REFLEX REACTION? Memory, Deindustrialisation, and Right-Wing Populism in a Northern English Town Mike Makin-Waite ISRF Independent Scholar Fellow 2019–20.
T
he recent growth of far-right politics and nativist populism in England is often seen as a response to the ‘austerity’ policies which shaped the last decade. The Cameron-Clegg coalition introduced these to make use of opportunities generated by the 2008 banking crisis. UKIP’s rising influence over the next few years pushed Cameron into calling the Brexit referendum, and tempted some ‘mainstream’ politicians to adopt arguments and registers which had previously been restricted to the fringes. There is, however, a problem with this simple explanation, and with the more general practice of emphasising the immediate precipitating factors behind political developments. Broader preconditions have always been put in place, and these are crucial in understanding ‘unexpected’ events. The Eurosceptic views currently dominant in English politics (and thus in the decreasingly ‘United Kingdom’) have been building for over twenty years. UKIP had its first significant successes in 2004. Before this, anti-EU themes had been promoted by a minority of Conservatives, dismissed then as mavericks, or ‘bastards’.1 Together with opposition to immigration, antipathy to the EU was also expressed in even ruder tones through the significant if geographically uneven support for the British National Party (which emerged from 1. Paul Routledge & Simon Hoggart, ‘Major hits out at Cabinet’, The Guardian, 25 July 1993. 9
