Labour's anti-immigration wing is a threat to workers' rights

One the more disturbing trends within the UK Labour Party in recent years has been the rising number of anti-immigration, and anti-European, members showing up in their colours. That trend has most recently been illuminated by the MP for Streatham, Mr Chuka Umunna, who has called for restrictions to be placed on skilled workers pursuing unskilled work across borders (Watt, 2014).

For a party founded by Trade Unions, that considers itself socially progressive and the champion of ordinary people's causes, this trend is a bit incongruous. The only connection that the trend seems to have with Labour policy is that anti-immigration and anti-European sentiments are popular topics for media controversies. The murkier underside to the Labour Party's policy approach is the determined, ambitious, opportunism to its politics that leads it to try and make use of any popular cause.

The determination to be in a position of institutional power is a powerful motivator, but it also invites bad habits and doublespeak. In politics it can lead to parties opportunistically jumping on popular issues for a short term boost in the polls and being deceptive about what voters will get from those parties if they are elected into power. Those bad habits can coalesce, and entirely take over the identity of that political group if it isn't careful.

The latest case of Labour getting on a controversial bandwagon is Mr Chuka Umunna's call for the establishment of arbitrary rules to stop the skilled taking unskilled work in richer countries (Watt, 2014). This would come as part of the package of undoing the European Union's Freedom of Movement - except for high-skilled workers moving for high-skilled jobs.

That concept seems to be entirely at odds with progressive roots of the Labour Party. The direction it invites British institutions to move in seems to present a basic threat to the rights of individuals. Taking away from people the freedom of movement, particularly from the unskilled (who are usually the poorest), means taking away one of the few powers the people have left to challenge the treatment they receive at the hands of domestic employers.

The Vice-President of the European Commission, Viviane Reding of Luxembourg's Christian Social People's Party, has in recent weeks been attempting to debunk the politician's myth of foreigner invasions (The Guardian, 2014), pointing out that immigration actually has a positive affect on the economy. However, moves like Mr Umunna's anti-immigration policy, from a supposedly progressive Labour Party, are not helpful in the debunking of damaging myths.

Policy approaches like these, towards immigration and Europe, show a worrying alignment of the so-called party of the workers with the ideologically conservative groups, like the British Conservative Party, whose policies aim to benefit business largely at the expense of the worker's ability to move freely across borders or to possess legal securities in the workplace. There are even long standing members of those conservative groups that dismiss such responses to immigration, with former Chancellor Mr Kenneth Clarke defending the contribution of immigrants (Dominiczak, 2014).

The fact that the Labour Party are willing to stand on the same side of the argument as those powers, and sometimes go further, exposes a murkier underside to the party. In the party's determination to gain the political power to achieve its causes, it is willing to align with populist causes like the suppression of immigration which threaten the rights of workers. The party needs to wary of such moves. It is not such a large fall from opportunism and manipulation to achieve an end, to the loss of an identity through the use of such tactics.

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References:
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+ Nicholas Watt's 'Stop EU citizens travelling to UK in search of work, says Labour'; in The Guardian; 10 January 2014

+ The Guardian's 'Top EU official slams British ministers on immigration'; 10 January 2014.

+ Peter Dominiczak's 'Ken Clarke hits out at Cameron immigration claims'; in The Telegraph; 13 January 2014.

Scapegoating of immigrants and the poor is unfair, and a dangerous distraction

The opening of the UK's borders to newer members of the European Union, has been and gone with little in the way of panic (Andreou, 2014). Considering the furore that was whipped up in fear of a flood of immigrants, it was quite an anti-climax.

That should not have been a surprise. Reducing any complex social system to such simplistic terms is always a mistake, and economics is amongst the most complex. Problems like slow growth or unemployment are not going to be solved by curbing immigration. And, worse, such scapegoating is only going to be a distraction that prevents people asking the questions that need to be asked, of the people who need to be challenged over their policies.

The latest variation of a British anti-immigration narrative has been erected in the background of the Conservative Party's pursuit of co-ordinated policies aimed at altering the balance of the relationship between workers and employers. Right now the Conservatives - through repatriation of powers, anti-open borders, anti-welfare (Goodman, 2013; Kirkup & Dominiczak, 2013; Pring, 2013) - are seeking to reduce the power of workers to take away the limitations on business owners and investors upon whom the conservative idea of economy depends.

The anti-immigration narrative, joined to the anti-welfare narrative behind things like Benefits Street, have frequently turned attention away from the Conservative economic model's ongoing failure to address a weak economy and slow recovery, and towards the working class and immigrants (Void, 2013; Mason, 2014). That narrative has encouraged people to ignore the real powerbrokers, and to turn the blame instead on individuals, or groups, who live their lives on society's bottom rung - all the while ignoring the fact that those people lack any real influence on the economy at large.

