to disprove such labelling of the EDL. [She is not reporting on other far right groups so it is wrong to generalise. ] The far right would love to enlist all of the EDL activists in their ranks for the cause of fascism, but there are grounds for hope that a more natural and rational alliance will eventually be with a revitalised and more working class oriented Labour Party of the future. This is conceivable precisely because the media image of the white working class is actually unfair and wrong. They are not naturally inclined to fascism or indeed to racism and are very much in need of political leadership. It is time for Labour to resume the job for which it was first invented and provide an outlet for the complaints and the demands of the working class.
But life for a migrant is never easy; she left behind all the security of her middle class family and had to rebuild a life in London on her own resources. She makes a few cutting asides about racial discrimination in British journalism and in general she encountered the prejudice and the occasional threats of violence that mar the lives of most migrants in Britain. The casual street level violence at the hands of racists is something every migrant learns to deal with in one way or another, but this is vastly complicated because it includes the hands of racist police officers, it is amplified by the media (especially the Mail, the Sun, the Times and the Telegraph), and after 2013 it has been overtly implemented by the government with its policy of a “hostile environment for migrants” (a disgraceful policy for any democratic government to even admit to, let alone promote).
Hsiao-Hung Pai gives her own experience a context in the broad picture of racism in Britain and makes two particular observations. One is that for its victims, it entails life changing physical and psychological harm through overt violence and systematic, sustained abuse. The harm may affect individuals but also wrecks family life and harms communities. Benjamin Zephaniah’s powerful introduction reminds readers that while thoughtful debate may proceed in political circles, for its victims the reality of racism is to be punched while walking in the street. The other observation is that racism is actively promoted in Britain, by the Home Office and its agents, by political parties, by the media and by a range of political organisations and wealthy individuals.
In all of this, she is reviewing information that is in the public domain and readily available. Hsiao-Hung Pai makes her own contribution to the discussion by reporting on the attitudes of a number of people who have played an active role in the English Defence League (the EDL) during a crucial time period between about 2011 and 2015. To achieve this, she does what a journalist does best – walking up to people and entering places that others have avoided, interviewing significant people and reporting their comments in a fair and honest way. It’s perfectly clear throughout that she does not agree with their opinions, that they often disagree with each other and that this is only a selective impression of what some people think, not a scientific study of the entire political scene. It does very well what it claims to do and it does not claim to do many things that other reviewers complain it ought to do (in their opinion). Within its own constraints, it is a valid and fascinating piece of social reporting.
While Hsiao-Hung Pai disagrees with her contacts, she also respects them, and here her status as a migrant is helpful. She is not repelled by the presence of right-wing activists, despite her open affiliation to the Left; instead she is attracted to a political environment that makes it possible for ordinary citizens to organise together and express their diverse political agendas. She has spent time in other societies – China for example – where this would simply not be tolerated. As she points out, if these people achieved their political goals, a well run, strictly policed state where diversity is not tolerated any more, then they would be its first victims. For this and other reasons she finds their politics irrational. But she roundly endorses the value of hearing what they have to say. She is genuinely interested to understand their point of view and that authenticity is surely the reason so many were content to be interviewed by her.
The history of the EDL in Luton pivots around a key moment in 2009, when a parade for the return of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Anglian Regiment from a tour of duty in Iraq was spoiled by angry protests against the Iraq War by a group of young Muslim residents. To other locals, this parade celebrated the return of local lads who had served their country. It seemed appallingly unpatriotic to subject them to verbal abuse. In any case, it was traditional to blame politicians, not soldiers, for unpopular wars and Afghanistan was in fact an unpopular war in Britain. Soldiers were often seen as victims rather than perpetrators, especially those returning with serious injuries or disabilities and those of course who died on service. They were Kipling’s ‘poor bloody infantry’ and attacking them was unacceptable.
