Remainers hold off the peoples vote: An argument for Solidarity
This week those that felt strongly about the United Kingdom remaining in the European Union marched through London demanding a ‘Peoples Vote’ another or a first chance (depending upon your perspective) to have their say on whether the UK leaves or remains in the EU. Although those that support a ‘Peoples Vote’ claim their intentions are simply to further our democracy by allowing the population to have their say on the Brexit negotiations so far, and ultimately what will be the final deal. I wish they would be more honest, they want another referendum, and ultimately they want the first referendum to be overturned, they want to stay in the EU.
I have no problem with their point of view, it’s theirs to have, but I do have a problem with how they see and understand democracy in the UK. This is not a new gripe or critique of mine I say write and argue this weekly and sometimes daily in my work, research, and life as a working class academic.
A Context to My Argument
There are parts of the country and millions of people that have had their communities declined over the last 40 years. Deindustrialisation has had devastating effects on specific areas within the UK; people have lost communities, skills, work, respect, and their identities. Deindustrialisation have had devastating effects upon working class peoples lives reminiscent of the devastation the industrial revolution and the Enclosure Act caused previous generations of working class people. I am from a mining community on the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire border and my family live very close to the birthplace of the industrial revolution Cromford, the site of Arkwright’s Cotton mill. Within a 20 mile radius of where I grew up there was once hundreds of thousands of jobs that employed working class people holding together communities, families and working class identities. This is the place where trade unionism was formed and workers rights fought for, where men women and children once dug out coal naked 3 miles underground, after walking 5 miles to get to their places of work.
The British working class have unionised, fought, died and survived in these places that were hostile to them and they were forced to work out of necessity.
Yet their resilience transformed those places into warm and creative communities. After mines closed, and the factories that took the places of the dark satanic mills moved overseas losing millions of jobs, it is now the monstrous distribution warehouses that stand in their place, Sports Direct, Amazon, Boohoo and many others they are the new Mills of exploitation, poorly paid, with only a soul destroying prospect of a future.
Voting Brexit
Although those who live in the deindustrialised areas are only one part of Britain’s working class those areas overwhelmingly voted to leave the EU 58% in the East Midlands, 58% in the North East, and 58% in Yorkshire and the Humber.
In other parts of the country and amongst other working class people their eyes are wide open to the consequences of 8 years of austerity for the poorest, and socialism for those with economic, cultural and political power. What I mean by this is since the banking crash of 2008 there has been a scarcity of resources for the British working class, material but also the resources that are connected to dignity and respect. The British working class whether we like this or not have always found their value, their inner dignity and their wider sense of worth from family, community and work. The austerity programme that has hit all social services- relied on to maintain working class life in an already unfair and unequal system has been severely cut, working class people struggle to find a place to live, the consequences is a breakdown in their communities, they struggle to find work that offers enough remuneration to feed their children and put a stable roof over the heads of their family, and lastly the very basics like healthcare, welfare services, and education have been cut to the bone which has a massive impact on not only the physical lives of the working class but also how they see themselves in relation to how they are valued.
I am not suggesting that middle class people did not vote to leave the EU, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson do not represent working class people, and the support for their politics come from a section of the nostalgic, little Englanders that see the EU has nothing more than a bunch of bossy French and Germans telling them what do. I dislike their view of the world and I dread a Britain that looks and sounds like them. However to try an overturn a referendum that was won by a majority, with the arguments that people were misled, lied to, or they simply didn’t understand the arguments and worse are too ignorant and uneducated to be taken seriously, and most recently that a large group of those that voted to leave are now dead, and therefore the referendum should be rerun is a gross mistake.
The Peoples Tantrum
We have a problem in the UK the middle class, the bourgeoisie define themselves against the working class they create or ‘curate’ (if you a middle class millennial) descriptions and narratives about themselves which ultimately belittles, and devalues working class people, reduces them to ‘other’ and resembling everything that they themselves practice. Through the EU referendum/Tory debacle, the middle class both left and right have fell back onto the tried and tested class prejudices, that the working class and especially those that voted leave, are stupid and racist, they are bitter and resentful of the middle class’s so obvious superiority. Consequently it is no surprise that when working class people voted to leave the EU the bourgeoisie turned their anger towards them. And has resulted in a very long tantrum since June 2016.
Democracy already hanging by a thread
The people that voted Brexit because they have been left out have had suspicions that mainstream politics, and politicians are not for them, that their voices, views and concerns do not matter in Westminster. Our democracy because of the physical and emotional distance between parliament and its people, and because of deindustrialisation, and austerity is already hanging by a thread. As an anarchist this does not worry me, within chaos opportunities can arise.
However to force a new referendum, or a peoples vote will only quicken that process from a broken and decrepit Westminster parliamentary democracy, which we have a possibility to change into something far more sinister. Far right populism in the UK is thankfully marginal; it has not pushed itself into the mainstream yet.
There could be other strategies: I am suggesting a show of solidarity (and solidarity means standing with not speaking for). For those that want to stay in the EU yet understand that the leave vote was used by some working class people to explain their experiences of class inequality, an unfairness in our society that they are at the sharp end of and a desire for something new, an opportunity to change Britain because it does not work them. Instead of trying to fight to get your own way, to belittle and to ignore, you could stand in solidarity, you could acknowledge inequality, you could push for social change, to end austerity, and invest properly in the health, and wellbeing of those that are currently being exploited and left out. Forcefully pushing the view that are you are undoubtedly right, and those that voted leave are not only wrong but are actually morally wrong, might get you what want - back into the EU but at what cost? It seems incredible and far-fetched but you might end up with Nigel Farage as your Prime Minister, imagine that once and not so long ago it would have been inconceivable that Donald Trump could be President of the United States.