Race and the Undeserving Poor: From Abolition to Brexit

by Robbie Shilliam

Over recent years, tabloid readers have become familiar with the concept of the "white working class", those thought to have been "left behind" by globalization, including immigration. Such sentiments were weaponized by politicians on all sides to fuel the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the Brexit campaign. And this racialized narrative has emerged repeatedly in mature democracies – in the political campaigns of Trump, Le Pen and others – and continues to gain traction in the guise of economic nationalism and populism. The need to understand the putative emergence of the white working class has become both intellectually significant and politically urgent.

In Race and the Undeserving Poor , Robbie Shilliam does just this. He charts the development over the past 200 years of a shifting postcolonial settlement that has produced a racialized distinction between the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor, the latest incarnation of which is a distinction between a deserving, neglected white working class and "others" who are undeserving, not indigenous, and not white. Shilliam's analysis shows that the white working class are not an indigenous constituency, but a product of the struggles to consolidate and defend imperial order that have shaped British society since the abolition of slavery.

Genres: Nonfiction, Race, History, British Literature

192 pages, Paperback

Published June 30, 2018

Reviews

[Alfie Hancox · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the most important book to understand Brexit and the present strength of social imperialism on the left (Corbynism included)

[Kei S · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was on my shelf for a while and I picked it up after the recent far-right uprisings in the UK. this is an interesting book that explores the genealogy of the concept of the 'white working class', situating it in term of British colonial history. the author charts the development of a racialised distinction between deserving and undeserving poor, a category that has shifted to mark different groups over time, with the white working class representing a recent incarnation of a 'deserving' (but neglected) constituency.

I found an early chapter about the poor laws in England the most interesting. the author shows how many white abolitionists and defenders of the English rural poor explicitly analogised the English poor to Black slaves. these elite commentators were concerned that the slave-like condition of the English poor put them at risk of developing the 'undeserving' traits and habits (e.g. idleness, impropriety, anarchy) that were then associated with/projected onto Black enslaved people in the colonies. for figures like William Cobbett, a champion of the rural poor, the 'English genus' was therefore at risk of being 'blackened' and the poor laws were a way to inculcate the 'deserving' qualities of industriousness and respect for patriarchal order associated with the 'English genus'.
already in this chapter, I felt I could see the seeds of so much of contemporary right-wing discourse around e.g. 'work-shy benefits claimants', 'bogus asylum seekers', fears of an anarchical takeover of England by migrants who 'won't integrate' or despise 'British values'.

I also found interesting the argument about how the end of informal colour bars/ diminishing 'wages of whiteness' gave rise to a sense of white people being 'left behind', i.e. losing (a significant amount of) their relative privilege in relation to the black and brown working class.

I am giving it 3 stars* mainly as I found it difficult to read. I think partly this was because the text is so rich given how relatively short the book is that a lot of argument is condensed into each page. I had to re-read many of the pages multiple times (and still not always understand) so I would have preferred a longer book with more explication. to be fair, the topics covered are clearly not straightforward and the ideas being explored contain contradictions and tensions. also, a lot of returning concepts (new to me) were used, but felt under-developed, such as 'little platoons', 'orderly independence', ''national compact'. the author also repeatedly used dated or unusual turns of phrase like 'in fine' and 'mooted' which added to the difficulty.

I think also we are dealing today with a construction of the 'left behind' which is not simply top-down. the book articulates a history of the elite construction of the racialised deserving/undeserving distinction and I would have liked to learn more about the history of working class constructions of class and race, especially where elite constructions were contested or transformed.

EDIT 23/10/2024: I've been thinking about the contents of this book a lot since, so have updated the rating.