Paste your essay in here…The participating electorate of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union on June 23rd, 2016 by a 52 percent majority (Goodwin 1). Brexit fundamentally splintered Britain’s economic and political ties with the rest of countries in the EU. The success of the referendum set a different course of history for all of Europe, thus prompting the question of why and how this drastic action by the people happened. Brexit lies on a continuum of public policy statements that reflect the current populist attitudes of the country as well as its inability to reconcile with its colonial demons of the past. With Britain’s brutal colonial history, Brexit cannot be analyzed within a vacuum. The racial violence which aggressively ensued post-referendum were not spontaneous acts of mindless bigots. The violence was specifically targeted towards migrants or those who appeared as migrants if they did not fit the euro-centric features of Britishness or spoke a different language. “Taking Back Control” of the Britain was the rallying cry of the Leave campaign. Racial aggressors operate and cultivate their malicious mentality towards non-UK born migrants from cues that their society and institutions set forth as the dominant position of the state. In short, “If a hostile environment is embedded politically, why should we be surprised when it takes root culturally?” (Burnett 86). When the referendum to leave the EU passed, it sanctioned racial violence for some who have harbored disdain for people who were told that immigrants do not belong in the country. Brexit was preceded by a racist climate, born not out of the recent nativist
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referendum debate, but in line with the divisive policies and programs of the past. The problematic framing of Brexit and its aftermath of racial violence naively disregards its centuries long history of systemic racism (Virdee 7). Blaming the racial violence on individuals and isolating the solution to law and order ignores the more fundamental issue that Britain has with racial dynamics (Burnett 83). Thus, authoritarian power of the state becomes stronger because of the state’s perceived issue with criminality. Broader social reform through serious self-reflection will never take place in Britain as long as this misunderstanding of racial violence towards immigrants continues to be perpetuated in the media, by politicians, the criminal justice system, and other elite opinion leaders.
At its height, the sun was said to never set on the British empire. Its global grasp was so immense that there are still consequential effects to their rampant imperialism, on the groups of people they colonized abroad and the sense of entitlement to power that the British feel today. Global superpowers of the 21st century like Britain developed as nation states as borders became privileged gateways that separate who rightfully belongs in country from those who have no business being in it (Bowler 8). “Business” underscores the popular trend of immigration strategy seen today. It is an economic policy of immigration which asks the potential immigrant what they can do for the country, not what the country can do for them or, more elaborately, what refuge they can provide to protect the potential immigrant from prosecution. This division of the haves and have nots fosters racism in and of itself (Goodwin 453). It is the separation of human beings in regard to their face value like the fattest cattle being chosen on the ranch to breed. The collective agreement of the importance of multiculturalism has been overshadowed by rhetoric that homogeneity strengthens countries while diversity divides it. Individuals sensed this change of national identity by being able to see the increase of ethnic diversity around them. Populist right
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voting is “predicted by immigration attitudes, which in turn are associated with cultural motivations, notably ethnic nationalism” (Bowler 7).
Britain embraced multiculturalism for a short period of time following anti-discrimination legislation and community programs of the 1970s which offset the anti-immigrant sentiments that the 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act had catalyzed (Goodwin 454). However, paired with an explosion of the “neoliberal consensus in Europe, crafted over three decades by conservative and social democratic political parties alike” (Virdee 1) in the 1980s, trickle-down economics were championed and reverted the progressive sentiments of anti-discrimination legislation. This economic policy is also a social statement. Neoliberalism entails a shift from the downward distribution of resources from the most elite and wealthy, creating a welfare state, to an upwards redistribution of resources. This shift makes the rich richer and the poor more entrenched in their poverty by giving tax breaks to the rich and defunding social and economic programs. In Britain, the shift of the government’s role in wealth and resource distribution was not split between party lines. It swallowed the whole political system and philosophy of the country (Burnett 91). While the conservatives and liberals espoused policy which supported the neoliberal agenda, the social and economic inequality of the people began to grow larger thus polarizing the populous. However, it was the far right who politicized this divide and capitalized on its power of persuasion and ability to ignite passion during election seasons, seen in the 2013, 2014 and 2015 elective successes of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and rising popularity of right-wing populist figures like Nigel Farage (Bowler 10).
