Introduction
In these blog posts I have been attempting to grapple with the issue of the relationship between the working class and nationalism, particularly in countries that industrialised through an imperial history. My research on this question led me to the hypothesis that the industrial working class in these countries may have developed an attachment to the imperial nation because they too benefitted economically from imperialism. I found the theoretical justification of this hypothesis in the Marxist theory of unequal exchange (see my blog post Black Lives Matter and the Contradictions of Representative Democracy- Part 3 Class, Nation and Empire). The term “working class” is still associated in the popular mind in post-industrial countries with the remnants of the industrial working class and their immediate descendants in the now de-industrialised areas, even though they are no longer the main providers of profits for capital. I have been arguing that the term “working class” in post-industrial societies needs now to be reinterpreted as containing two components: the remnants of the industrial working class should be referred to as the “old working class” and those who currently provide the bulk of the profits for capital, located mainly in the large cities, culturally and ethnically diverse, young and highly educated, should be referred to as the “new working class”. They now constitute the main electoral base of the Labour Party (see my article in Soundings, Class and Nation in the Age of Populism).
In the economic crisis that started in 2007, led to the long recession and to the prolonged period of f austerity, many of the remnants of the old working class have placed the blame for their distress on foreigners and become nostalgic for a return of the old imperial nation whilst the cosmopolitan new working class has begun to acquire a greater class consciousness. It was the new working class that largely generated the extraordinary phenomenon of Corbynism. Any, however slender, hope for a reduction in economic inequalities within and between nations, in my opinion, depends essentially on the development of international class struggle against the power of capital based on a cosmopolitan class consciousness rather than on the illusion that the national state will be the vehicle for the creation of a more egalitarian world.
Post-World War II immigration has reconstituted the British working class over a very short period and has been instrumental in the creation of the new working class. The empire came to Britain and, in the process, began the destruction of the imperial basis of British national identity. Whilst economic growth persisted in the post-war boom, the resultant political contradictions were largely managed and kept under control. De-industrialisation and economic crisis, however, brought about a crisis of national identity which is arguably insoluble in national terms except through the victory of neo-fascist forces.
Football and the New Working Class
A Long Read article in the Guardian, by Aniefiok Ekpoudom, a freelance writer born in Lewisham, South London to Nigerian and Cameroonian parents, published on March 31 and entitled Field of Dreams- why south London became an essential crucible for Black British footballers brought me back to the problematics of the relationship between the new working class and national identity. It seemed to illustrate well the dilemmas involved.
Ekpoudom highlights the role that South London has played in the creation of black star footballers. Professional footballers are undoubtedly members of the new working class, despite the mega salaries that some of them enjoy. Their labour is instrumental for the creation of the profits not only of football clubs, but also of media companies. Football is essential for the profits of media monopolies such as Sky and BT, not only through the sales of their premium tv sports services to households and pubs, but also by attracting exceptional advertising revenue during matches. On the day I first published this post, a Guardian commentary, What you need to know about the privatisation of Channel 4, pointed out that a leading contender to buy Channel 4 is Discovery, a “big US pay-TV company, which is merging with WarnerMedia, the parent company of CNN, HBO…The company, which has a mix of free and pay-TV operations, continues to be highly active in the UK market, striking a deal with BT in February to launch a pay-TV sports joint venture including BT Sport, which has rights to sports including football’s Premier League and Champions League”. 1
Ekpoudom discusses examples of many black players with South London roots most of whom were either born in the UK or arrived here with their immigrant parents at a very young age. Their parents had come to Britain searching for work in hospitals and on the railways, in factories and in the London docks. Mentioned, amongst others, are Ian Wright, Arsenal’s second highest ever scoring striker, UK born son of Jaimacans, fellow Arsenal star David Rocastle, born in Lewisham to Caribbean immigrants and West Ham, Manchester United and England full-back Rio Ferdinand, born in Camberwell to an Irish mother and a West Indian father from St. Lucia. Ferdinand’s father worked as a tailor, and did security jobs and worked as a bouncer at West End clubs in addition. His mother was a child minder and cleaner. Rocastle’s mother, Linda, worked in Greenwich hospital; his father, Leslie, worked in local factories.
