INTRODUCTION

How did the changing contours of British empire affect the racialization of the undeserving poor? And how did the changing demographic of England’s own working poor impact the integrity of empire? In the last chapter I detailed the ways in which the deserving/undeserving distinction was formatively racialized. In this chapter I interrogate the shifting racialization of this distinction beyond the classic concern for the parish poor as Victorian Britain’s imperial project responded to several significant challenges.

In the first part of the chapter I turn to the post-emancipation era and the way in which the political franchise in Britain was framed by the politics of abolition and empire. I begin by interrogating the humanitarianism that abolition sired, which presented empire as one human family. Questions remained as to whether the nowfreed Black man could cultivate deserving characteristics or would instead be unable to shirk the undeserving essence of the slave. I then examine the 1865 Morant Bay uprising in Jamaica and its pivotal influence in undoing the humanitarianism that conceived of empire as a human family. I argue that the fallout from Morant Bay decisively re-racialized the imperial family. An Anglo-Saxon family was now envisioned, stretching from metropole to settler-colonies, which faced an agglomeration of non-white colonial subject populations that required discipline. I then make sense of the 1867 Reform Act by reference to these racial politics. The Act enfranchised a portion of the working class into the English genus and hence into the Anglo-Saxon family. In this double movement, the “deserving” took on a new form: skilled and settled working men were re-racialized as an Anglo-Saxon constituency.

What of the undeserving English poor? In the second part of the chapter I address this question. From the 1840s onwards, considerations shifted geographically to focus upon urban landscapes, especially the slums of London. The populations that inhabited these areas – part-vagrant, casual and unskilled workers – were given a new name – the residuum, or “left behind”. I consider how the residuum was racialized by analogy to savages and slaves.

INTRODUCTION

In the last chapter I examined how the deserving/undeserving distinction was formally rescinded in the 1948 National Assistance Act but informally reintroduced through colour bars that moderated the national compact between state, business and labour. At this moment in British history, a short- to medium-term material benefit ensued from membership of a “white working class” constituency. But when Thatcherism destroyed the national compact, this constituency lost its institutionalized – albeit informal – advantage within Britain’s racialized division of labour. In this chapter, I examine the ways in which the eugenicist concern for the residuum survived to inform social conservative thinking in the 1970s. Post-Thatcher, social conservatism influenced the re introduction into social policy of the distinction between those deserving and undeserving of welfare. Concurrently, an obsession rose with a population group who inhabited Britain’s council estates, were seemingly immune to character improvement, and were, shockingly, white.

In the first part of the chapter I return to the postwar period and the continued influence of eugenicist interventions into the urban poor. I follow the way in which concerns over parenting and the inter-generational transmission of poverty no longer addressed the “residuum” but rather “problem families”. I track these concerns as they gained momentum with the importation from the United States of notions of an “underclass” that lived through a “culture of poverty”. Such ideas were drawn upon by Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher to inform the social-conservative basis of their economic revolution. In the United States the “culture of poverty” thesis betrayed a racialized subject: the African American mother and absent father. In Britain, this subject appeared as the victim of Thatcher’s deindustrialization, that is, a distinctly white underclass.

In the second part of the chapter I turn to New Labour and its incorporation of American “workfare” into British social policy, whereby welfare was once more made formally conditional upon the ability and desire of the claimant to work.

INTRODUCTION

In the last two chapters I paid attention to how Enoch Powell and the social conservatives that followed him expunged organized labour from their narrations of the English genus. For Powell and others, labour’s cooperative spirit had proved corrupt when it had lodged itself in the national compact and compromised its self-help principle to the lure of welfare dependency. Margaret Thatcher identified Edmund Burke’s “little platoons” in property owners; and Tony Blair largely accorded to this vision, adding responsible residential associations. But by the end of New Labour’s tenure, the “white working class” had returned to elite discourse in the form of a maligned constituency deserving of some kind of social justice. This present chapter makes three passes through the philosophies, party politics and rhetorics which provided for their return. In doing so, the chapter seeks to make the case that the politics of the 2016 EU referendum were deeply entangled in the historical rise and fall – and rise again – of the “white working class” as a deserving constituency.