Race and Racism were used as a way to define Englishness against outsiders who may pose a threat in their own country, they are termed “internal others” (Virdee 5). In this case, the internal
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others are anyone who is not British. Reactionary populism “demands nothing less than a restoration of a mythical golden age of sovereign nation-states defined by cultural and racial homogeneity” (Virdee 2) and it has been an epidemic across all European countries. The glory days of intense nationalism and global authority are done for many countries in Europe, and Britain has not escaped these anxieties. People of the UK paired a loss of national identity, customs and strength with their membership in the European Union, which seeks to enhance free movement of people in Europe and enhance multiculturalism (Bowler 4).
Reactionary populism swept over the UK as they sensed their country changing because of unprecedented immigration levels and unfulfilled promises of past leaders to regulate it. Between 1995 and 2015, the number of immigrants from other EU counties living in the UK tripled from .9 million to 3.3 million. (Wadsworth et al. 35). Rates of migration started to steadily climb in 2004 with the accession of eight eastern European countries into the EU. Then, in 2015, the Pan-European refugee crisis sent the whole continent awry with frantic strategies of where to place these people looking for asylum (Virdee 5). Previous Prime Minister David Cameron and his Conservative Party constantly were unable to “meet their manifesto commitment to return net migration back to the ‘tens of thousands a year, if not hundreds of thousands’” (Goodwin and Milazzo 455). In fact, net migration had risen 333,000 per year during his time as Prime Minister. This failure was reflected in the success of UKIP during Cameron’s time in office as they gained seats on the local and national level. The people felt that UKIP was best, because they emphasized their ability to control the situation. The British people wanted control over making their own decisions without listening to the EU which they felt were threatening their sense of national identity and control over immigration policy and securing their borders. These two issues were
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linked in the minds of voters suggesting that they associated an uptick of non EU immigrants as a loss of sovereignty, of national identity and autonomy. This points towards a dichotomy of interests between natives and immigrants that became set in their minds and led them to decide that they were at war with one another (Goodwin 459). Immigration was consistently rated the most important issue facing the UK from June 2015 until the referendum (Burnett 86). The Leave campaign amplified public concerns of immigration probing people with ideas that Turkey would soon join the EU, that immigration was wasting too many public resources, which only deserved to be shared amongst British citizens, and that the refugee crisis was getting to a point of no return (Bowler 6).
The leaders of the Brexit movement for the Leave campaign saw the opportunity to use the growing anti-immigrant/foreign sentiments, fostered by populist movements and successful political party breakthroughs like UKIP, to initiate institutional change that was a reflection of the anxieties of the electorate. (Burnett 85). Before the 2016 referendum, Nigel Farage, a leader of UKIP, targeted the concern for immigration among the populous and exploited the anxieties it brought to them by highlighting potential dire economic and cultural consequences of lenient immigration policy (Goodwin 453). UKIP was successful by targeting those who felt ‘left behind’ by the elites in Britain. These were the “low skilled and less well educated blue-collar workers and citizens who had been pushed to the margins” (Virdee 2). However, it was not solely those same demographics who voted to leave the European Union.
The 52 percent of the electorate who voted to leave the EU were comprised of a wide population that encapsulated middle aged men and women of varying classes (Burnett 87). Post-referendum analysts tried to theorize what demographics voted to leave the EU. Their speculations
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were based on the populist UKIP platform, likening the nationalist appeal of a Brexit to the same audience as a far-right contingency. It was first suggested that support for the Leave campaign was more popular in areas that had little ethnic diversity and were of lower class (Virdee 9). Both of these claims were contested with further research.
