Make Bradford British?

If you heard about Make Bradford British a couple of weeks ago on Twitter you might be excused for mistaking it for a racist slogan. But then you might have found a link to the Channel 4 citizenship test and discovered that if you wouldn't pass the tests immigrants go through to get into this country. This was a step-up from the pinhead documentary Proud and Prejudiced, which almost portrayed the crypto-Nazi EDL as defenders of multicultural Britain against radical Islam. The stated point of Make Bradford British was the standard concern about the lack of integration in a racially tense place like Bradford to create a model for a multicultural Britain. The line that the liberal intelligentsia was the main proponent behind multiculturalism was quickly trotted out, but in terms that the mission had failed to deliver integration outside of London. The emphasis on a set of 'common values' came out at the beginning and end of the episodes.

A pair of 'diversity experts' invite us to watch this search for an answer to the question "What does it mean to be British nowadays?" The problem with this is that it assumes there is or should be a thing called 'Britishness'. We have forgotten that Great Britain is composed of a union between the English, the Scottish, the Welsh and the Irish. It is a marriage of convenience that has lasted a very long time. It was never about a nation, tradition or identity. It is almost as absurd as the French having a fit over the disappearance of the King of France. The standard spectrum on this debate runs from the view that we ought to respect 'other cultures' to the position that we need to reassert 'our values'. These are just empty signifiers and that remains so even if we are calling for a return to the values of Boudica. At best we can only tolerate the Other, which is especially easy if they fit into a neat unit which renders them 'one of us'.

Rashid and Damon were the most interesting to see 'interact', the rest was a standard mash up of fake lessons regurgitated for the camera upon command. The copper had to learn to look beyond the blackness of Desmond and the liberal bint had to find someone who won't tolerate her sinuous nonsense. Rashid and Damon are set up to share the same bedroom, but they move one bed out of the room so that the two can sleep separately from one another. It was an agreement that they both reached. Rashid was presented as a Muslim absorbed by his faith to the point of inconveniencing the team with the call to prayer. The cheap lesson in the first episode was Rashid putting aside going to his mosque to pray in order to go on an outing with the team. Whereas, Damon came out with the predictable lines about the Muslim community - the lack of integration demonstrated by women wearing headscarves etc. - that you can enjoy in our fine press. He went as far as to defend the use of the slur 'Paki' at dinner and admits that he viewed mosques as 'terrorist centres'.

Then Damon started to go to the gym with Rashid and visits the mosque in a predominantly Asian area which Damon had avoided for so long. It was warming to see these two men paint the bedroom of Damon's daughter. Even more heartening was the scene where Damon tells Rashid that it is he - the bearded Muslim - who is in fact closer to his grandparents and their 'British values' than he is. Damon has since attended the wedding of Rashid's sister. This moment went beyond the multicultural trite of liberals and the white whines of conservatives. Even though the rest of the participants regurgitated the same old platitudes and shallow ideas of what it means to live in a multicultural democracy. It may have meant to just reenforce the old narrative that there needs to be a national centre to a plurality of cultures in contemporary Britain. But it included a moment of great potential.

Holism, White Whines & Multiculturalism.

 The White Whine.

In 1968 Enoch Powell delivered the notorious 'Rivers of Blood' speech in which he speculated that "in 15 to 20 years time the black man would have the whip hand over the white man." The speech is often invoked by the radical Right as prophetic of the "failures" of multiculturalism, with it's liberal ideas of tolerance, diversity and equality. So whenever there is a suicide-bombing we are reminded that "Enoch was right" supposedly. Enoch Powell was the first to remind us he was right in 1981 when he saw the riots of Brixton and Toxteth. Coincidentally these riots were the result of the economic policies of Margaret Thatcher, which Powell had supported and actually promoted for years. So the calls for voluntary repatriation from Powell provided a cover for the consequences of monetarism, when mass-privatisation and deregulation lead to the devastation of the working-classes there is a need for a scapegoat. For Powell it was clear that the scapegoat had to be black.

Today it is typical to hear about the "multicultural experiment" that began in the 1960s or vaguely after WW2 with a massive influx of immigrants from the West Indies and later India. Actually the tradition of the British Empire was to allow all people loyal to the British monarchy into the country and it was only when the Attlee administration introduced the Nationality Act that this practice became formal. Enoch Powell believed that his speech might put Ted Heath on the spot, a situation from which he might then capitalise on. If the Conservatives failed to defeat Labour in 1970 Powell could have challenged Heath's leadership and then lead the Party on a populist ticket against Wilson in '74. Instead, Ted Heath marginalised Powell and won the General Election. Ted Heath pushed through the Immigration act of 1971, which restricted immigration even further than the Commonwealth Immigrants act of 1962 - which had restricted immigration to people who had been allocated work vouchers - and immigration was almost put to a complete stop.