However, the example discussed in the article that relates to the complex relationship of the new working class to the problem of national identity is that of Cristal Palace striker Wilfried Zaha. Zaha was born in 1992 in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, and arrived in Britain at the age 4 in the company of his emigrating parents. He grew up in South London in the vicinity of Crystal Palace’s Selhurst Park football ground, the club he has played for during most of his career, except for a brief spell at Manchester United. He joined Crystal Palace’s academy aged 8 and had his first team debut in 2010. He was chosen to play for England in 2012 and played several games for the national team. However, his relationship with it became difficult as he was left out for a number of years and in 2016, he switched to playing for the Ivory Coast. A similar choice has more recently been made by West Ham striker Michail Antonio who, when overlooked by England, chose to play for Jamaica. Ekpoudom’s article states that, for Zaha,
‘His presence in the Premier League, and his relationship with England, have begun to throw light on the nuances of identity and home for Black British people, for the generations of African and Caribbean families raised in the old traditions of a new country. In that passing of time, they have slowly been carving out an identity of their own.’
Problems arise not only for the naturalised immigrants and their descendants, but also for the natives who feel secure in their identity. Zaha’s stance raised issues also for England manager Gareth Southgate who is quoted as having said:
“If you don’t feel that internal 100% passion for England, then I’m not sure it’s for me to sell that to you. It should be your desire to do it. Although I’m always willing to sit down with players, it should be them coming to us … the inherent desire of wanting to play for your country is the most important thing.”
Ekpoudom suggests that Southgate’s response implies a lack of understanding of the complexities involved in the question of national identity for immigrants and their descendants.
Clearly, in a country now containing a very high proportion of the population with multiple nationality backgrounds who are also amongst the most important contributors to the country’s wealth, the requirement for 100% loyalty to the home nation suggested by Southgate is difficult to meet. What is national identity has become virtually impossible to define and this poses a problem for nationalists. That problem has been long identified. In 1990, in an interview for the Los Angeles Times, Tory MP and die-hard Thatcherite Norman Tebbit said:
“A large proportion of Britain’s Asian population fail to pass the cricket test. Which side do they cheer for? It’s an interesting test. Are you still harking back to where you came from or where you are?”
This became well-known as Tebbit’s cricket test of nationality. Tebbit’s implicit suggestion in proposing the test is that unless an unambiguous answer to his test is given, that person isn’t really “one of us”, a true Englishman. This view has more recently acquired a new lease of life with the relative electoral success of the populist right in the context Brexit. This manifested itself first through the electoral performance of Nigel Farage’s UKIP, particularly in the so-called red-wall districts populated largely by the remnants of the old working class and its culture. Much of Farage’s political ground has since been taken up by Boris Johnson. I have argued that this because many of the remnants of the old working class have become nostalgic for the imperial past as a result of having borne the brunt of the hardship generated by de-industrialisation followed by economic crisis and austerity. As it had lost any political representation when the Labour Party embraced the New Labour platform and became leading exponents of the virtues of the “knowledge economy”, and in the wake of the thorough defeat of the labour movement that used to effectively defend their interests by extra-parliamentary means, the future appeared bleak and the past more attractive.
‘Ain’t no black in the Union Jack’
Football has long provided fertile ground on which to think about questions of race, class and identity, national or otherwise. I was reminded by reading Ekpoudom’s article that when I lived in Peckham in the mid-1970s, my partner and I witnessed a shocking violent attack on an Asian newsagent opposite our apartment by a mob of Millwall supporters. Millwall’s The Den football ground was less than a mile away from our home. A phone call to the police didn’t produce any response until well after the mob had moved on, even though the local police station was only a few hundred yards away. This recollection led me to search for research on Millwall that might throw further light on the issues raised by Ekpoudom’s article and their relationship to class. Millwall has been long notorious for the working class racism of its fans2.