The claim that areas of little ethnic diversity were more likely to vote to leave was challenged by findings from a case study of two towns in Britain, Derby and Corby. Both Derby and Corby saw an increase of 10,000 non-UK born population migrating into their towns between 2005 and 2015. However, Derby had a 28,000 immigrant population in 2005 so the increase of immigrants was only by one third. On the other hand, Corby had only a 4,000 immigrant population in 2005, so the 10,000 of non-UK born immigrants severely skewed the ethnic proportions of the city by
3.5 to 1 (Goodwin 453). The rate of change makes a huge difference in one’s perception of their area, not just the level. The UK born residents of Corby could see in their direct communities how they were becoming the minority which was conveyed as a loss of control and power. Thus, the UK born residents of Corby overwhelmingly voted to Leave, compared to those of Derby who had experienced the same number of immigrants come into their town in the same period of time. Since the rate of change was smaller for Derby, they were able to “absorb additional immigration with little change in the perceived diversity of the area” (Goodwin 454). They did not feel threatened by the internal others around them. Whereas in Corby, the sudden demographic shift was enough to trigger a significant political reaction to Leave the EU thus attempting to put a stop to the influx of diversity in their town.
Furthermore, “while exit polls confirmed that around two-thirds of those who voted in social classes D and E chose to Leave the EU” it is also important to “note that the proportion of
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Leave voters who were of the lowest two social classes was just 24 percent” (Virdee 2). So, it was the Leave voters in the top social classes, A, B and C1, that made a true difference in the referendum. Three in five Leave votes came from those who did not have the reason of worrying about job security or financial stability because of higher levels of immigration (Virdee 2). Also,
age was a prominent factor in the Brexit vote; “while 62 percent of 25-34 year olds chose to Remain, 60 percent of those aged 65 and over voted to Leave” (Virdee 2). This is consistent with the theory of nostalgia for better days. Older people perceive that Britain had lost control in the past couple of decades and compared it back to the days before the EU, without free movement or open borders. This perceived loss of control accumulates with other subjective reasons as to why people choose to Leave. “Among those who felt that during the preceding 10 years Britain had
gotten ‘a lot worse’, the average Leave vote was 73% compared to 40% among those who felt the country had gotten ‘a lot better’. (Goodwin 451).
The success of the “Taking the Country Back” narrative suggests that voters were more affected by the demographic change in the country and threat to their national identity than to the practical effects that immigration would have on the country. People who were in the Remain camp choose to switch to Leave when they became more cognizant of rising immigration between 2014 and 2016 (Virdee 9). This is salient in proving how important the issue of immigration was to the Remain or Leave vote. It is the subtle imperial longing that the British are hailing back to as
a way to reassert their dominance over the European continent and have the right to civilize non-UK born EU members as they did centuries ago at their empire’s height. “Taking the Country Back was also a popular slogan responsible for a “distinct intensification of particular forms of racist violence” (Bowler 10) in the post-referendum period.
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The popularization of this rallying cry for the Leave campaign had many implications in the post-referendum period that led to outrageous levels of racial violence. First, the passage of the referendum was an affirmation that Britain did not only belong to the British now, but that they had reclaimed it after it was taken from them. This thought process includes a sense of history being corrected after long periods of time of immigration policies that had corroded the state and national identity (Burnett 88). Second, it follows then, that the cultural norms associated with Englishness could be forcefully reasserted. This is displayed in acts shortly after the referendum passed like this incident reported to the police of a man ripping the niqab off of a Muslim woman with her nine-year-old daughter beside her while yelling “You’re in Britain, live by British rules” (Burnett 88). Thirdly, “the racial violence that has intensified following the referendum result is a fallout of policy” (Burnett 89). Although the media has framed the violence in terms of a “spike” in numbers, the issue is much deeper than a trend; “it is the literal manifestation of the political climate which sustains it” (Burnett 89).
Analysis of post-referendum hate crimes does not dive deeper into the reasoning behind why the racial violence is happening today. They do not look at the context that presides it, a long history of racial violence in the UK. Both the Leave and the Remain camps analyzed the overt racism post-referendum in ways that represent it as “a failing located within a thuggish minority, to be punished and dealt with solely under the rubric of law and order” (Bowler 13). Liberals from
the Remain campaign suggested that racist hate crimes are simply a by-product of Brexit while Conservatives from the Leave campaign state that racist violence, presided by racism, is excluded to a minority of individuals who misunderstood the ‘take the country back’ demand (Cuerden 158). Political elites quickly noted that this racial violence had to first, be addressed then stifled in order
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to preserve social cohesion. They began to publicize this racism by developing a relationship with the media; however, this relationship proved to exploit how little these opinion leaders understand racism or how much want to hide it from the public (Burnett 95).