Not only are those prejudices grossly unfair, it also fatally distracts people. It distracts them from asking questions of those who have a real influence and can't, or won't, solve the problems that lead to symptoms like unemployment, poverty and crime.

And questions need to be asked of those policies.

The aims of the Conservative economic model that wishes to take away the limitations on business owners and investors depends, unfortunately, upon the suppression and control of working people for its success. Policies, like the closing of borders, just traps people. They prevent people from escaping bad working conditions, from escaping the lack of minimum or living wages and rights, and from escaping bad employers. The limitations on business owners are reduced, but only at the cost of the safeguards put in place to protect workers.

No one issue is ever going to be the key to economic success, and banning immigration is never going to be a miracle solution. Reducing matters to such simplistic terms will only breed resentment, while the resulting scapegoating of a group of people will distract from the failure to produce sound and uncontroversial solutions.

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References:
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+ Alex Andreou's 'The immigration invasion that never was'; in The Guardian; 2 January 2014.

+ Paul Goodman's 'David Cameron can’t count on the Tory truce over the EU lasting'; in The Telegraph; 14 October 2013.

+ James Kirkup & Peter Dominiczak 'David Cameron in pledge to restrict benefits for immigrants'; in The Telegraph; 27 November 2013.

+ John Pring's 'Government's new workfare scheme is 'unethical' and 'unworkable''; in Disability News Service; 3 October 2013.

+ Channel 4's 'Benefits Street'; 6 January 2014

+ Johnny Void's 'The latest benefit fraud crackdown is a grim sign of the times'; 17 September 2013.

+ Rowena Mason's 'Nigel Farage backs 'basic principle' of Enoch Powell's immigration warning'; in The Guardian; 5 January 2014.

The Met Police's water cannon and the dangers of ideology, escalation and suppression

Earlier this week came the news that London's Metropolitan Police want permission to deploy water cannon. On their behalf, London Mayor Boris Johnson has petitioned the Home Secretary Teresa May, and it seems that a public consultation is soon to follow (Dodd, 2014; Merrill, 2014).

If the growing publicity that protests have received in the last few years, and the obvious tensions that there have been between protesters and the police at those events, are taken into account, this response from the capital's police force should not be a surprise. It should, however, make you wary.

The British Police does already employ water cannon, but only in Northern Ireland - and there only controversially. The police of many European countries use water cannon too, alongside their armed officers, their Gendarmes. Yet, so far, since their introduction by Robert Peel, the British Met Police have largely managed to refrain from becoming militarised.

Water cannon being made available for policing in the capital would mark the passing of a watershed. It marks a step towards the abandonment of civilian policing and a step towards turning the police into a paramilitary force. It would be a step towards abandoning the principle of 'policing by consent' that has underwritten law enforcement in Britain, as point four on the policing principles stresses:

'To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.'

Abandoning those principles in favour of a more militarised force risks throwing away consent in favour of suppression. That problem is only enhanced by making the extent to which the police enforce the law a political issue. Unfortunately, opinions on that matter are very much subject to ideology.

Conservatism is an ideology deeply wed to the idea that society is something constructed out of chaos by the imposition of order. The wealth of capitalism, the traditions of the establishment and the dogmas of the church all depend upon that order to function. And so, despite some apparent hypocrisy, it makes sense that the same voices that might decry 'meddling governments' for getting in the way of the unrestricted pursuit of wealth, are also the voices that are now calling for the increased armaments for the police to deal with civil unrest (Watt, 2013).

The widening gap between rich and poor is a source of fear for the poor, but it is also a source of fear for the rich. When the wealth gap is greater, the inequalities of a society are more starkly visible and more likely to provoke bitter resentment.  The struggles of the poor, as Thomas Paine (1797) pointed out, is of the deepest concern to the rich, since their affluence is directly won with the acquiescence of the poor to remaining orderly within an unequal social structure, that offers them little in the way of benefits for doing so.

As such it is unsurprising that those affiliated with conservative ideology, or those institutions such as the police, whose role is to maintain the order that conservatism craves, should want these enhanced weapons for the keeping of order. The problem with the ideologically conservative perception, though, is that it is based on an essentially negative view of human kind. Through that negative perspective it would be dangerously easy to coalesce incidents like the English Riots of 2011, with the massive political protests over the last few years in which a small minority became violent or damaged private property.

We must be wary of allowing conflicts to escalate, as the expansion of the available suppressive weapons to the police surely only encourages. We must be wary of the potential for those weapons to be missapplied, and dangers of injuries and resentments that would follow. We must be wary not to let these steps infringe upon the rights of people to protest in the name of reform, in the name of a cause, or in the name of broad institutional changes - all essential in a political process that continues to isolate people from power that is wielded nominally in their name.

