Protests at Boston’s Copley Square taken by the author. Bostonians stood together to fight for the rights of Muslims, refugees and women.
Adversity in the US is bringing out the best in people protesting; not so in the UK.
“When Muslims are under attack, what do we do?” At Copley Square in Boston on the 29th of January, 20,000 chorused back “Stand up! Fight back!” The same response came for refugees, for women and for minorities. Over 4 million have marched for these values in the US in two months of astonishing resilience.
The same groups are under attack in the UK: racist violence is increasing and unprosecuted, refugees are left to rot in Calais and misogyny in parliament is reaching new heights.
For a brief moment, I thought Tony Blair was calling for the UK to stand up like the US, when he called people to “rise up in defence of what we believe,” last month. But what Blair, and much of the left in the UK, are standing up for is remaining in the EU. There remain no significant protests about this government’s actions towards those least able to defend themselves.
Looking back across the Atlantic, from snowy Boston to Blighty, the reaction to May’s administration leaves me cold. Rather than gather together around universal values of justice as people are in the US, the left in the UK have focused on a nebulous value of “European-ness”: a sense of cosmopolitanism, an abhorrence of the “deplorables” of the UK and a preference for global elites elsewhere.
It is the very attitude that people voted against when they voted for Brexit, and yet seems to have only strengthened in defeat.
The European-ness touted is one that serves to proclaim superiority to the domestic working class more than declare solidarity with any European peoples or values.
Being European, lest we forget, has never been a British value. Britain dragged itself into the European bloc kicking and screaming in 1973. Lower shares of students have taken up Erasmus student exchange schemes than in any other EU country. 61% of us are still monolingual (comparable only with Hungary and Italy).
And yet, liberal elites seem to have found “European-ness” to be not only one of their values, but the only one worth protesting in a year that has brought a new savagery to the Conservative government leading our country. The European-ness touted is one that serves to proclaim superiority to the domestic working class more than declare solidarity with any European peoples or values. This sense of moral superiority, over the people who voted to leave Europe rather than the values that inspired them, is a far cry from the embrace of togetherness that the protests in the US have exemplified.
The UK hasn’t always been so disappointing. Just last year, the support for junior doctors in their fight for a fair contract was outstanding: people supported not only junior doctors but our NHS and the principles that everyone should have high-quality health care and decent working conditions. Five years ago while I was studying at one of our universities, students occupied the main buildings on campus to protest the increase in student fees, which have forced people into debt, restricted choice and reduced equality of opportunity. Back another ten years our protests against Iraq were the largest in the world and were a rallying cry for peace and justice.
None of these protests worked, of course. Keeping the will to protest despite British governments’ ability and recent willingness to ignore popular sentiment is not easy.
But the British haven’t lost the will to protest just because the odds of success are low. The tens of thousands who attended the anti-Trump rally in London in February suggest that inevitability of defeat alone does not stop us (after all, any impact on Trump’s policies from the UK is unlikely). Nor will the Brexit protest on the 25th March stop Brexit.
The success of the Trump march, however, reveals what we aren’t seeing about ourselves. It’s easy to critique Trump from afar, without noticing our own blonde brute running our international affairs, our own millionaire businessman suggesting we make Britain a tax haven, our own rabid racists running our media. May’s administration is a natural ally of Trump’s government.
It’s the values we’re standing up for are letting us down... “European-ness” just doesn’t cut it in the face of the right wing attacks our society is facing.
Right now, it’s the values we’re standing up for are letting us down. Tony Blair, in his passionate defence of what he believes in, has not noticed that it is precisely the impoverished values behind his beliefs that led to today’s predicament. “European-ness” just doesn’t cut it in the face of the right wing attacks our society is facing.
We need to show that Britain too holds values like equality and justice dear, not just our profits and the freedoms of the elite. That when our society is under attack, which it is, we also stand up. We also fight back.
Tom Traill is currently studying for a Masters degree at the Harvard Kennedy School.