Democratic Systems in Post-War Britain - Essay Example

Introduction During the post-war period Britain faced immigration of unprecedented scales. The majority of new inhabitants have arrived from the countries of the British Commonwealth in return to occurrence of new work positions in the country. Reactions of British people to new inflow of immigrants to some extent depended on class division. Representatives of the governmental groups were still under the influence of imperial ideas. Therefore they considered Indians, Pakistani, Africans and inhabitants of Caribbean basin as British nationals, having the right to settle in Britain. In post-war Britain there was a significant lack of a labour force, therefore employers at the beginning used immigrant labour with greater enthusiasm. However the local workers, living in poor areas (to which new immigrants came), have been anxious with breaking of their habitual way of life and quite often met newcomers rather hostilely. Almost third of all natives of the countries of Commonwealth has concentrated in the several certain areas of London. Later on the same communities arose in the West of the central England, in Bradford and other poor urbanized areas. Replacing each other governments considered the full integration of new immigrants into the British society as desirable and quite achievable purpose. Roy Jenkins, a Labour Member of Parliament and government minister in the 1960s and 1970s, and one of the four principal founders of the Social Democratic Party in 1981, in an oft-quoted statement he defined the policy of integration for immigrants "not as flattening process of uniformity, but of cultural diversity, coupled with equal opportunity in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance". (Joppke p. 225) In 1966, in accordance with Race Relations Act (1965) passed by Labourites, Race Relation Board has been created. It has provided the protection of the rights of citizens in case of the proved discrimination on racial motives. Let us consider the following figure of immigration to the Great Britain from West Indies, India and Pakistan in 1960-1970. The figure shows the conformity of quantity of inhabitants of the Great Britain, having one or both parents from West Indies, Pakistan and India, to the date of their arrival to the Great Britain. Dependants admitted in Britain (in thousands) 1 July 1962 - 31 December 1972 Source: Adapted from the Home Office, Commonwealth Immigrants Acts of 1962 and 1968: Control of Immigration, Statistics 1972, Cmnd. 5285, London, HMSO, 1973; and previous volumes published annually in the same series. In 1968 it has been passed the Bill against discrimination, however it has been accompanied by the new legislation, which has made control over the entrance to the country tougher and sharply reduced the quantity of new immigrants. The same year during parliamentary discussion on racial relation Enoch Powell (that time the speaker of conservatives) has made the speech in Birmingham, in which he has expressed his anxiety on occasion of sharp increase of non-white population of Britain. Moreover the Gallup Poll has shown, that 75 % of British more or are less solidary with Powell's estimation. With the purpose of struggle against racial discrimination in 1976 British third Race Relations Ac has been passed. The Act forbade discrimination at employment, rent or purchase of accommodations, acceptance in clubs and organization. For supervision over the execution of the Act it has been founded the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), which has been allocated with the broad powers. The decisions of Commission had the status of the law. However 1970s have been also marked by occurrence of frankly racist party of British National Front. In reply to this there have appeared the organizations resisting the National Front. For example, in 1977 for counteraction to propagation of National Front the Anti-Nazi League (ANL) has been founded. By 1990s the inhabitants of the Great Britain having West-Indies and South-Asian background are mostly presented by British by birth people and their quantity continues to grow. It enables to speak about them as about non-white British population possessing all civil rights, and not as about the immigrant community. They are sizeable part of all population of Britain. Therefore it is no so strange that there may happen the conflicts between people of different ethnicities living together. Rioting in contemporary Britain Now let us consider what have been the government and community responses to the rioting in Bradford, Burnley and Oldham in order to understand the causes and nature of these conflicts. 'The riots - dubbed by numerous media reports as the 'worst on mainland Britain for 20 years' - started on 26 May after a series of attacks by white youths by white youths on Asian homes in Glodwick, an area of Oldham with a significant Asian population' (Newburn, 2003, p 533). Recently conflicts on racial basis occur in the Great Britain with frightening regularity. In May of 2001 in Oldham two nights on end police and special troops unsuccessfully tried to stop the fight between white Englishmen and the Indian and Pakistan immigrants. The conflict had its own background. The Pakistan youth has declared the creation of special areas in Oldham where no white person should step. It has been presented as a necessary measure because the police do not protect Pakistan immigrants from excesses of white racists. The young people have started to gather in some similarity of knots of self-defence. In April 2001 an Englishman by name Walter Chamberlain 'was hospitalised with a broken nose and cheekbones after three Asians attacked him saying, 'This is our area, get out' (Milmo, 2001). The point is that this old man crossed a "no go" zone for whites. A veteran of the World War II, 76-years Walter Chamberlain, has been brutally beaten by a group of teenagers-immigrants. Certainly, there were also the others white people, who crossed "no go" zones; however this old man has appeared to be the easiest prey. Far right powers have immediately answered. They have attacked the Pakistan shop and have thrown a stone in a window of the house, where lived pregnant woman of the