To the protestors, on the other hand, the people of Afghanistan and perhaps also Iraq were not remote strangers, bearing in mind that at least some have family links to Pakistan, that Afghanistan and Pakistan are neighbouring states and the border between them somewhat meaningless. Modern communications also meant that they would have direct contact with people who had seen what the Anglian Regiment actually did while on duty, not all of which would be as benign as the British media preferred to suggest. Finally, Luton’s Muslims already felt they were subject to intimidation and abuse in their daily lives and saw Britain’s military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of the same oppressive patterns which they experienced – a war against Islam. What ought to happen, in a democracy, is that the close, personal as well as social and religious links between British citizens and the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan would make war impossible. Instead, the impact of Blair’s wars, it turns out, has been to marginalise Muslims in Britain, legitimise Islamaphobia and give a fresh lease of life to fascists.
Hsiao-Hung Pai is especially interested in the emergence of Islamaphobia as a focus for far right activism. Not only has this given street activists fresh targets, but the media love it and it has also been picked up with enthusiasm by the British Government, under the label of anti-extremism. It provides a much needed narrative to link foreign wars with local social and political concerns. While protesting at the alleged failure of Muslims to “integrate” with the cultural values of the wider community, everything in the hostile environment conspires to drive Muslims back on each other for support and protection, despite their best efforts to remain accepted in the wider community. It takes only a handful of real incidents to ignite the tension and the murder of Lee Rigby in 2013 was a significant event in the history of Luton’s EDL. Hsiao-Hung Pai’s EDL contacts rely on allegations and blatant smears which are validated by reports not only in red top papers but even the BBC, notably Panorama, with endorsement from mainstream elected politicians. Hsiao-Hung Pai frequently inserts into her text the factual refutations which are so widely ignored.
Nevertheless, the reality is that these sweeping claims about Muslims are not borne out in the personal experience of those interviewed for this book. Indeed, her questions drive her sources to rely on [falsifiable] media reports, or to qualify that their objections are not to all Muslims, only to “extremists,” and they turn out to have largely positive impressions of Muslims they do know, though in some towns there are virtually none. When her sources do address their personal experiences, they refer instead to the impact on their lives of cuts to public services, removal of community resources, and the collapse of industrial employment. The loss of secure employment and secure housing has ruined their lives and robbed their children of prospects. The large scale attacks on working conditions and undercutting of wages, including the use of cheap labour from other parts of the UK and from Europe, have had a terrible effect on working class communities. Nothing in the policies of the major parties, including Labour at that time, indicates the least desire to address this crisis. The banal witticism that “we are all middle class now” is actually a message that the working class have been abandoned.
This widespread despair will never be expressed only in apathy. These are industrious and energetic people, accustomed to collective self help, and it is both inevitable and appropriate that they turn to political activity to demand a hearing and a remedy for their grievances. When the main parties fail to offer a vehicle, they will develop their own. In the case of the EDL the objective was to protest at the evident abandonment of the white working class and the method was to march. Many of the complaints expressed by the EDL were shared for example by the Left, and concerned the loss of industrial employment, loss of economic security and loss of public services, but the EDL also gave expression to anger about alleged Muslim extremism based on the slanderous misinformation put forward in the mainstream media, including the BBC, and in mainstream politics, including Government policy under both the Coalition and the later Cameron government. The EDL did not accept the argument that Islamaphobia was simply a variant of racism, and while many racist or neo-Nazi groups took part in their marches, the EDL itself disowned them. The reality, as set out by Hsiao-Hung Pai, is that this mix of complaints and arguments and the method adopted to present them was irrational and internally inconsistent and she presents some evidence that leaders within the EDL came to recognise this in time, and looked for ways to evolve into something more effective.
Hsiao-Hung Pai describes the efforts made by agents on the far right to infiltrate and even take control over the EDL or to promote a unification of far right organisations and suggests that they were not successful, partly because far right politics is so inherently unstable and the differences between groups on the right are too great when put to the test. There is an obvious constituency of angry white working class men to whom political parties have the opportunity to appeal. Her book only reaches up to the general election of 2016, when she discussed the extent to which UKIP was the party best equipped to win these votes. The Conservative appeal to racism and to Islamaphobia is certainly also a factor, but many of her interviews indicate an alienation from middle class values of the type promoted by the Tories and a search for a more authentic, working class politics. Nothing in Blair’s Labour Party held any appeal whatsoever on any aspect of their concerns. However, while it is obvious that no Labour Party manifestation will ever tolerate the more racist and fascist aspects of the far right, the book does demonstrate that a Labour Party committed to the true interests of the working class in Britain would draw in disenchanted voters who have been alienated for too long and could draw them away from the poisonous attractions of the neo fascist right.
