David Goodhart: More dangerous than Nick Griffin?

Founder of Prospect Magazine criticised.

Whether you are Black or White most people know what the BNP Leader Nick Griffin stands for. The fascist boot boys that follow him around, along with his own putrid rhetoric, ‘ Sink those ships full of Africans that try to come to Europe’, ensures that Griffin is about as transparent and as honest, in his rabid racism as he could possibly be.

Perhaps, however a more dangerous individual comes in the shape of the pseudo liberal intellectual David Goodhart. Goodhart came to prominence in 2004 after The Guardian gave him unprecedented coverage allowing him to spew his bile about immigration. It was, of course, couched in polite language but the façade was quickly exposed as a racial rant. His new approach, however, is much more subtle, effective and ultimately more dangerous. Why? Because he no longer is the central mouthpiece for his views on race. He has got Black people to do it for him. Then in the classic divide and rule he sits back and watches Black people fight amongst ourselves.

Goodhart’s first outpouring on race and immigration received widespread condemnation: Commenting about his piece the Guardian’s own Gary Younge suggested,

What starts as a thesis about managing migration to preserve the welfare state - the fact that the NHS and many other public services owe their existence to mass migration earns an entire parenthesis towards the end - develops into a diatribe about the flaws of ethnic diversity.

The then Chair of the CRE Trevor Phillips was much more damning in his criticism: “ Is this the wit and wisdom of Enoch Powell?” he wrote of Goodhart, “Jottings from the BNP leader's weblog? The xenophobes should come clean. Their argument is not about immigration at all. They are liberal Powellites: what really bothers them is race and culture."

But like a wounded fox Goodhart has licked his wounds and returned with a new plan: Get others to say the things that he wants to say, better still if they are Black.

As founder and editor of Prospect Magazine he dedicated a complete issue to race. ‘Rethinking race’ was a series of articles written by Black writers, including Tony Sewell, Munira Mirza, and Linsday John. To summarise what they collectively said would be: ‘stop talking about racism, it barely exists. We don’t need Black writers writing about Black things when we can read Chaucer and Shakespeare’, and, finally, ‘the problem with Black kids at school is Black culture’.

Last night, on Radio 4’s ‘Analysis’ programme David Goodhart was at it again, suggesting that many of those who came forward to comment on the recent summer disturbances were part of a ‘new Black politics’. A Black politics that was more ‘authentic’, and represented the real views of Black Briton’s. His loudest cheerleader was the would-be Conservative politician Shaun Bailey. Patronisingly described by Goodhart as ‘authentically street’, Bailey goes on to state that, “Being seen as an angry poor criminal sat in the corner is the problem of Black people...I think we are a community that has been raised on a dependency culture. We are the chosen victims and I will change that.”

For Goodhart's thesis to work he needs to show, as he puts it, ‘an old radical guard’ - Bernie Grant, Linda Bellos, and Stafford Scott juxtaposed alongside a ‘new Black politics’, which incidentally, and not without mistake has no Black politics. So, when he talks about, and to Kwasi Kwarteng MP, he suggests that West Africans, such as the Eton educated Kwarteng represent the ‘truer feelings’ of the Black community.

A community which is no longer hung up about race inequality. Kwarteng is led into Goodhart’s lair by confessing that his constituency is predominately White, and therefore that is who he represents. Also included in the programme was David Lammy MP who becomes complicit with Goodhart's thinking because he has to defend why he only condemned the rioters without suggesting that the death of Mark Duggan, high levels of stop and search by the police, and lack of opportunity were contributory factors. In truth, however, Lammy did make some of those points in a House of Commons debate.

In essence what Goodhart presented the Radio 4 listeners was a stark but erroneous choice: that Black people must fall into one of two camps; the ‘Old radicals’ who, in his view blame their lot on everybody but themselves, particularly the State apparatus, or the new Black generation of politicians epitomised by Shaun Bailey, who too often argues that Black people no longer face a race penalty.

Goodhart, therefore, is not content with finding Black talking heads to help espouse his views, he also seeks to pit one group and thought against another. And not unlike that other ‘intellectual’ David Starkey, he too is happy to advise us as to which Black grouping, and idea we should affiliate with.

Goodhart's intevention is disappointing on a number of levels, not least that an individual such as Goodhart who comes to this  debate with some baggage is then afforded another  premier platform - Radio 4 - to define Black politics.

The reality of course is that there is no crude homogeneous Black community or communities. Our richness is our diversity. Moreover, dealing with some of the very real challenges many Black communities face: high levels of unemployment, challenges within the education system, continuing high levels of police stop and search, and gang related crimes, will require a kaleidoscope of measures including Black individuals and communities taking our full responsibility, but also a significant response from the State to ensure the persistent structural barriers caused by racial prejudice are once and for all eradicated.

Sadly, this more nuanced approach for the ‘great’ liberal intellectual David Goodhart, seems far too complicated. Either that or there’s something else going on.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/analysis#playepisode1

Simon Woolley

Picture: David Goodhart, Director of the think tank Demos