The Left must reconnect with the working classes!

Far-right instigated riots have marred the streets of Britain. The thuggish violence has rightly repulsed the public, undermining the social fabric of Britain. Minorities, especially those associated with immigrants and Islam, now live in fear of when the next round of violence will emerge. Far-right extremists specifically targeted mosques and Holiday Inns.

Underlying the violence is a cauldron of existential angst. There is deep discontent within society particularly among the working classes. They feel out of touch with their national and cultural identity. They see progressives and foreigners transforming the country into something unfathomable, while having their own working-class culture chastised. They see their country being Islamised and inundated with people they believe it cannot sustain. Other than the far-right, no one is thinking with them about who are they in this world that offers them little.

We're second-class citizens in our own country.

Many working-class communities in the North of England feel left behind and treated as second-class citizens within their own country. Nothing works for them: the economy doesn't, society doesn't, and culture doesn't. Everything around them is decaying. The UK's decline, which is becoming obvious to the middle and cosmopolitan classes, has been the working classes defining perspective for decades. Irrespective of the facts, they feel abandoned by their own leaders and countrymen, whom they accuse of diluting the national identity appeasing hostile elements.

This sentiment was the driving force behind Brexit - Britain departure from the European Union. For many working-class communities, it offered an opportunity for a protest vote against the norms of Establishment Britain. Even before the 2016 referendum, this discontent was visible in EU elections. In the 2009 EU elections, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) finished second in the vote share, ahead of Labour. In 2014, Nigel Farage's UKIP won both the popular vote and the most seats in the EU Parliament.

The politics of Brexit revealed a coalition within society that embraced the cultural right and hardheaded nationalism. The cultural right is reacting against the integration of immigrants into British society, mass immigration demographic consequences, and the perceived clash of civilisations between the Judeo-Christian West and the Islamic Near East. In the cultural right mindset, Islam is infecting the Judeo-Christian values underpinning British and English identity. Liberal values simply appease and accommodate a cultural fifth element destroying the unified identity of our nation.

In the background, the working classes have lost any sense of what Marxists call class-consciousness. The working classes have been autonomised by neoliberal economics with Thatcherite economic policies destroying the very communities and social fabric underpinning the working classes for generations. The absence of a strong class identity has led many to turn to nationalism. The working classes were always patriotic, nationalistic, even reactionary, but they supported the progressive social democratic Labour Party because of their class identity and the solidarity that entailed. The diminishing prominence of the working classes, alongside New Labour's compromise with the Washington Consensus, has alienated them from their traditional home on the left. The progressive identitarian politics of recent years, often derided as 'wokeism' by critics, has further alienated them from the left. Naturally, the far right and cultural right have stepped in filling the resulting vacuum.

However, these were not working class organised riots. Far right organisations exploited working class discontent gaining support and momentum. The brutish violence on display appalled the majority, including the working classes, yet the far-right continually capitalise from the working-class existential angst. These riots are not "an organic response from 'ordinary working-class people,'" as Dan Evans rightly points out.

Socialism must have the support of the working classes. While middle class support is necessary, when they dominate the movement, socialism becomes detached from the interests of the core group it represents. This is why the New Realist is sceptical that the Greens are a genuine vehicle for the left, given how divorced they are from the natural concerns of the working classes. The same applies to Labour.

The core strategic aim of the left over the next generation, aside from tackling climate change, is integrating itself back into working class communities. The objective is using traditional strategies of the libertarian left, such as mutual aid, "syndical" unionism (i.e. more radical focus on getting working class gains through unions), worker coöperatives, mutual credit unions, organising football supporter groups (credit belongs to Dan Evans for that suggestion), and rebuilding an international proletariat emphasising the unity of the working classes across borders. Integration is key. While the anti-fascist protests are heartening, they are not a long-term solution for the left.

As Professors Steve Hall and Simon Winlow argue in Death of the Left, the left needs rebuilding from scratch. At the core should be the moral virtues that define the left: hard work, responsibility, perseverance, courage, tolerance, solidarity, liberty, and equality should form the basis of a new left. These virtues should not be confused with liberal values, especially liberty, but they are compatible. From these values, organising effective action within communities, as advocated by libertarian socialists and Dan Evans (see above), will become much easier.

The ultimate objective is providing the working classes with an identity they pride in. Helping them rebuild their communities, regardless of state support, alongside their character will win-back working-class support for socialism.

Tackling Islamophobia is also key. Islam embraces the values of solidarity, for instance Islamic mutual aid (zakat) is one of the five pillars of Islam. Mutual aid complements working class and Islamic values. Islam needn't be a threat to Western values.

The far-right will have won if the left waits on gaining power implementing its agendas through the power of the state. Let's be clear: although Labour is part of the left's heritage, it has not represented the left for decades, including under Jeremy Corbyn's stewardship.

Only by reconnecting with the working classes and relieving that existential angst - by showing how they can identify themselves in modern Britain - will the left halt the rise of the far-right and expand its base of support. The path forward is demonstrating how socialism will impacts their lives without the forcing them into compromising their own values. The left will not win the support of the working classes simply because they "should" support socialism. The working classes will not tolerate such arrogance and laziness.

This article was originally published on the 18th of August.