It is often forgot that Enoch Powell was a monetarist and a proponent of small government, which has made him influential amongst Thatcherites. So he was no fan of Europe, budget deficits and immigration, but Powell was a fan of the privatisation of public services. Powell was born into the lower middle-class, he joined the army and aspired to become the Viceroy of India without serving on the battlefield. After Indian independence Powell drew up a plan to reconquer India. Powell was also a classicist and served as a Lieutenant-Colonel in Northern Africa in the Second World War, it was not a heroic service though it was marked by an amusing incident in which he burned his moustache when trying to get a fire going. Though Powell did think he was the right kind of man to rule over millions of black people. He hated Neville Chamberlain for selling Britain out, not for appeasing Hitler specifically, and was always deeply troubled by the decline of Britain as an imperial power. In a nutshell, the 'Rivers of Blood' speech was a white whine and nothing more.

On a regular basis we still hear the white whinging today about immigration, even as we are entering a pensions crisis which may be avoided through immigration. The presupposition of such whinging is that the liberal doctrine of multiculturalism has been imposed by the state through mass-immigration for decades which has undermined British values and led to division in society. Immigration has not been left to flow without a stop for decades, it has been opened up and closed before being opened up a little bit and closed once more. The class divisions in British society are far bigger than 'cultural' divisions created by immigration. As for British values, there were never any to begin with and that is because there has never been a British nation. The notion of multiculturalism has never been a consistent part of policy. But it has merely been talked about an awful lot whilst partially initiated only as far as the tendency of the market is towards pluralism and relativism.

A Community of Communities.

The liberal conception of multiculturalism is insufficient, putting aside cultural relativism as it's disturbing manifestation in South Africa is too often overlooked. Officially apartheid was initiated to separate the multitude of tribes and ethnic groups into Bantustans in order to prevent such groups from "drowning" in white culture. The racist hegemonic nature of multiculturalism was not obfuscated in South Africa, rather it was taken to its most logical conclusion and the African National Congress were labelled "terrorists" by the regime. The cynical liberal wisdom was supplanted with white nationalism and we can see this in Holism as propagated by Jan Smuts. Holism held that the world is composed of wholes, each of which constitute a grand system that can sustain and stabilise itself. The stability of the system was guaranteed by the arrangement of wholes, provided each whole remained in the right place the system could be maintained. Every whole is made up of small wholes which are evolving and will inevitably come together to form larger wholes until finally becoming part of a single unified whole.

At the time Holism provided a justification for British imperialism and racial segregation. The Empire was the self-organised system; the wholes were the lands colonised along the way. To guarantee the order of such a system it was imperative that the wholes be kept in place. The essence of Smuts' argument was that the blacks have to be kept in their place otherwise the natural order will be disturbed beyond repair, from whence the idea of the Bantustan comes. The liberal vision of multiculturalism offers us a conception of society as a community of communities, each with a distinct identity and set of moral values which is appropriate to that community. Then we find ourselves witnesses to the condemnation of homosexuality in one community and the election of politicians by another community to defend gay rights. In the Netherlands we have seen the gay community rally behind the nationalists against the Muslim community in this way.


Typically there is no mention of the white community in all of this, but that is not because multiculturalism is racist to white people as the reactionaries claim. The notable similarities between liberal multiculturalism and Apartheid proves such a claim absurd. The presupposition of multiculturalism is that the white community is hegemonic, it is the dominant community into which all other communities can be meshed neatly. In multiculturalism it is the neutral framework which protects each culture so that it can thrive in its appropriate way. The Harm Principle is invoked as a way of setting limits to such 'thriving', but even the limits of the Harm Principle are not clear enough and we find ourselves demanding the average Muslim to become a white middle-class liberal. Because liberalism works best when everyone is a fucking liberal! The forces of the market lean towards pluralism, but these same forces require a reaction against such pluralism in order to defend the market as Enoch Powell demonstrated.

There is a genuine need for a common project which is universal in nature, international in scope and radically egalitarian all at once. In Tahrir Square there was a common struggle against Mubarak which united Muslims and Christians. There have also been instances in which Muslim women in traditional dress and lesbian Jews have been brought together in protest against the Israeli government. These are just glimpses of what is possible at a societal level of solidarity. The liberal form of multiculturalism offers a decaffeinated Other, a Muslim community without a Muslim community. The nationalists drive this to it's logical conclusion and call for bans on the veil, halal meat and so on in defence of freedom. To put it bluntly the dichotomy of the debate is shaped by the contradictions of the economic system and the way fascists respond to such contradictions from a managerial perspective. We need to make radical changes if we want to construct the universalist alternative to multiculturalism and fascism.

Social Networks, Resistance and the New Capitalism.

Genealogy of Systems.

Adam Curtis has churned out an article on the history of the 'ecosystem' in relation to the protests against cuts. The notion is linked closely with the idea of a universal equilibrium in all of nature. The central problem with the idea is that it can be manipulated by the powerful and utilised to serve other ends. It can be used to justify and enforce a particular view of the world, in order to maintain power structures of authority and domination. The idea of an 'ecosystem' was used by the counter-cultural movement of the 1960s as thousands of young Americans formed communes in order to leave behind the old forms of control - political, hierarchical, sexual and so on. A new order would be forged out of a network of communes throughout which information would flow freely in house meetings and a kind of stability would emerge as a result. In actuality, house meetings turned into sessions in which the strong would bully the weak and everyone else could only stand back and watch.