Asian origin. From that moment the violence flamed up. For a start about hundred young Asians have crushed a pub, throwing it with bottles with Molotov cocktail. Then more than 500 young men arranged two-day riot. The policemen, trying to manage the riot, have been thrown with the same bottles with an incendiary mix, stones, and petards. As a result the city was crushed, dozens of people have been arrested. Moreover there were a lot of wounded inhabitants. In June the same racial riot occurred in Burnley, the city in the north of England. As well as in Oldham, left-liberal press has attributed the role of conflict instigators to indigenous population. Ostensibly everything has begun with the attack of group of white persons on the Asian taxi driver. Attackers have been slaying the taxi driver for long enough. The police have approached the place of attack only in a half an hour. The Asian youth has considered this delay as malicious intention of policemen and has decided to punish the offenders on their own. There have flashed the fierce fights, which have been managed to stop only by the evening. In revenge the next day it was set on fire the shop of the Asian man. Then white nationalists have transferred the main blow on the square where the mosque is located. Their opponents have begun to smash pubs and have attacked a sex-shop. The police have been torn between. Fortunately, the fights went without any murders. Less then a month appeared first victims. Two persons were killed in Bradford. The situation gradually left from under the control of authorities, which have been not capable to cope with race conflicts in English cities. Apparently, the thing is here not so much in inability or unwillingness of authorities to solve a problem, but in a general crisis of national policy of European democracies, which is expressed both at the level mass consciousnesses (xenophobia), and at the demographic level (depopulation of the nation). According to Raco & Imrie (2003, p. 30) 'following the riots in Oldham, Bradford and Burnley in 2001, the government responded by arguing that it was a lack of mixing between different ethnic communities that was a significant element in causing the riots'. Yet, for Amin, the riots highlight "the problematic nature of attempts to build community and local consensus, and the limitations of seeing 'difficult' areas as places of fixed identities and social relations" (2002a, p 976). It is indicative that in British mass media coverage of interracial conflicts far right powers are a priori appointed as originators of collisions. And herewith non-white immigrants render the most active resistance of police; they pretty often provoke slaughter (as in case in Bradford). But the British mass media refuse to come out into the open and to admit the fact that both parts are guilty in these conflicts due to its notorious political correctness. For the same reason crimes of local residents against foreigners are inflated as "racist", and crimes of immigrants against local residents, on the contrary, is hardly spoken. Thus any person, who does not wish indigenous population became minority in their own country, is called "racist" and "xenophobe". However, even if Labourites from Dawning Street also would give free possibilities to BBC to react on these events objectively, it would not solve the issue. According to Herbrechter & Higgins (2006, p. 348) 'the state's response to the "riots" was bifurcated between a national level focus on community cohesion, social capital and related blurring of the state/civil society distinction as enunciated through the official reports, and a local criminal justice system response that has been highly repressive'. Moreover we should mention that for last quarter of a century the problem of immigration many times became key issue for results of elections. Conclusion In fact not the left-liberal government and the mass media, which have admitted such succession of events, are guilty. The one who is guilty is the system. That vaunted democratic system, which appeared to be absolutely not protected from suchlike things. There are no compensating mechanisms, there are no restrictions constraining inevitable negative tendencies of serious ethnic shifts, observable during last decades in the Europe. Moreover these ethnic shifts were generated by the system itself, and now it is not able to manage them on its own. In order to be able to do it the system should cease to be what it is, the European democracy. People of different cultures and civilizations cannot live without clashes and conflicts in existing "states-nations" of the European pattern. And therefore the immigration policy of modern Europeans is self-destructive and threatens to lead to war the future generations. Against the background of 2001 events in England cities, it is difficult to doubt of topicality of these statements. The one way for our democratic system is to try to operate in democratic ways, and then it will be used by those who now are at war with it (in streets of Bradford, Oldham, Burnley, and other cities). This process is inevitable. Let us remember, for example, Kosovo and Macedonia. But in this case England will cease to be England that is the country occupied by Englishmen, and will turn in ethnically harmonious society. In case England want to remain England it should refuse democracy. And then right powers will come in. And here the decision what it is better - an ethnically harmonious society or semi-fascist dictatorship, will be most likely made by people and for sure in quite democratic way. References Amin, A. (2002) 'Ethnicity and the multicultural city: living with diversity', Environment and Planning A, vol. 34, pp 959-80. Joppke, C., (1999), Immigration and the Nation State: The United States, Germany and Great Britain, Oxford University Press, Oxford Herbrechter, S. & Higgins, M. (2006) Returning (to) Communities: Theory, Culture and Political Practice of the Communal. Rodopi. Newburn, T. (2003). Handbook of Policing. Willan Publishing. Raco, M. & Imrie, R. (2003) Urban Renaissance: New Labour, Community and Urban Policy. The Policy Press. Milmo, C. (2001) 'Extremists Stoke Racial Tensions After Attack'. The Independent London, April 25. Read More