The author has been accused of painting her subjects as “Low IQ Knuckledragger Types.” On the contrary, she starts out by recognising this popular image of the EDL, which is indeed implied in the cover of the book, then proceeds to give her subjects a voice which demonstrates this is far from the case. The whole point of the book is to disprove such labelling of the EDL. [She is not reporting on other far right groups so it is wrong to generalise. ] The far right would love to enlist all of the EDL activists in their ranks for the cause of fascism, but there are grounds for hope that a more natural and rational alliance will eventually be with a revitalised and more working class oriented Labour Party of the future. This is conceivable precisely because the media image of the white working class is actually unfair and wrong. They are not naturally inclined to fascism or indeed to racism and are very much in need of political leadership. It is time for Labour to resume the job for which it was first invented and provide an outlet for the complaints and the demands of the working class.
October 24, 2016
This book came with the highest recommendation: Rod Liddle hated it. I know this because he ranted incoherently about it in the Spectator, as is his wont. Since, to my knowledge, Rod Liddle has never been right about anything, and — barring a Damascene conversion — will never be right on anything, I thought the book must be good. Besides, this is a desperately important topic and one of great personal interest to me. For obvious reasons, I have spent a lot of the last few months wondering how it is that the country where I've spent my entire adult life has become such a breeding ground for far-right extremism. We really need a book on this topic.
Unfortunately, this is not a very good book. I hasten to add that this does not make Rod Liddle right (see what I said above about the impossibility of that). Or, at least, if he is right that this isn't a very good book, it's for entirely the wrong reason (I'm not sure what a Liddle-approved book on the British far-right would look like, but I imagine it would probably contain the phrase 'hurrah for the Blackshirts' at least once).
The problems are two-fold. Firstly, Ms Pai's methodology is never very clear. She is too obviously revolted by her subject matter to ever really become a participant-obsever. That is understandable. However, given that she has decided to take an etic approach, she provides remarkably little in the way of detailed analysis. Instead, she quote — at great length — from her sources. What this demonstrates is that most members of the English Defence League and similar groups are inarticulate, incoherent, and fundamentally boring. That's not an insignificant point in itself, but I'm pretty sure I knew that before it was demonstrated over the course of more than 300 pages.
It is perfectly possible to write arrestingly about groups of horrible people. The descriptions of George Wallace rallies in Gary Wills' book [i]Nixon Agonistes[/i] are a brilliant example of this. It is perhaps not fair to compare Ms Pai to Dr Wills, who at his prime was probably the best journalistic writer on American politics. Even by less exalted standards than this, however, her prose is leaden. It has all of the dullness of most social scientific writing without much of its compensating academic rigour. Combined with the exhaustingly long and tedious quotations from her sources, this makes the book very difficult to read indeed. For this Zed Books must take some of the blame: a better editor would at least have reduced the length of the book and some of the more pointless repetitions. Unsurprisingly, the forward by Benjamin Zephaniah, is much better written than the rest of the book. More intriguingly, so is the autobiographical afterword by the author herself.
It is, though, the final chapter, on the rise of UKIP, that exposes the books biggest fault. The EDL is a sideshow. What worries me more are the ordinary racists and xenophobes of Britain's suburbs and terraces, who read the Express or Mail, who claim that that they're not racist but have concerns about 'mass immigration', who speak of 'law and order' with an undisguised lust for the jackboot, and who finally found in Brexit their great political purpose and the triumph of their will. Perhaps it would take an author of the caliber of Orwell to understand the source of the evil that consumes them and has now consumed this country. Unfortunately, Ms Pai is no Orwell.
