We are seeing the inevitable rise of white identity politics

The constant denigration of the white working class has come back to haunt the liberal-progressive elites

Photo: Gavin Lynn / Wikimedia Commons

For a long time, I strove to avoid using the term ‘white working class’. In my TV work, my writing, and on social media, I would make mention of the term only where it was strictly relevant to the topic under discussion – quite often, ironically, when I was defending myself against the fallacious charge that I was ‘always banging on about the “white working class”’.

I never particularly liked the term. Neither did I think there was much political justification for it. Given that the ‘white working-class’ was, as a demographic, so large throughout Britain and had not, historically at least, faced the challenges of oppression and discrimination to the degree experienced by other cohorts, I didn’t see why it was necessary to mark it out as a distinct identity group.

The term was divisive, too. At the end of the day, the working class was the working class, regardless of the racial characteristics of those who belonged to it. At least that was how those of us on the left were supposed to approach such questions. To my mind, people who attached themselves to the cause of the ‘white working class’ tended quite often to have sinister motives, and usually harboured a desire to set elements of the working class against each other.

That’s what I believed then. And I’m sure it was all true.

But how things have changed.