Beyond Division: ‘Multicultural Nationalism’ and the White Working-Class

Keir Starmer’s regret at talking of an “island of strangers” was widely seen as a defeat for the newly resurgent ‘Blue Labour’ faction – even if his Government’s white paper still claimed that immigration has caused “incalculable damage”. 

But the partial retreat leaves fundamental questions unanswered. What should Labour’s relationship be with white working-class voters? And, as political divides open around diversity, how can we all live together? 

The answers lie in a ‘multicultural nationalism’ that creates explicit space for white working-class experiences, views, and aspirations within a cohesive diverse nation.

Fifteen years ago, Blue Labour was a radical communitarian grouping saying little about immigration. Indeed, it was partially defined by its support for the community-based living wage campaign of the hyper-diverse Citizens UK. 

In its recent reinvention, Blue Labour posits that Labour should mirror Reform UK’s appeal to immigration-sceptical and socially-conservative white and predominantly working-class voters. 

Starmer is perhaps now realising that this approach won’t undermine Nigel Farage’s offer of ‘the real thing’ but may send more liberal supporters towards the Liberal Democrats or Greens.

But Labour cannot turn its back on white working-class voters. 

Many Reform supporters have never voted for Labour and never would. But crucial voters do choose between the two, and they won’t vote for a Labour Party that only caters for its liberal wing. 

Treating large numbers of voters as though they deserve no place or voice in society will simply stoke the social tensions we saw last summer. 

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Multiculturalism developed in the late 20th Century to accommodate ethnic minority and faith communities within a wider white-majority Britain. After the turn of the century, it was blamed for encouraging ‘Muslim separatism’ and enabling violent political terrorism.

Critics ignored the similar problems in European nations that had never embraced multiculturalism, and the evidence that the UK was one of Europe’s more cohesive countries.  Officially abandoned as a state philosophy by Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron in 2010, multiculturalism remains the way that much of the public sector, private business, and liberal opinion thinks about a diverse society. 

But a multiculturalism that is only supported by social liberals cannot create a cohesive nation. That must, by definition, include the socially-conservative. 

Multiculturalism did give less attention to what can bind us together, and it can feel as though it was only difference that matters – not what we hold in common. 

Increased diversity has also changed the UK, and England in particular. White people are far less likely to experience overt or subtle racism, but it no longer makes sense to talk of a single ‘white majority’ that stands apart from or above minorities. 

Many larger urban areas of England have no white majority or soon will not. ‘Mixed-race’ is the fastest growing census category. When Conservative and Reform leaders, like self-proclaimed ‘British Muslim patriot’ Zia Yusuf, are ethnic minorities it is clear that membership of powerful institutions is no longer entirely restricted by race.

At the same time, the disadvantages of economic decline in former industrial and coastal communities, poor social mobility, educational under-achievement, poor health, and the lack of voice and influence found in many white working-class communities sets their lives far apart from politically-confident white graduate professionals or the more successful parts of minority communities. 

This is often felt as a sense of loss of their part in a nation to which they were once central. 

It can be expressed as resentment if others – minorities or newcomers – are perceived as getting priority, attention, and higher status. 

These white working-class communities feel excluded from the sense of privilege that being part of the ‘majority community’ was supposed to confer.

Statistics show little real difference between disadvantages in white and ethnic minority working-class communities. Some argue against even talking about the ‘white working-class’, lest it prevent the expression of unified working-class politics. But this misses the point. 

Right-wing populists can mobilise sections of the white working-class because it does exist as a social reality. It is marked out by demographics, geography, education, history, values, ideas of nationhood and, often, a physical separation from the lives of those who apparently face similar social problems.

Rather than deny this, the challenge is to create a story of the nation in which white working-class voters feel they once again have a voice – but alongside, not in competition with, other communities. 

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Multicultural nationalism puts the idea of a nation centre-stage, with shared national stories that can include all those making their lives here. 

Rather than putting one national story ahead of all others it creates a national story in which all can see their own story. 

Liberals are used to the idea that we should include the stories of minority groups in a multicultural story; now the white working-class needs to be part of this to create a stronger national story.

Multiculturalism offered minorities three things: acknowledgment – ‘we know you are here’; recognition – ‘you have a right to be heard’; and symbolic inclusion – ‘you should be able to see yourself in representations of the nation’. White working-class voters should expect no less. That means recognising their claim to be part of the history of the nation, and understanding and accepting the importance many attach to ideas of England as a nation.

Of course, it would exclude those who reject the idea of a diverse society or argue for racial supremacy – just as multiculturalism rejects members of minorities who would impose faith law or advocate political violence.

For most white working-class people, ‘whiteness’ is not a particularly important issue, it is simply a marker of their lived experience.

Far from dividing the working-class, multicultural nationalism would make it more likely that white and non-white working people can express a common interest.

In place of divisive rhetoric about an “island of strangers”, it could give us all a new sense of nationhood. 

But that nationhood will not find itself – it will have to be built. 

Sam Taylor Hill is the author of ‘Challenging Alienation in the British Working Class: Building a Community of Equals’. Former Labour MP and minister John Denham is a professor at Southampton University and the director of its Centre for English Identity and Politics. Tariq Modood is Professor of Sociology, Politics and Public Policy at Bristol University