Unfortunately, this is not a very good book. I hasten to add that this does not make Rod Liddle right (see what I said above about the impossibility of that). Or, at least, if he is right that this isn't a very good book, it's for entirely the wrong reason (I'm not sure what a Liddle-approved book on the British far-right would look like, but I imagine it would probably contain the phrase 'hurrah for the Blackshirts' at least once).
The problems are two-fold. Firstly, Ms Pai's methodology is never very clear. She is too obviously revolted by her subject matter to ever really become a participant-obsever. That is understandable. However, given that she has decided to take an etic approach, she provides remarkably little in the way of detailed analysis. Instead, she quote — at great length — from her sources. What this demonstrates is that most members of the English Defence League and similar groups are inarticulate, incoherent, and fundamentally boring. That's not an insignificant point in itself, but I'm pretty sure I knew that before it was demonstrated over the course of more than 300 pages.
It is perfectly possible to write arrestingly about groups of horrible people. The descriptions of George Wallace rallies in Gary Wills' book [i]Nixon Agonistes[/i] are a brilliant example of this. It is perhaps not fair to compare Ms Pai to Dr Wills, who at his prime was probably the best journalistic writer on American politics. Even by less exalted standards than this, however, her prose is leaden. It has all of the dullness of most social scientific writing without much of its compensating academic rigour. Combined with the exhaustingly long and tedious quotations from her sources, this makes the book very difficult to read indeed. For this Zed Books must take some of the blame: a better editor would at least have reduced the length of the book and some of the more pointless repetitions. Unsurprisingly, the forward by Benjamin Zephaniah, is much better written than the rest of the book. More intriguingly, so is the autobiographical afterword by the author herself.
It is, though, the final chapter, on the rise of UKIP, that exposes the books biggest fault. The EDL is a sideshow. What worries me more are the ordinary racists and xenophobes of Britain's suburbs and terraces, who read the Express or Mail, who claim that that they're not racist but have concerns about 'mass immigration', who speak of 'law and order' with an undisguised lust for the jackboot, and who finally found in Brexit their great political purpose and the triumph of their will. Perhaps it would take an author of the caliber of Orwell to understand the source of the evil that consumes them and has now consumed this country. Unfortunately, Ms Pai is no Orwell.
April 27, 2017
This Author Wants Readers To Think That The Nationalist Movements Are Made Up Of Low IQ Knuckledragger Types
The grotesque photograph on the front cover of this book alludes to the author's contempt-the extreme image is deliberately being used to encourage a condemnation from those who might otherwise be sympathetic to the movements objectives.She is manipulatively trying to discredit legitimate British nationalism and she is over simplifying a complex issue.
This publication is pushing a Leftist hardcore agenda. Hsiao Hung Pai's reminiscence about Stratford East London and the days of Red Action, a far left group known for being aggressive towards people they considered to be their fascist opponents, was quite strange.
"In London, we had a group called Red Action, a bunch of leftwingers who operated like an alternative police force. They would come to clubs and gatherings and make sure that the event was not invaded and that people got home safely. There were no mobile phones so they would communicate with each other using walkie-talkies, and they would react to our distress calls much quicker than Her Majesty’s police force"
In actuality Red Action was an anti social group of white young men who viewed themselves as the good guys & enthusiastically espoused the use of violence-they were also active supporters of the IRA.
Some of the statements in this book are proof positive of the secular Left's intolerance. Hsia Hung Pai believes those who dissent or think differently to her are dangerous & must be silenced.The socialist ideals of the Left have proved themselves to be hypocritical and alarmingly detached from reality.This author is wrong to depict nationalists and cultural conservatives as dysfunctional extremists for attempting to put forth a differing opinion.She obviously has an aversion to overt displays of nationalism and she is imposing her biased interpretation on the motivations of the emergent right instead of trying to understand how they themselves are making meaning in their own settings.