It was Arthur Tansley who came up with the concept of an 'ecosystem'. He had done so after he read Freud in search of answers for a disturbing nightmare he had in which he murdered his wife. Tansley actually underwent psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud. He took the Freudian idea of the brain as a kind of electrical machine - a network throughout which energy flowed - and applied it to nature. For Tansley the complexity of the natural world conceals an array of interconnected systems around which energy flowed and he coined a name for them - ecosystems. From here Tansley went on to claim that there is a universal equilibrium in nature, everything from the mind to nature and society tend towards a state of equilibrium. Essentially Tansley had projected mechanical qualities onto nature, in order to make sense of the complexities of it, without any real evidence to do so. Then Jan Smuts came along with an even grander theory of nature, Tansley hated it.

Jan Smuts was one of the most powerful men in the British Empire and he ruled over South Africa. When the Hottentots refused to pay their dog licenses Smuts sent in planes to bomb them. Smuts found time to get away from bombing black people to go up into the mountains, get naked and contemplate the natural order of things. Smuts came up with Holism, which held that the world is composed of wholes which are each a part of a giant system that would find its own stability if all the wholes were in their right places. Each of the small wholes are evolving and coming together to form larger wholes until all come together into one big whole. As critics pointed out, Smuts was merely providing a justification for imperialism as well as racial segregation. It was clear that the Empire could be seen as a giant self-organised and regulated system in which wholes are kept in the proper place: blacks should stay in their natural whole and not disturb the order of the system.

The Hippies used a hybrid of the ideas of Arthur Tansley and Jan Smuts in combination with cybernetic theories drawn from recent innovations in computer theory in the 1960s and 70s. The dream of a better world which could regulate and stabilise itself failed time and again, whether the ideas were applied for radical or conservative ends. It is incapable of dealing with power, as there could be no sides to take nor alliances to forge in a totally self-regulated and stabilised system. It leads to that same managerial style of political engagement, which has become prevalent since the end of the Cold War in this post-political era. Today the anti-cuts movement has adopted the same idea of how to reorder society through systems organised through autonomous networks, literally the social networks of the internet. Though it is a very effective way of organising demonstrations which are creative and expressive, it is not an effective method for changing the world. The concentration of power must be confronted.

The New Capitalism.

The article was controversial as it linked the libertarian approach of UK Uncut, and by extension the other anti-cuts demonstrations, with the dominant ideology. In an interview, before even the first episode was shown, Adam Curtis explained that he supports the protests but believes that the form of the protests is deeply flawed. The cuts cannot be defeated by self-organised and regulated networks of individuals rallied through social networks like Facebook. Without adequate leadership or even a central vision the schismatic tendencies within the movement can explode. For Curtis the retreat to the idea of a self-organised resistance is a cowardly one made by the Left from confronting the concentration of power in very few hands. There is a great need for an inspirational alternative to unite and rally the people in protest against the cuts. There is some truth in that given there are alternatives to the cuts, but these alternatives are not articulated very well in protest because of the self-organised nature of the demonstrations.

We ought to note that Curtis refers to the figures of the counter-cultural movement, like Stewart Brand, who converged with the libertarian Right in Silicon Valley. The libertarian Right are opposed to old hierarchies and power structures which obstruct the forces of the market and the freedom of the individual. The central thesis of the free-market libertarians is that the capitalist system will flourish if it is liberated from all old constraints and obstacles. Similarly the counter-cultural Left held that through the construction of systems, outside of political power and away from the Establishment, we can build a new society without hierarchy where we are all free and equal in a system. This is where computers come in as a means of self-regulation through which risks can be removed and stability ensured. Government is redundant and so is the Establishment. Today we find the notion of systems as self-regulating is carried over from the reactionaries to the revolutionaries.


For him we are not living in a post-ideological era, the age in which we live is still thoroughly ideological and Curtis aims to explore politically loaded concepts like ecosystems which are commonly taken as apolitical and objective. The idea of a system composed of interconnected nodes which maintain the stability of the system, through the feedback of information, is profoundly ideological for Curtis. It becomes even clearer when we look at the role of the idea that the innovations in computer technology can rid a system of risk. This is the kind of thought which abolished boom and bust under New Labour. The rise of computers has given birth to the idea of a new kind of capitalism in which perpetual growth is possible and the system is not only capable of self-regulation but also self-organisation. The inherent risks and instability of the system can be abolished forever whilst competition and productivity can be enhanced.

Adam Curtis is suspicious of the suggestions that the web has distributed power just as he is opposed to the suggestion that the market has distributed power and that even the class system has been broken down by the meritocratic forces of capitalism. We have abandoned the belief that there could be a better world, that is not based on market principles, and have settled for a managerial approach to capitalism. There has been a shift from the Enlightenment view, that the human being is separate from nature, to the idea that we are each one node in a chain which constitutes the entire system. The system is too complex for a single person to understand, but it can be analysed and predicted by computers. It can remain stable through the flow of information. All of this underlies the view that there can be an economic equilibrium to the radical idea of autonomous cells of resistance to global capitalism. The recent demonstrations in Britain parallel a tenet of the dominant ideology which the protesters are fighting against.