In the first part of the chapter I explore the emergence of Red Tory and Blue Labour, both philosophical responses to the perceived failures of New Labour. The Red Tory position sought to re affiliate labour’s cooperative spirit to conservative understandings of orderly independence. The Blue Labour position sought to re affiliate the conservative character with labour’s cooperative spirit. In doing so, however, both political philosophies made claims to an English genus that distinguished itself through its tradition of orderly independence. Accordingly, within the logic of both philosophies is an identification of non-white immigration as a destabilizing and divisive influence on the relationship between indigenous working and governing classes. The first part of the chapter therefore examines how the deserving working class returned, in political philosophy, but as a re-racialized constituency.

In the second part of the chapter I turn to Labour and Conservative genealogies of Euroscepticism. Consolidating in the 1960s, Labour’s Eurosceptical tradition mounted a defence of the working class, but in a wider political context where such a defence supported the integrity of the national compact and its informal colour bars.

What is growth?

Economic growth is acceleration in the production of goods and services. An increase in the speed of production means an increase in the amount of goods and services produced in a given period of time. Global growth is a twentieth-century phenomenon (Figure 3.1).

An increase in GDP is the epiphenomenon of an integrated growth process (Sekulova et al. 2017) that involves the accelerated mobilization of the work of humans and non-humans, the accelerated investment of surplus into machines that produce more, and the accelerated extraction and transformation of matter or disposal of waste. Indeed, it is not only GDP that grew exponentially in the twentieth century: all indicators of work, social metabolism and environmental impact accelerated (Figure 3.2).

Growth is not only a material process; it is also a cultural, political and social process. Growth is an idea produced, imagined and instituted. It was first produced materially in England and other colonial and industrial centres in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. And in the 1930s it was conceptualized and counted, before entrenching itself as a global ideology in the 1950s. After Dale (2012) and Purdey (2010) I call this ideology “the growth paradigm”: the idea that perpetual economic growth is natural, necessary and desirable.

This chapter looks first at the material processes of work mobilization and surplus production that is behind growth. We then revisit the history of the growth paradigm, before turning to limits to growth.

The production of growth

In standard growth theory, the level of output depends on capital and labour, but sustained growth is the result of technology. Econometric studies (statistical studies of many countries and years correlating attributes of these countries with their GDP) show that differences in output are explained not so much by differences in capital or labour but by a third factor, capturing pretty much everything else, named “total factor productivity”. This black box of technological progress includes factors that may influence productivity, and which were found separately to correlate with growth, such as institutions and social capital, education and “human capital”, energy or infrastructure.

What is an economy and what does it do? This chapter explains how many of us who write about degrowth understand the economy. Our view differs fundamentally from how mainstream economists see the economy: namely, as a circular flow of money, goods and services between firms and households. The interdisciplinary picture I provide here combines insights from economic anthropology, ecological and feminist economics, Marxian and institutional political economy.

First, I will argue that the economy is not something “out there”, an independent system with its own laws of motion. It is a social and political construct: an invention of people in particular societies to represent and organize part of their experiences. This construction is constantly changing and can be contested – it is not carved in stone. But it is embedded in institutions that enact it and materialize it: institutions that are hard to change.

Second, whatever the term “economy” means, this something is material. It involves the transformation of raw materials into artefacts and services. Production is entropic: a portion of the energy used in production is always lost irreversibly as heat.

Third, the engine of the economy is work: work by humans and non-humans. Machines increase the total amount of product that results from a given amount of human work by minimizing losses, or, more often, by complementing human work with the work of nature. But machines do not do work themselves.

Fourth, the end of an economic process is expenditure. Expenditure can be productive, increasing production down the line; or it can be unproductive, pure and final expenditure beyond necessity or use. Societies construct their meaning and purpose around unproductive expenditure.

Fifth, different societies organize production, expenditure and who takes or does what differently. Class relations are the basis of exploitation: they are imprinted in the institutions of a society, and they are a constant source of conflict.

Sixth, work and expenditure are meant to satisfy the values that a society holds dear. Market value is one among many forms of value. Under capitalism, market value encroaches and colonizes other social values.

In the previous chapter I distinguished growth as a material process from the “growth paradigm”: the hegemonic idea that growth is natural, necessary and desirable. Degrowth marks a frontal attack on the growth paradigm. The growth paradigm is wrong because growth is not natural, because it is no longer socially or ecologically desirable, and because it is not necessary (other than in that the capitalist system works more smoothly with it than without it).