There is a considerable amount of academic literature written about Millwall Football Club. I found a very interesting study of Millwall supporters centred on the issues that have been raised here, written by sociologists Les Back, Tim Crabbe and John Solomos, entitled ‘Lions, Black Skins and Reggae Gyals’ Race, Nation and Identity in Football’. It seems to provide some support to my argument that the old working class may have had some identification with an imperialist concept of nation.
Millwall F.C. was founded in 1885 as Millwall Rovers by the workers of J.T. Morton, a cannery and food processing company with a factory in Millwall Docks on the Isle of Dogs. The factory became one of the largest employers on the island. Both the West India and the East India Docks were also located in the Isle of Dogs. They were effectively London’s gateway to the Empire in the 19th. and early 20th. Centuries. Millwall Football Club has since retained its largely industrial working class and descendants fan based and the resulting old working class culture in many ways has outlived the industrial economy that had created it. Millwall fans have been traditionally loyal to their London working class identity and proud of their anti-elite and anti-social reputation. Their slogan is ‘No one likes us, we don’t care’. A graphic insight into the collective identity of the fans can be obtained through this video.
Back et al’s article explores the complex identities of the fans and its relation to the question of race and nation. The fans’ attitude to race is complex. Black people can be considered as ‘one of us’ if their identification with the club is beyond doubt, but black members of rival clubs are part of the enemy. They are subject to racist abuse and targeted more than their white fellow team members.
Back at al quote the following description of an incident that occurred during a Millwall game with Arsenal in 1995 told to them by a black Millwall player, Tony Witter:
Nigel Winterburn played a ball down the line and Ian Wright was just over the half way line tried to turn against me and I tackled him and put the ball out of play. He’s gone to get the ball, it’s just rolling on the track and he’s gone to pick it up. The amount of racist abuse that came from the Millwall fans in the lower stand was incredible: ‘black this, black that,’ monkey chants and the rest. Basically, I am standing not more 5 feet away from Ian. I sort of looked at them, looked at Ian and Ian shrugged his shoulders. Then I hear this voice from the crowd – ‘Not you Tone, you’re all right – it’s Wrighty. I think they just see a blue shirt when they look at me. But with Ian Wright they see a red shirt, then they see a black face. But do they not see my colour? Do I wear this shirt over my head?’.
The expressions of hatred subliminally combine a view of the enemy both as the members of a rival club and of foreign nations. Black players in the rival club, as well as being the enemy because they play for the hated opponent team, have the additional burden of being the enemy because they are foreign, as England is a white country. Whilst identity based on club loyalty is paramount, loyalty to the nation viewed subliminally as an imperial white nation comes a close second. Both the English flag of St. George and the Union Jack are an integral part of the iconography of Millwall Football Club fans and of the club itself. This is the club flag displayed in the empty Millwall stadium at a match played behind closed doors during the pandemic.
Back et al also discuss the issue of national identity surrounding support for the national team:
The English national side has been the context in which the most extreme form of racially exclusive nationalism has been harnessed to football culture. During the seventies and eighties England fans would regularly sing ‘There ain’t no black in the Union Jack, send the bastards back!’ This was also combined with Unionism and opposition to Irish Republicanism where England fans would sing ‘No Surrender to the I.R.A.’ with equal venom. More recently this was brought into focus during a match between the Republic of Ireland and England in Dublin in February 1995, which led to the eventual abandonment of the game, in the midst of scenes of violence in the crowd.
This view of the nation isn’t exclusive to football fans. In the previous blog post Black Lives Matter and the Contradictions of Representative Democracy- Part 3 Class, Nation and Empire which I have already mentioned in this post, I referred to the case of the London dockers’ 1968 strike and march in support of Enoch Powell’s anti-immigration ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech in which one of the placards read “Back Britain, Not Black Britain”.
