As a young Jewish man, and a passionate believer in the
virtues of a liberal, democratic and pluralistic society, I am abhorred by the
claims made by Mathew Goodwin in the course of his defence of his decision to
include UKIP members as a control group in his study on attitudes to violence
and the far right.
First, Goodwin defends his inclusion of UKIP by explaining
that the authors of the report wanted a control group to the right of Cameron’s
conservatives.
Ed West, writing for the Telegraph, has already made the
suggestion that surely a better control group would have been just an ordinary
cross-section of British society. Nevertheless, it is my own submission that if
Goodwin had wanted a control group “right of Cameron’s Conservatives”, I see no
reason why he shouldn’t have just interviewed ordinary members of the Conservative
party most of whom are much more right wing than Cameron who is frequently
criticized by Tories as being a moderate, centrist, “heir to Blair” figure.
Nevertheless, Goodwin makes the fair point that he never
claimed UKIP is a party associated with violence and he points out that the
assertion of UKIP’s leadership that it is opposed to extremism and violence is
“backed up by our own data”.
So how does Goodwin justify his suggestion that UKIP shares
more with the far right than it admits? Given by his own admission UKIP members
do not lust after violence, he does so by claiming that the party has
“considerable policy overlaps with the extreme right”. Here is where Goodwin’s
argument becomes disingenuous, warped and extremely offensive to members of
UKIP such as myself who are members of minority communities.
The BNP are self-evidently right wing nutters: the leadership
meets the KKK, have denied the holocaust and, until stopped by the courts, left
membership of the party only to indigenous white Brits. Many of the BNP’s
supporters are neo-Nazi skinheads and this is all a million miles away from
UKIP.
Yet Goodwin argues that UKIP’s sensible policy on
immigration which is designed to promote liberal values overlaps with the BNP’s
white supremacist policies.
Goodwin quotes the UKIP policy of ending uncontrolled
immigration as being overlapping with the extreme right. But surely wanting
controlled immigration is not an unusual view at all after the unprecedentedhigh
levels of immigration seen under New Labour? I myself, for example, believe
immigration should be controlled with regards to the brain drain which many
academics claim has led to the NHS stealing doctors and nurses from poor
African countries where they were trained. Furthermore, Goodwin also claims
that there is overlap in terms of the policy of wanting the “expulsion of
illegal immigrants”. I cannot possibly see how this view is extreme.
Yet there is one policy which Goodwin claims does not just
overlap with the far right but is in fact a “radical right pitch to voters” and
that is: ending multiculturalism. Here we spot the fundamental flaw in
Goodwin’s paper and that is that “far right” is never properly defined. Being
far right is innately a bad thing as far as Goodwin is concerned. This is
evident in his description as UKIP as being “alongside the more toxic extreme
right” implying that there is a less toxic, but albeit toxic category UKIP
falls into.
While I too would of course agree that far right politics is
detestable, my own definition of “fair right” must be different, and in my
view, more sensible, and I can demonstrate this in my support for UKIP’s allegedly
extreme right policy on multiculturalism. Incidentally, I would argue that the
Prime Minister agrees with UKIP on this given that he has said state multiculturalism
has failed.
UKIP is a libertarian party and British classical liberalism
emphasises not trying to promote diversity but rather favours a policy of merely
tolerating minority groups. That we don’t believe in throwing money at quangos
or encouraging positive discrimination in order to achieve the successful integration
of minority groups into British society is all that this policy is about. UKIP
has long ago scrapped a silly French-style ban the burqa policy.
Indeed, UKIP is a liberal nationalist party in the British
libertarian tradition. It is about preserving a nation-state which is tolerant
towards minority groups and will not allow society to fragment. After all, a
lack of social cohesion hurts minority groups the most. The narrative Goodwin paints
is a clear smear against UKIP and it does not stand up to scrutiny. The real
victims of this affair will be my Asian, black, and other friends in UKIP who
are from minority backgrounds, and who will be looked down upon because others
have deeply misunderstood their political beliefs.