That growth may not be necessary or desirable does not make degrowth automatically desirable either. The degrowth hypothesis is that a trajectory of social transformation with a concomitant contraction of resource throughput can be socially and ecologically desirable. How, and under what conditions, is the object of a degrowth research agenda.

Growth is not natural or inevitable

Those who defend growth often imply that growth is the natural and inevitable course of the economy. The argument is something like this. Left alone, without government meddling, entrepreneurs will make an economy grow, as they are endlessly creative in increasing their incomes. Growth is then the natural product of a free, self-regulated market. The destiny of the economy, unless human institutions mess with it, is to grow, just as the destiny of a newborn is to grow up or that of a small tree is to grow taller and taller. The pursuit of growth is imprinted in our instincts, if not our genes, the argument goes. Given the opportunity, like other species we expand our habitat and resource use as much as possible. It might have taken us a while to find the word (“growth”), but the desire and potential has always been there.

This naturalistic analogy is wrong on many counts. First, perpetual growth does not exist in nature. Children and trees grow “up” to a point – they do not grow at a compound rate ad infinitum. No species grows to infinity, and when a population grows too much and consumes too many resources, it collapses before it reaches a new ecological balance with other species.

INTRODUCTION

The four Mediterranean EU member states listed here vary not only in size but also in their links to the United Kingdom and their place in the European Union. As a founding member, Italy has often been overshadowed by France and Germany. But its contributions and role have been considerable, with it often backing efforts towards further European integration. Greece’s accession to the EEC in 1981 was part of its move to becoming a democratic country. Its commitment to European integration saw it join the euro, a decision that since the global financial crisis of 2007 has plunged both Greece and the Eurozone into periods of crisis. The membership of Cyprus and Malta, which began in 2004, brought into the EU two smaller Mediterranean island member states, with both proving themselves to be formidable negotiators. Their links with the UK, maintained through the Commonwealth (and, additionally for Cyprus, in the form of two UK military bases), meant that they, along with the Irish Republic, were the only EU member states whose citizens resident in the UK were permitted to vote in the UK’s referendum.

All four states have shared some common challenges, most recently in the form of the migration and refugee crises from north Africa and the Middle East. In the case of Brexit, as we see in this chapter, their concerns ranged from the rights of their citizens in the UK through to the possibility of a shift in the balance of power within the Union that could, in the case of Greece, have seen it face renewed pressure over its future in the Eurozone. Italy has also been concerned by a possible shift in the balance of power. Without the UK as a counterbalance, France and Germany could in future define the EU integration process. It was these challenges, and more, that often overshadowed and shaped how these four states approached the UK’s renegotiation, referendum and vote to leave.

ITALY

Italy has often admired the British “third way” of dealing with the EU. The UK has long seemed able to pursue its own interests within the EU, while counterbalancing French and German influence over the development of European institutions.

Jekyll Island is a small, narrow island off the coast of the state of Georgia. Today it has golf courses, small hotels and B&Bs, a quaint village district, and a historical society. People from both north and south go there to vacation and relax. At about the turn of the nineteenth century, East-coast Americans did the same things on Jekyll Island as they do now. However, back then, another attraction of the island existed, and it accommodated some of the richest men in the world.

In 1733, General James Oglethorpe founded Georgia as a British colony and named the island after his financier, Sir Joseph Jekyll. Decades later, Cristophe DuBignon fled the French Revolution and landed on Jekyll Island, purchasing much of the property. In 1879, DuBignon’s descendant, John Eugene DuBignon and his brother-in-law Newton Finney turned Jekyll Island into a private hunting club for the wealthiest men in America. Munsey’s Magazine called it “the richest, the most exclusive, the most inaccessible club in the world”. In 1888, the club officially opened its doors, and by 1896, J. P. Morgan owned much of it – building the six-unit, “Sans Souci”, which would be one of the first condominiums in the United States.

Future membership was by inheritance only and the only non-members allowed were servants. The club comprised splendid mansions called “cottages” where the members would stay, dine, socialize and conduct business. The club’s membership was so exclusive and steeped in such astounding amounts of international wealth, that after one of its members, George F. Baker, founder of the First National Bank of New York, and very close associate of Morgan’s, died in 1931, The New York Times noted, ”… the Jekyll Island Club has lost one of its most distinguished members. One-sixth of the total wealth of the world is represented by the members of the Jekyll Island Club”.