We live in an environment where there is an increasing competition for access to resources,where our nation state nearly lost it's authority when the locus of real decision making shifted elsewhere (the EU).These people are justifiably trying to make their voice heard in a culture where the Left controls & dominates the mainstream media.Many of these people are interested in raising the consciousness of the general public & their protest is necessary in terms of challenging the status quo.Political parties need to respond to their disillusionment.
The Left created the (new) Right when it attacked freedom of speech,when it attacked traditions and Christian beliefs,when it constantly referred to ordinary people with legitimate concerns as racist xenophobes,when it told people to shut up & get on board because they were the "wrong side of history",when it confused women's rights with marxist feminism,when it began to emasculate men,when it decided to introduce brainwashing into children's education,when it decided to push it's extremely progressive godless ideals,when it decided to let the state get out of control---People became fed up and then they got angry and then they pushed back. Nationalist movements and populist movements have evolved as a result of stress put upon them by the left wing in this country.
The grotesque photograph on the front cover of this book alludes to the author's contempt-the extreme image is deliberately being used to encourage a condemnation from those who might otherwise be sympathetic to the movements objectives.She is manipulatively trying to discredit legitimate British nationalism and she is over simplifying a complex issue.
This publication is pushing a Leftist hardcore agenda. Hsiao Hung Pai's reminiscence about Stratford East London and the days of Red Action, a far left group known for being aggressive towards people they considered to be their fascist opponents, was quite strange.
"In London, we had a group called Red Action, a bunch of leftwingers who operated like an alternative police force. They would come to clubs and gatherings and make sure that the event was not invaded and that people got home safely. There were no mobile phones so they would communicate with each other using walkie-talkies, and they would react to our distress calls much quicker than Her Majesty’s police force"
In actuality Red Action was an anti social group of white young men who viewed themselves as the good guys & enthusiastically espoused the use of violence-they were also active supporters of the IRA.
Some of the statements in this book are proof positive of the secular Left's intolerance. Hsia Hung Pai believes those who dissent or think differently to her are dangerous & must be silenced.The socialist ideals of the Left have proved themselves to be hypocritical and alarmingly detached from reality.This author is wrong to depict nationalists and cultural conservatives as dysfunctional extremists for attempting to put forth a differing opinion.She obviously has an aversion to overt displays of nationalism and she is imposing her biased interpretation on the motivations of the emergent right instead of trying to understand how they themselves are making meaning in their own settings.
We live in an environment where there is an increasing competition for access to resources,where our nation state nearly lost it's authority when the locus of real decision making shifted elsewhere (the EU).These people are justifiably trying to make their voice heard in a culture where the Left controls & dominates the mainstream media.Many of these people are interested in raising the consciousness of the general public & their protest is necessary in terms of challenging the status quo.Political parties need to respond to their disillusionment.
The Left created the (new) Right when it attacked freedom of speech,when it attacked traditions and Christian beliefs,when it constantly referred to ordinary people with legitimate concerns as racist xenophobes,when it told people to shut up & get on board because they were the "wrong side of history",when it confused women's rights with marxist feminism,when it began to emasculate men,when it decided to introduce brainwashing into children's education,when it decided to push it's extremely progressive godless ideals,when it decided to let the state get out of control---People became fed up and then they got angry and then they pushed back. Nationalist movements and populist movements have evolved as a result of stress put upon them by the left wing in this country.
April 16, 2016
Like most things, racism changes over time. When my mother in law, as a young Jewish girl, was being chased by members of the British Union of Fascists through the East End of London, we knew who was fascist and racist and we knew that they hated Jews. When I was growing there was a huge uprising of racism led by the National Front, at this time skinheads, fascism and racism became synonymous (together with football hooliganism), their targets were migrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh and the Caribbean. There was a particular spike in the period when Ugandan Asians were expelled from Uganda and were accepted by the UK. Working-class East Enders (Dockers) demonstrated against them and Enoch Powell, a prominent Conservative minister, made his infamous ‘rivers of blood’ speech, with its allusions to slavery in his references to the black man of the future having ‘the whip hand’. I remember going on anti-racist rallies and joined the Anti-Nazi League as a teenager against this. One could go back even further, before the term fascist had been invented and when there were anti Irish riots in England, against those who had migrated due to the potato famine. And before this, antisemitism in the middle ages, when the Jews in York were burned to death.
