The Left doesn’t tolerate dissent. That’s a disgrace
Ihave now spent a greater portion of my life in my adopted country than in the land of my birth. Moving houses involves sorting through one’s belongings, deciding what to bring along, what to leave behind. Moving countries also involves the careful packing of one’s culture and political philosophy too, so that they safely reach the new country, ready to be adapted to one’s new homeland and to forge a new identity.
My culture travelled just fine. This country can pride itself in how accommodating and hugely welcoming it is to other cultures, indeed there are some who argue it can be too accommodating, but that’s a debate for another day. My political philosophy? That did not travel so well.
I owe my success to the Left-wing movement in Bangladesh, without which I could not be where I am. While the Bangladeshi Right has historically been entrenched in religious orthodoxy, the Left, with all its flaws, has worked tirelessly to secure the right of girls like me to have an education – instead of being forced into marriage and child bearing, having barely reached puberty. An outspoken, opinionated woman has had only one political home in Bangladesh: the Left. This, of course, isn’t the case in the UK.
How are opinionated women – or men for that matter – being treated by the Left in Britain today? Just fine, provided one toes the party line. But dare to dissent and the mask of diversity and benevolence, over which the Left claims to have a monopoly, slips.
The latest to join the long list of people put in their place while expressing an unsanctioned view is Gisela Stuart, the German-born former Labour MP, who, it was reported last week, was allegedly reminded that she “had another country to go to” by Alastair Campbell. Her crime: daring to campaign for Brexit (Mr Campbell called the story “truth mangling”).
What adds to the insult is the suspicion that if any Conservative used language like that, they would risk their career – but that the Left gets away with so much by invoking a philosophical “get out of jail free” card. Incredibly, the now suspended Labour MP Jared O’Mara actually said as much a little while ago, when he refused to resign over his own derogatory comments but suggested that had such bile been uttered by a Tory MP, the situation would have been different because Conservatism doesn’t foster “equality and egalitarianism”.
What breathtaking arrogance! What is the source of this benefit of the doubt which the Left allows itself, demanding that it be held to a lower standard than those of its opponents? What use is this veneer of egalitarianism if the preachers so consistently fail to practise it, continuing to take the support of their historic constituencies for granted?
The Left’s obsession with diversity of race and sex has reduced these important matters to a lazy box-ticking exercise, which a huge section of the population now holds in contempt, ultimately harming the cause of the very groups it purports to help.
If the Left truly values diversity, it must celebrate dissent. Without difference of opinion the echo chamber may well sound harmonious, but the voices bouncing off each other will be exactly the same. FOLLOW Dia Chakravarty on Twitter @DiaChakravarty;
at telegraph.co.uk/opinion
Our national problem with productivity is nothing new. It was a hot topic of discussion in the Seventies when it was known as “the British disease” and regarded as a major factor in the country’s economic decline. The indigenous workforce was apparently incapable of (or unwilling to) create the output that the modern international market required. Not only did it turn out less per worker in volume but its industrial products were notoriously inferior in quality to those of foreign competitors. British car manufacturing became risible on the world stage before it finally collapsed in its nationalised incarnation, eventually to be resuscitated under private (sometimes Japanese) ownership. One by one, the great national brand names in televisions, radios, and home appliances disappeared from the global scene – all apparently doomed by the intransigence of their armies of employees.
Considerable academic study and political acrimony was expended on the topic of the British labour market and why it was so self-defeating. This was not just a rejection of the idea of working faster or harder or, even temporarily, longer hours for the sake of improving the chances of your industry. Even more seriously, there was organised resistance to progress in the form of more efficient systems, stricter quality control and modern ways of operating. This was transmuted by the trades unions into a political philosophy: technical innovations and improvements to efficiency were presented as tools of the capitalist bosses specifically designed to downgrade workers or make it possible to employ fewer of them. So instead of adapting to technical progress and cooperating to create a more highly skilled workforce, the reactionary forces in union and management simply sent British industry into a death spiral.
You know what happened next. The Eighties brought an end to the most rampant of the Luddite trade union powers and, lo and behold, it turned out that the British workforce was not as perversely obtuse as it had seemed. But the explosion of liberated optimism that burst upon the scene 30 or so years ago has tended to obscure the deeper issue that remains. There is still a problem with British productivity and it is largely the same problem: this is a historic cultural and social phenomenon at least as much as an economic one. When the trade unions turned working-class unwillingness to work harder or more efficiently into a form of ideological Marxist “alienation”, they were not altogether wrong. The trouble with employment in Britain is that it is tainted by class resentment. In the manufacturing sector, this goes back to the genuine exploitation of the industrial revolution. But in other areas of the economy too, it is an ugly presence: more perhaps than in any other developed country, there is a highly developed sensitivity to being seen as servile – “serving” the customer or the client is too readily conflated with appearing to be a servant.
When I first came to Britain, decades ago, I was mystified by the attitude of people working for shops and service suppliers. The almost universal apathy and unhelpfulness of those days bordered on dumb insolence. This was particularly startling to me because I had just finished working my way through university – in the great American tradition – by dealing with customers at cinema theatres where such behaviour would have been unthinkable. Nor did it occur to me (or the customers) to think of my job as demeaning. I was earning my way to a professional career but even if I hadn’t been, there would have been no shame in my relations with the public. There was a general sense that doing any job well and competently was a sign of self-respect.
I think of those days often when I see the international workforce that provides most services in London. The reason that all those restaurants and sandwich bars and coffee chains employ migrants is not necessarily because they can be paid less but because their attitude is so willing and helpful. They do not think of the employer as a class enemy and they do not see their jobs as implying a fixed station in life. And yes, that word is at the heart of it: it is the assumption of the fixed nature of working-class life that has been so invidious. If you expect that the relationship between you and the people you are serving will never change because of an accident of your birth, then you might have reason
‘Serving the customer or the client is too readily conflated with appearing to be a servant’
at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion to feel hostile. Whereas, if you see yourself as having a decent chance of moving up and onwards from that position, then you have good cause to perform as well and cheerfully as possible.
The fatal trap of British workingclass life has traditionally been defeatism – tendencies which were compounded by the Left with its insistence that individual aspiration was a betrayal of your roots: only through collective resistance to the capitalist boss class could the workers’ struggle succeed. That meant that any personal desire to improve yourself should be seen as disloyalty to your community and even your family. (If you doubt this, ask anyone over 60 who went to a grammar school from a working-class home.) So yes, the Eighties broke through a lot of that. But it’s not over yet. There is still a strong sense that the only way to get free of this hated class domination is to work for yourself. That is why the self-employed and the small entrepreneur are the most productive and dynamic elements in the economy, and why they are such an effective force for social mobility. And why it is so wicked for the Treasury (largely staffed by people who have never worked outside the public sector) to persecute them at every possible opportunity – unless stopped by a wary Chancellor who has learned his lesson.
But surely, at the turn of another century, we can find a way past this? Social intimidation and the terrible passivity that undermines the life chances of a whole cohort of society should belong to the past. Being productive and proud – even if you work for somebody else – is a major part of what makes life worth living. This isn’t just about economics.