It was on this island at the Hunt Club where six men – four Wall Street bankers, an economist and one politician – would plan and draft the first blueprint for the United States Federal Reserve System: an all-controlling central bank that has overseen the currency, monetary system, and economic policy for the United States for over a century.

INTRODUCTION

Much like across the rest of Europe, the vote by the British people to leave the European Union was not expected by the countries of south-eastern Europe. Amongst the newest members of the EU, they had all striven to become members of an organization that, along with NATO, had come to define European politics. This amplified the shock that the United Kingdom, a leading European state that had backed the enlargement of both organizations, had now decided to turn its back on the EU. Geographically, Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Slovenia are part of a wider region in which geopolitics and history did not facilitate or encourage regional cooperation until quite recently. Before fulfilling their post-Cold-War strategic priorities – EU and NATO membership – the four countries had supported regional cooperation formats or initiatives only when they were sure the respective format would promote their accession agendas to the EU rather than delay them. Geographically, some of them are parts of other regions – the Danube (Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania), the Black Sea (Bulgaria and Romania) and the Mediterranean (Croatia and Slovenia). Despite this, and while not constituting a formalized format, the four countries covered here as south-eastern Europe have common interests that form the backdrop for understanding their approach to the UK’s renegotiation, and especially their common concerns about the outcome of the June 2016 referendum. They share common interests over the future terms of relations between the EU and the UK, as well as with regard to the future of the EU without the UK. Not belonging to the heavyweights in the EU, all four countries are interested in pursuing a common European position in the negotiations with the UK and did not join with those opposed to entrusting the negotiations to the European Commission.

Because of the UK’s strong strategic role with regard to security matters, bilateral relations between the four countries of south-eastern Europe and the UK have been much more important in terms of support for EU and NATO enlargement than in terms of economic and trade cooperation.

INTRODUCTION

As with the rest of the European Union, the United Kingdom’s decision to seek a renegotiated EU relationship and a referendum was greeted with a mix of irritation and concern in the central European states of Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia. The renegotiation, the campaign, the result and the uncertainty and speculation that followed presented these four medium-sized EU member states with a variety of challenges and opportunities.

Despite their geographical proximity, these four states vary in both their levels of integration in the EU, their cooperation with one another and their relations with the UK. Austria, which was neutral during the Cold War but closely aligned with the West, and especially Germany, joined the EU in 1995 in the first enlargement after the Cold War. In 1999 it became one of the founding members of the Eurozone. The Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia joined in 2004, with six other countries – an enlargement that Britain had backed strongly, and is often seen as having gained from in terms of positive relations with the newer member states. In addition to Poland these three states form the Visegrad Group, working together to further their ideas for European integration. Slovakia joined the Eurozone in 2009, while Hungary and the Czech Republic retain their own currencies. While all four countries are members of the Schengen area, unease at the arrival of immigrants has been a common issue for them, helping boost Euroscepticism in all four. At the same time, citizens of the four states, but especially in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia, have taken advantage of the EU’s freedom of movement. The future of their citizens resident in the UK quickly became one of the defining issues in the period covered here.

Membership of the EU has given all four countries an enhanced ability to shape European and international relations. As medium-sized EU members, the renegotiation and the challenge of dealing with Brexit has seen all four try to shape the position of a union of 444 million people. This was especially so for Slovakia, whose six-month presidency began only a few days after the Brexit vote.

Brexit is full of surprises. The result was a surprise even for the Leavers. For me and many others, it was a sad surprise. No longer was the European Union an irreversible project. It was established to create irreversible economic and political bonds for the sake of an ever-lasting peace. The Union embodied values, and the most important of all was: peace. The EU was and is much more than an economic added value. The Union is not an aim in itself. It is a peace project. Brexit has national sovereignty as a goal in itself. If the EU falls apart, peace is not guaranteed. It is a sad thing that the Brexit debate is mainly about trade and the City of London. Much more is at stake.

