Labour Wrap: Brexit, nationalism and xenophobia

BREXIT — the looming exit, certainly of England and Wales from the European Union (EU) — will probably take ten years or more to fully unravel, says Terry Bell in his latest Labour Wrap. The hundreds of treaties and agreements and other complexities will mean this will be no easy matter.

For example, there are estimated to be 3 million EU migrants in Britain, while there are also estimated to be more than 2 million British citizens living and working in other EU countries. And while the economic and other consequences are largely unknown, the most immediate effect has been to boost nationalist feeling, not just in Europe but around the world.

And nationalism, says Bell, contains within it the poisonous seeds of xenophobia. Within hours of the narrow “leave” result of the British referendum, there were reports of racist slogans daubed on walls and T-shirts appeared calling for migrants to leave.

It is the antithesis, says Bell, of the humanism contained in the trade union slogan: workers of all countries unite. This slogan was a call for unity within an exploitative system of nation states. It recognised that only by uniting could the sellers of labour protect themselves and, in the process, perhaps improve the lot of all humanity.

He adds that globalisation — the notion of an international rather than national economies — has wreaked havoc on the former industrial heartlands of Britain. And it was in these areas of high unemployment that working people voted en masse to leave, having fallen prey to blaming not the system, but a version of it.

In the process, impetus was given to a range of populist groups, fertilising the seeds of xenophobia inherent in nationalism. According to Bell, the main concern about Brexit for South African trade unionists and democrats should be the impact it may have on our own festering nationalisms.

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