We must not lose sight of the point of order. We must keep in mind what our methods say of us, of what we say to one another when we give a green light to using ever more dangerous weapons and tactics to enforce the law.

Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Fourth Wall Controversy

The new season of BBC's Sherlock caused a stir when it seemed to directly engage with its fans. The show, and its showrunners Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss, have been criticised for the enormous amount of influence that fans of the show seemed to have on the narrative of the show, and the negative effects that influence brings.

The prime concern appears to be that letting the audience dictate the narrative, or trying too hard to appeal to an audience's whims, risks turning a tv show into little more than self-congratulatory reruns that bleed dry the novelty and creativity of the show.

But things really can't be treated that simplistically, especially when you consider that Sherlock brings the great detective into the modern world. If we are to bring Sherlock Holmes to the world we inhabit now, to the London of today, you must talk about the shape of that world. You must talk about the things that set that world apart from the Victorian era of Conan Doyle. You must talk about how someone with so specific a skillset manages to function within the social structures of our world. When you talk about those things, you cannot ignore just how thin the fourth wall has become.

Critics have warned that the influence of fans could end up making the show far too narrow in their appeal (Lawson, 2014). Instead of being available and accessible to a wide audience, they risk instead become a niche interest for a few obsessives.

There are reasons, however, to not be quite so pessimistic.

After the success of the first two seasons, the gap between the second and third seasons inevitably generated immense amounts of anticipation amongst the show's large, and largely online, fanbase (Mellor, 2014). This created a fascinating problem: how do you diffuse the tension created by fan expectation?

The answer that Sherlock gave us served two purposes. First, it toyed and played with the fans and their theories, diffusing the tension with comedy while coming a hairs breadth from breaking the fourth wall in the process. But secondly, it served also to dissect an increasingly important part of the twenty-first century: the fourth wall is now very thin.

The world we live in is no longer neatly packaged into discrete boxes. Even before a piece of art is completed it can be discovered, dissected, critiqued, praised, condemned and forgotten.

The creators of Sherlock have tried hard to show us that high scrutiny environment, with those aspects of our world playing an important part in the narrative of the first two seasons. In particular in the episode The Reichenbach Fall where Jim Moriarty's final plot involved turning the churning and vindictive whirlwind's of media critique and public opinion against the detective.

Moffat and Gatiss' Sherlock tries to give us a real sense of the world we inhabit. It presents us with a dense and critical world of limited privacy. Through pioneering visual representations of technology such as text messages, Sherlock is able to maintain a high pace to the episodes that suits its setting. And through repeated references to blogs, forums and message boards, and social media like Twitter and YouTube, we see another aspect of our world: obsession.

In the first two seasons we saw the eponymous Sherlock through the lens of the cases he tried to solve with Dr John Watson. The third season has now taken a step back in order to show us more. The early seasons demonstrated the skill of the man in his own field, inside his own obsession. Now it is endeavouring to show us how he lives in the wider world.

Sherlock, a man with skills that make him a machine for detection, finely tuned by obsession, finds himself vulnerable in other kinds of situations by the specificity of skill-set. The third season's second episode, The Sign of Three, reinforces that direction by placing the detective at a wedding. Sherlock's absolute focus on his detective work leaves him isolated from other people and the rituals through which their lives proceed. That isolation leaves him bemused and uncomfortable when thrust into participation.

Even as critics warn against the increasing ability of fandoms to encroach upon the separation offered by the fourth wall, Sherlock delivers up moral tales about the dangers of isolation and obsession. It takes that obsession and shows us the counter productive threat it poses in a world without barriers. It shows us the dangers of obsessive observation when the observers fail to weigh things in proper time or context, or twist those tools to reshape the world in selfish ways.

Sherlock has responded to pressure from the other side of the fourth wall by offering fans a little bit of what they want, while presenting them with a cautionary tale. If you demand that the world reshapes itself to accommodate your obsessions, you might just get what you want. But reshaping the world around what you want can leave you boxed in and isolated from other experiences.

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References:
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+ Stephen Moffat & Mark Gatiss' Sherlock Series 1 and 2; BBC, 2012 [Buy Now]

+ Stephen Moffat & Mark Gatiss' Sherlock Series 3; 'Episode 1: The Empty Hearse'; BBC, 2014.

+ Stephen Moffat & Mark Gatiss' Sherlock Series 3; 'Episode 2: The Sign of Three'; BBC, 2014.

+ Mark Lawson's 'Sherlock and Doctor Who: beware of fans influencing the TV they love'; in The Guardian; 3 January 2014.

+ Louis Mellor's 'Sherlock series 3 episode 1 review: The Empty Hearse'; on Den of Geek; 1 January 2014.