Conclusion
The discussion above is not meant in any way to imply that the English industrial working class was uniformly nationalist with a racist view of the nation. On the contrary, class identity and its relationship to nation has always been a heavily contested territory, with the more politically conscious elements of the working class strenuously fighting this version of national identity, espousing active anti-racism and arguing for international class solidarity.
My own personal experience, as well as witnessing the racist attacks of groups of Millwall fans, also involved helping to organise the demonstrations against the visit to London in 1973 of Portuguese dictator Marcelo Caetano in which there were clear manifestations of working class internationalism. The demonstrations that followed Caetano wherever he went were against the fascist Portuguese regime, but solidarity with the liberation movements of the Portuguese colonies then fighting a war of independence was perhaps their major theme, as the documentary accessible via this link will show. When Caetano visited the Royal Naval College in Greenwich, he was met by a contingent of London dockers who emptied a dustbin over his limousine on arrival.
However, it was the existence of active class struggle and the presence of a significant minority of political conscious elements that enabled that challenge to the dominant view of the imperial nation to have some considerable resonance in the class. The abject defeat of the labour movement at the hands of the Thatcher government in the 1980s and deindustrialisation largely removed the counter-current and left the remnants of the old working class prey to the reactionary ideology which manifested itself most clearly in relation to the Brexit referendum and the subsequent elections. The surrender of Labour Party to neoliberalism under New Labour had left the class devoid of any significant political voice and the party paid the price.
The hypothesis- I would put it no more strongly than this- I have been exploring is that the cosmopolitan nature of the new working class may inherently help create an internationalist class identity. As I write this, there are signs that the current crisis may indeed be generating a new wave of active class struggle led by the new working class, and not just in Britain. A story in the Guardian dated April 1 is headlined and entitled ‘Pizza Express waiting staff win back bigger slice of tips’. It concerns the successful struggle of hospitality industry workers organised in the Unite union. It contains an expression of strong support for the workers on the part Unite’s recently elected new General Secretary Sheila Graham. Graham was surprisingly elected by the Unite membership in the face of opposition from the union’s traditional Left which had previously backed Len McCluskey. Her platform had been to shift the resources of the union away from the Labour Party and parliamentary politics and direct it more at shopfloor organising.
Another very recent positive development in the United States was highlighted in the Guardian in a story published on April 1, Amazon workers in New York make history by voting to form union. The picture illustrating the story clearly demonstrates the multi-ethnicity and youth of the workers involved. In a Guardian/Observer comment piece published on Sunday, April 3 entitled ‘After Amazon workers’ union victory the Fed must stop tipping the scales for bosses’, Robert Reich, who was once President Clinton’s Secretary of State for Labour, argues that current economic crisis conditions make the Amazon workers’ victory likely to be an example of a trend which will expand.
In the circumstances, due to the complexities of the issue, any attempt to create a progressive notion of national identity is likely to create division in the working class. Even worse is Keir Starmer’s decision to try to win votes in the ‘red wall’ districts by wrapping himself up in the Union Jack and pandering to the reactionary instincts in the old working class. It is likely to be viewed as political opportunism and do nothing to secure his position among the members of the new working class who have become Labour’s natural base. Only class-based politics can have a broad appeal. It can also help develop the internationalist vision which is so necessary for the dark times in which we live.
Alvaro de Miranda
Alvaro de Miranda is retired from the University of East London where he co-founded a Department of Innovation Studies. He came to the UK in 1958 aged 15 to join his parents who were exiles from the Salazar regime in Portugal. Having experienced fascism, he is particularly alarmed with the recent worldwide electoral rise of the far-right and has been following it comparatively in this blog.
04/04/2022
For a discussion of the economic role that sports stars play, see my article The Economic Power of the Olympic Brand and the Legacy of London 2012. ↩
Allegations of racism continue to plague the club. Its efforts to combat it have been controversial with accusations that they have been lukewarm and ambivalent. Racist incidents continue to plague the club as this recent example demonstrates. ↩