One nation...in isolation?

Thursday’s local election results have an eerily familiar ring to them.  An electorate dissatisfied with the establishment, in the throes of an economic crisis, looking for someone to blame, votes for the party which claims to represent the frustrations of the average citizen.  In the 1930s, when Germans were pushing their life savings around in wheelbarrows just to buy a loaf of bread, a vote for the National Socialists seemed like the only way to make a change.

Outsiders make easy targets for election campaigns.  Why can’t you get a job?  Because the foreigners are taking them.  Why are your benefits being cut?  Because the government is handing out houses and healthcare to immigrants.  What’s the solution?  Send them back and cut loose from the control of the European Union and the floods of workshy scroungers that come with our membership.

It’s an argument that goes down well with people frustrated by a seemingly endless recession perpetuated by a remote and duplicitous political elite.  In taking an average of 25% of the votes in the seats in which it stood, UKIP registered itself as a serious force on the British political landscape, sending a clear message to the old guard.  A vote for UKIP was a protest vote – but a dangerous one.  As purveyors of “I’m not racist, but…” ideology, UKIP’s leadership know exactly how to target the susceptible.  Though not explicitly racist, political parties which advocate intolerance as a solution to economic difficulties, can conduct a creeping and far more worrying advance into the national psyche.

UKIP, by putting the United Kingdom in its party name, plays on misplaced notions of patriotism.  Patriotism in itself is not necessarily a negative concept, but when it spills over into nationalism, it becomes a dangerous force.  Albert Einstein called nationalism “an infantile disease.”  What are nations, after all, but arbitrary lines drawn on maps?  Imagined communities, as Benedict Anderson once argued, created by man as a method of controlling others.

Immigration, sometimes on mass, sometimes in small groups, has taken place voluntarily (and not so voluntarily) throughout history.  Immigrant communities have brought their own cultures, mixed them with local customs, and created unique new traditions.  They have become part of the landscape, absorbed into the national character, no longer questioned.  Things change.  Populations move.  Communities shift and adapt around them.

Peering out from behind Rawls’ ‘Veil of Ignorance’, one might ask why anyone should be denied the right to settle where they choose.  After all, it is generally acknowledged that a person should be free to move wherever they choose within their own country.  Joseph Carens, in making his influential case for open borders that would have Nigel Farrage choking on his celebratory pint, argues that this should be applied on a global level; after all,  “whether one is a citizen of a rich nation or a poor one, whether one is already a citizen of a particular state or an alien who wishes to become a citizen” is just as morally arbitrary as your sex, race or class (Joseph H. Carens, ‘Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders’, Review of Politics,  Vol.49, (1987), p.256).

Free movement across borders would not necessarily signify the erosion of national character.  I like to use football to support this theory.  I like football.  I support West Ham United.  I do not live in West Ham, and never have done.  I support West Ham because my Dad does.  He’s never lived in West Ham either.  He supports West Ham because his father did.  My joy at West Ham’s successes and despair at their defeats is not diminished by my distance from the East End of London; nor is it detrimentally affected by the presence of rival team supporters living in the area.  Over a hundred years since the team was formed, the players still play in claret and blue and the supporters will be forever blowing bubbles.  Why can this principle not be applied at the global level?

Membership of the European Union is not the poisonous domination of our laws and national freedom that UKIP and many Tory backbenchers would have us believe.  In this day and age we need greater integration, not isolation.  Isolationism, as a foreign policy strategy, hasn’t worked all that well in the past, as the US learnt in catastrophic manner on 7 December 1941.  As Signor Ferrari asks in Casablanca, Hollywood’s most iconic critique of the White House’s isolationist policies, “My dear Rick, when will you realize that in this world today isolationism is no longer a practical policy?”

This is true more than ever.  In an increasingly globalised world, to withdraw from the European Union would be a foolish move.  Eric Hobsbawm warned that “nothing stimulates nationalism on both sides as much as international conflict” (Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (CUP, 1991), p.91).  At the most pragmatic level, greater integration prevents wars.  Nations are less likely to declare war on nations with which they are politically and, most importantly, financially entangled.  The EU is not perfect; it’s a work in progress.  But human history is, despite how it might appear, on an upward trajectory.  Less than 70 years ago the nations of Europe were at war with one another.  The key to maintaining the upward trajectory is to move towards greater openness and integration.

The Conservative Party will undoubtedly run to the right on immigration and the EU to win back its supporters from UKIP.  Labour, wishing to avoid being seen as soft on immigration, will toughen its stance too.  The Westminster clique would do better to come down from on high, stop fiddling their expenses and granting privileges to the highest bidder, and learn how real people live.  Leading by example and preaching a little tolerance would be a good start.  We can only hope that calmer heads, and perhaps, cynically, traditional British apathy, will prevail.