On 17 August, it was reported that hundreds of people had gathered that day in Ashington in Northumberland, to protest against what demonstrators were referring to as “illegal immigrants” in the area. As readers may know seeking asylum is legal and has been for 74 years, since the UK signed the UN Convention on Asylum Seekers in 1951.
It was further noted that, “the demonstration was shared by the Facebook page “British Unity”, and organisers have said the aim was to have their concerns about safety in the town, which they believe is being put at risk by “illegal immigrants”, recognised by the government.
The protesters who had met at midday were said to have called for the removal of “illegal-immigrants” from the area and demanded a stop to “housing them for our children’s future”. It was also reported that, “a police presence was in attendance at the protest as demonstrators also called for “mass deportations” and to “stop the boats””.
Meanwhile in the south of our region, Reform took County Durham Council in a landslide in the May local elections, winning 65 out of the 99 seats on the council.
A couple of years ago I wrote a piece for North East Bylines called Silencing the Drumbeat about the way that the working people of the North East had thoroughly rejected Mosely and his British Union of Fascists in the equally turbulent 1930s. I have recently been asked to write a follow-up piece about how things have changed since the 1930s. But also about what we can learn from history to help us to combat Reform. So, here goes….
Common enterprises
In the 19th century huge numbers of people migrated into the North East as the coal mining industry rapidly developed, along with associated industries such as iron and steel, railways, engineering and on the three great rivers of the region, the Tyne, the Wear and the Tees, shipbuilding. The North East was the place to be; it was a progressive, forward-looking place of innovation and it attracted people because of this and became what David Byrne in the book Geordies described as the ‘Yukon of the North’.
People came from Scotland, from Ireland, especially after the Potato Famine of the 1840s, but not just because of that terrible event and from other parts of the north of England while tin miners came from as far away as Cornwall in the 1830s.
It wasn’t always sweetness and light between the different groups who came to the North East, but strong cohesive communities did develop partly because of the way large economic enterprises could bind people together. Following this there was also the development in the second-half of the 19th century of the trade union movement and the cooperative movement in the North East which brought people from different backgrounds together. It was this kind of solidarity that was still evident in the 1930s, when Mosley and his British Union of Fascists failed so spectacularly in the North East.
Those large economic enterprises such as coal mines and shipyards are all of course now long gone. We live in a more fragmented society, where social media rather than bringing us together has tended to put us in silos, so that different groups of people often don’t engage with each other at all, except in ritualised slanging matches. Consequently, one thing that is needed is for common enterprises to be developed again which can bring people from all backgrounds together and these could include issues around issues that concern all people such as health, education, transport and not least the environment.
Attachment to place not ethnicity
Another feature which needs to be developed is the idea of attachment to place rather than ethnicity. Those who came to the North East in the 19th century developed an attachment to the region, partly of course because of the nature of the work. Much of the work developed because of the landscape and the nature of the land; it was coal or iron ore beneath the ground or where there was a large river how people could launch large ships.
Clearly that idea of attachment to place cannot be as powerful today as it was 150 or 200 years ago. However, we can still develop an attachment to place which brings people together from different backgrounds. As the Scottish poet Alistair McIntosh has so succinctly put it:
“A person belongs
inasmuch as they are willing
to cherish and be cherished
by a place
and its peoples”
This seems to me an excellent way of going forward; Old communities in the North East need to be respected and need to respect each other. We should cherish what each other has to offer and this should mean listening to each other, listening to each other’s stories and helping each other. What a difference can be made for example, when asylum seekers in the region do voluntary work and can help disabled and elderly people in places like Ashington or the old pit villages of County Durham. They can become valued and the process of dehumanisation that so much of the media and political class try to engage in would not be anything like as effective.
Why attachment to place has become less important
One of the main obstacles to bringing people together, and people from different backgrounds being cherished in the place where they live, is talked about in a recent IPPR paper, which discusses the way that the public realm has been torn apart in the last 15 years as austerity has bitten hard into vulnerable places across the country including many in our own region.
The loss of public realm has meant that there are less places where people can come together and engage with each other in constructive and positive ways. Instead, people are sitting at home and communicating by social media, which as noted earlier, often tends to put us in silos and so creates division, rather than cohesion.
If we are to successfully combat these forces of division, then it is important that the public realm and fabric of our towns and villages is rebuilt and rebuilt in a way which is inclusive to people from all backgrounds, where they can be together and find common ground on the many issues where as the late Jo Cox put it, we have more in common than divides us.
As for social and other media, then of course there was no reason why we can’t also develop forms of social and other media which are inclusive and allow for constructive dialogue between people which can lead to greater understanding and cohesion.
Rebuilding the common realm
This then seems to be the major task of combating those who would wish to divide us. When Mosley and his British Union of Fascists came to the North East 90 years ago, he found a cohesive region, built on the coming together of people from different backgrounds, which could easily withstand both his propaganda and any intimidation from the Blackshirts. Indeed, it is interesting that the British Union of Fascists was seen as alien to people in the North East and were seen as from the South and not the kind of people that working people in the North East could relate to.
Indeed in the 1930s, the Newcastle Chief of Police, Inspector Crawley, who had been the chief of Newcastle police since 1925, stated that Mosley was mostly to blame for any trouble caused, and that an open meeting, “invites disturbers”, especially, “in the case of a novel, perhaps foreign brand of politics”. Crawley further claimed that Mosley’s style of clothing, and manner were, “definitely provocative to North country types, including a large number of unemployed in this distressed area.” Because of the culture of welcoming others which originated from the Liberal and Labour cultures working people had been educated in, the BUF had a hard time of it. This point is emphasised by what Crawley wrote to Sir Vernon Kell, on 9 June 1934, that “despite the inspired optimism of the Fascists to Newcastle, it would be difficult for the police to conceive of an area where Fascism is more at variance with the trend of thought of the general public.”
There was also a huge and very important network of community associations in the region at the time which had been built up over the previous hundred years or so. There was a public realm and common spaces where people could come together and have dialogue. If we are to successfully take on those who would try and divide us, this public realm and these common spaces need to be rebuilt, to some extent online, put particularly in the form of spaces where people can meet physically, learn about each other and work together to achieve common goals.
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