The new target is Muslims, and Islamophobia is the new problem (although many of these already fell under the label of Asian and have been subjected to racism for generations in the UK). Add to this refugees, and those who have accessed the UK from Eastern Europe through the EU’s labour movement policies. The reaction to Islam and this new migration is the rise of the EDL and UKIP. The typical neo-Nazi is still there and one could draw a Venn diagram showing the overlap between their support and that of the EDL and UKIP. As always, their support is a mix of the mad, the bad and the gormless.
A particular focus of this book is the EDL. It originated in Luton, a town I lived in for about seven years. The centre of activity is the Farley Hill estate and I lived at the edge of this and know well many of the areas mentioned in the book: Marsh Farm (where I was the branch librarian) and the predominantly Asian/Muslim Bury Park (where I helped set up a library for that particular community). Luton is a town of migrants: African-Caribbean, Asian, Scottish and Irish in particular. The Labour Party was strong, drawing its support from a wide cross section of the community. As it swung to the right to capture the lower middle class vote it seems to have lost the support of many of the more vulnerably employed working class, this has haemorrhaged into support for racist groups of various kinds.
Hsiao-Hung Pai is a lot braver than me. She meets racists in pubs and on estates and ask them details of their views. She can understand the problems of many. Trapped into low paid, casualised work (or no work) and battered by the impact of globalisation and the decline of traditional industries, their prospects are bleak. The group achieving least through education in the UK is now the white working-class. Add to this the disparagement and attacks on this group through the media (chavs, scroungers and the like) and we can see a group with genuine grievances. However, for most the abstractness of neo-liberal capitalism is too remote in comparison with the Polish or Romanian families moving into their estates in small numbers, or ‘Islamificaton’.
I read recently that the most important issue for most English is immigration. For many, this is a topic that is more important to many that the state of the health service, access to decent housing, their children’s education or whether they can afford to keep a roof over their head. While migration is high in some areas, that this is the most important issue for most people when the only impact is hearing someone with an East European accent serving in a shop, of seeing a young woman in a niqab in the street is very odd. Hsiao-Hung visits Eastleigh, a town with almost no East European migrants, but this is the one topic that is on the lips of the residents. The media must play a part in this, as they do with the Islamophobia narrative.
This book is a fascinating and useful addition to the others on English racism and in particular the EDL. I’ve had an interest in the far right for some time and I remember books about the National Front that I read in the 70s. At the time there was a struggle between the overtly Nazi elements and those whose goal was electoral respectability. Perhaps the rise of the EDL and UKIP are part of a final shift in this struggle moving the debate in the far right away from antisemitism and Nazi ideology and into more ‘respectable’ forms of racism and Islamophobia. As with earlier forms of racism this fails to address the real causes of anxiety in communities and deflects it instead onto others with a different language, culture or religion. Time will tell, but it might be that this is more pernicious than a few jackbooted nutters marching in the streets.
The new target is Muslims, and Islamophobia is the new problem (although many of these already fell under the label of Asian and have been subjected to racism for generations in the UK). Add to this refugees, and those who have accessed the UK from Eastern Europe through the EU’s labour movement policies. The reaction to Islam and this new migration is the rise of the EDL and UKIP. The typical neo-Nazi is still there and one could draw a Venn diagram showing the overlap between their support and that of the EDL and UKIP. As always, their support is a mix of the mad, the bad and the gormless.
A particular focus of this book is the EDL. It originated in Luton, a town I lived in for about seven years. The centre of activity is the Farley Hill estate and I lived at the edge of this and know well many of the areas mentioned in the book: Marsh Farm (where I was the branch librarian) and the predominantly Asian/Muslim Bury Park (where I helped set up a library for that particular community). Luton is a town of migrants: African-Caribbean, Asian, Scottish and Irish in particular. The Labour Party was strong, drawing its support from a wide cross section of the community. As it swung to the right to capture the lower middle class vote it seems to have lost the support of many of the more vulnerably employed working class, this has haemorrhaged into support for racist groups of various kinds.