It was a happy surprise that support for EU membership amongst the citizens of the remaining 27 member states increased dramatically after Brexit. For a large majority of them, Brexit was not a template. It would add instability to an already unstable world. The EU had become part of our DNA, even if we lack enthusiasm for it. For young people, a return to the old world of borders and national currencies seems unworldly. If any Britons thought that Brexit would be the beginning of the end of the EU, the start of the unravelling process, this was not the case. It was the first in a long series of miscalculations on the part of some in Britain.

Another surprise was the unity of the remaining 27 member states during the first phase of the Brexit negotiations. Britain is negotiating with a bloc that speaks with one voice. It means that we have an answer to Henry Kissinger’s question “Who do I call if I want to speak to Europe?”. You can now call Brussels! By contrast, Britain speaks with many voices and is not so united anymore. It is obvious that in the talks on the future EU– UK relationship the EU has to work hard to remain united, but we are used to compromise. The EU is based on compromise.

On his first foreign trip after being elected German president in early 2017, Frank-Walter Steinmeier chose to visit the European Parliament to make a strong plea for European integration. In the speech he characterized Brexit, and in particular the conduct of the Leave campaign, as “irresponsible” (Steinmeier 2017). This notion of irresponsibility, of political brinkmanship for short-sighted political gain, best describes the impression of the German political elite towards the Brexit vote and former UK prime minister David Cameron’s decision to seek a renegotiated UK–EU relationship. This was reflected in Chancellor Merkel’s controversial statement in May 2017, when she argued that, after the election of Donald Trump and the Brexit vote, the “times when we could completely depend on others are, to a certain extent, over” (Henley 2017).

The story of British–German relations in the wake of the Brexit vote is therefore more than just about difficult negotiations at the European level. It is also a story about a misjudged relationship, when misconceptions on both sides led – and continue to lead – to miscalculations and, ultimately, disappointments and a distancing in relations. This is particularly damaging at a time when a functioning bilateral relationship could have been crucial to shaping both Europe and the wider world. These misconceptions go both ways. On the UK side, from the outset of the renegotiation Germany was perceived as the prime ally among the EU27, and one that would go a long way to secure British membership in the EU as a balance to France, and to keep a close economic partner in the Union. During and after the Brexit referendum, leading proponents of Brexit argued that, because of the close economic ties, the German government would take a soft stance on Brexit negotiations in order to protect its economic interests. In both cases, however, for the German government, the political interest in safeguarding the European Union trumped any other considerations, resulting in a hard and clear stance on the renegotiation and in the lead-up to the commencement of formal exit negotiations with the United Kingdom.

The name Paul Moritz Warburg is synonymous with the founding of the Federal Reserve System. Warburg’s impact on American banking is a parallel to his family’s impact on European banking. The epic story of the Warburg family of European bankers can be traced back to the early 1500s when Simon von Cassel settled in the German Westphalia town of Warburg (originally founded by Charlemagne in 778 and was then known as Warburgum) and began the family’s quest for money and financial power. Although the Warburgs excelled in many other occupations throughout Europe, it was this lineage that produced some of the most successful bankers in the world. Blessed with sharp minds and good business sense, the generations of the Warburg clan gained seemingly boundless money and power.

In the eighteenth century the family splintered into two groups. Some went to Altona, Denmark and others to Hamburg, Germany. Despite being relegated to Jewish ghettos and, by law, referred to as “moneylenders” and not bankers, in 1774 a Warburg established the merchant-banking firm of S. G. Warburg. It soon became W. S. Warburg as the family grew and sons and grandsons began to contribute to the family business. In 1807 the Altona Warburgs sold to the Hamburg Warburgs of M. M. Warburg & Co., founded by Moses and Gerson Warburg in 1798.

When Napoleon invaded Germany, Hamburg was captured by the French army in 1804, as was Moses’s brother Gerson. Napoleon himself held Gerson hostage and demanded a ransom from the entire Hamburg Jewish community for his release. However, Gerson’s own brother Moses wouldn’t pay it. Only after prodigious pressure from their community did Moses finally put up the money, which was still a sum much lower than what was expected of him. Despite this lack of loyalty, the two brothers signed a partnership in 1810, and expanded M. M. Warburg together.

The end of the Napoleonic war marked the beginning of economic rebuilding for Germany. When the French withdrew in 1814, Moses and Gerson saw the need for replenishment of the country’s stock of silver currency to boost the German economy.