Political elites’ and law enforcements’ reactions to the racial violence were fueled by anti-immigrant and anti-foreigner sentiments. When the uptick of racial violence was first noticed following the June 23rd referendum, it was disconnected from the political direction of the UK’s views “on issues of immigration, race, religion and refugee policy” (Burnett 86). Immediately, law enforcement began to produce regular statistics on hate crime. The National Police Chief’s Council
(NPCC) “requested weekly ‘returns’” to keep track of the rampant racial violence being reported from police stations all over Britain” (Burnett 90). Eight weeks later, the police decided to stop publicizing the weekly returns, signaling to the people that the “spike” in hate crime was dropping. This was problematic, because it points to racial violence being at the capricious will of the people who are following trends of non-stable racist behavior instead of being an effect of institutional racism.
The police were quick to produce regular statistics on hate crime following the referendum, and the media followed focusing particularly on the most brutal crimes. The police were the ones designating which stories to be put on air and circulated for the public’s consumption. 47 percent originated from the police and 16 percent from other criminal agencies (Burnett 92). Through a
study of these cases, it was found that incidents reported to the media were ones in which “policing appears to reside at the center of the solution” (Burnett 92). So, not only are the police aiding in which crimes are publicized but also how they are interpreted. When the media seeks to give meaning to incidents of racial violence “it turns to the police, other criminal justice agencies,
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political figures, and then finally to the victims or victims’ families” (Burnett 93). This creates a dangerous hierarchy of interpretation.
The media fed into the narrative of victimage with the targeted immigrants. Reporters asked immigrants how they felt about the attack, emotionally, instead of why they think this violence is happening and how to stop it (Cuerden 161). Before the referendum, popular media like The Daily Mail and The Sun were forces that played into the undeserving immigrant narrative “under the guise of having an ‘honest debate’ about race and immigration, they regurgitated tropes of multicultural enemies” (Burnett 95). This was exhibited in headlines like one from The Sun in October of 2013 which states that “there are 600,000 ‘benefit tourists’ in the UK” (Burnett 96) and one from The Daily Mail in November of 2015 which warns people that “UK mosques are fundraising for terror” (Burnett 96). After the referendum, the media turned to the police, politicians and other elites for interpretations of the racial violence. These interpretations were saturated with solutions of law and order, because they saw these events as individual hate crimes. Highlighting this issue as one of criminality submerges the important context of institutionalized state racism that has been priming this outburst of violence. Furthermore, it allows authoritarians in government and the criminal justice system to avoid any responsibility for an environment to cultivate such outward actions of racism (Cuerden 118).
Brexit is an amalgamation of Britain’s attitudes of its now-lost superiority over the world which was based on colonial ideas of establishing dominance over non-British peoples who desperately needed to be civilized. The media and political elites were irresponsible with their light handling of anti-immigrant sentiments preceding the referendum and after its result. The politics of Brexit have solidified ‘nativism [as the] state ideology and ‘take back control’ its political
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culture” (Burnett 85). One can pick apart the reasoning behind Britain leaving the European Union with concerns of economic security, national identity, loss of control; however, one cannot discuss these seemingly-well intentioned explanations without noting that “whatever Brexit means or does not mean, it certainly means racism” (Burnett 85). Euroscepticism rested on the premise that foreigners are deteriorating Britain’s traditional culture, and political and economic strength. Without the issues of immigration and threat to Britishness tied directly to Brexit, the referendum would not have a subjective grievance to rally people around. Negative feelings of change, ultimately, are what passionately drives people to make a political stance. People voted for positive change, but what they did not realize was that the only change in their society was now the public sanctification of racism and bigotry. It used to be hidden under Britain’s longstanding political and criminal justice institutions, but now it’s at the surface of British identity.