Hsiao-Hung Pai is a lot braver than me. She meets racists in pubs and on estates and ask them details of their views. She can understand the problems of many. Trapped into low paid, casualised work (or no work) and battered by the impact of globalisation and the decline of traditional industries, their prospects are bleak. The group achieving least through education in the UK is now the white working-class. Add to this the disparagement and attacks on this group through the media (chavs, scroungers and the like) and we can see a group with genuine grievances. However, for most the abstractness of neo-liberal capitalism is too remote in comparison with the Polish or Romanian families moving into their estates in small numbers, or ‘Islamificaton’.
I read recently that the most important issue for most English is immigration. For many, this is a topic that is more important to many that the state of the health service, access to decent housing, their children’s education or whether they can afford to keep a roof over their head. While migration is high in some areas, that this is the most important issue for most people when the only impact is hearing someone with an East European accent serving in a shop, of seeing a young woman in a niqab in the street is very odd. Hsiao-Hung visits Eastleigh, a town with almost no East European migrants, but this is the one topic that is on the lips of the residents. The media must play a part in this, as they do with the Islamophobia narrative.
This book is a fascinating and useful addition to the others on English racism and in particular the EDL. I’ve had an interest in the far right for some time and I remember books about the National Front that I read in the 70s. At the time there was a struggle between the overtly Nazi elements and those whose goal was electoral respectability. Perhaps the rise of the EDL and UKIP are part of a final shift in this struggle moving the debate in the far right away from antisemitism and Nazi ideology and into more ‘respectable’ forms of racism and Islamophobia. As with earlier forms of racism this fails to address the real causes of anxiety in communities and deflects it instead onto others with a different language, culture or religion. Time will tell, but it might be that this is more pernicious than a few jackbooted nutters marching in the streets.
April 17, 2017
Very good investigative journalism. Looks at the forces driving the emergence of new far right groups in the UK. However, it lacks a deeper analysis of the structural dynamics of contemporary capitalism, partially driving this re-emergence.
December 5, 2021
If you don't already despise white privileged right wing gammon mentality in the UK already, you will after reading this. Give it your brexit supporting parents for Christmas just to piss em off. Awesome book.
June 2, 2017
The topic intrigued me and if you like controversial subject matter this sounds like a page turner, but it lacks research and sadly needs a story. Pai does mention a lot of groups and the leaders but save your time read the bad reviews and wait for a better book. I even blame the book publisher and editor for its failure. There were over 30 used books on sale on Amazon and it wasn't even 6 weeks after launch. It's slow and hard to get past the first 30 pages. I felt they tried everything they could to make it to 400 pages but could not stretch it out any farther than 384 pages. It reminds me of the Beatles song "Let it Be" it kept repeating. I don't know if Hsiao-Hung Pai even researched her subject matter or understood the scope of the title. I think the publisher should Google some of her content. I say this because Anjem Choudary is in jail for hate, terrorism, and anti-Britain agendas. Pai says she is charmed by him. She treats Darren her main contact like dirt even though he is trying to help her (diva syndrome?) Lastly her questions are not laughable but just boring. I feel this book is written by a rebellious teen the night before and the child thinks the teacher is an idiot.
January 29, 2018
Rather disappointed by this. Was expecting something more than the stating of the obvious. Includes many discussions with right-wing people, but doesn't even begin to explain the whys, and is even rather meagre on the hows. Pity, because the author's heart is, at least, in the right place, and she writes well
January 1, 2019
Irrespective of your politics, this is a dull book. Anecdotal conversations with whoever with no analysis of the important issues the book should be covering. I'm sure I read pretty much the same six pages earlier ... oh yes I did! I'll have a look and see what's coming up in six pages time .... more of the same ...
March 1, 2017
It can feel a bit slow in the middle, but it's an interesting subject and the ending is very really made me think.
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