Golliwog in the window - should this really be in court?

[Rob Ray]

They are and they aren't. It's important to make a distinction between Tory factionalism and the broader project of Toryism. They do have a general direction they agree on, if they didn't they'd not have a party.

 

[pbsmooth]

What's that got to do with the topic?

a load of people were discussing it. maybe you fell asleep?

 

[tim]

Also, being in N.Ireland, I’d never seen a black person in my life - apart from on TOTP.

Not even Trevor MacDonald? He was a client of my parents Travel Agency back in the 70s, they were always booking him flights to Belfast.

 

[bimble]

The 70s aren't that far away...

On the plus side, was lucky enough to own the Tom Stone Action Man figure, which was genuinely beloved.

I don't remember the 70s but was there for the closing scenes.
I didn't have any human-shaped dolls at all, apart from one who was bright orange and made of cloth with some sort of seeds inside. Which makes it sounds like i was born in a shoe but i wasnt at all, had loads of animal-shaped ones.

 

[chilango]

A pompous quote from Thatcher, so what?

The Tories are fucking useless, and riven with internal divisions. There is no underlying vision. The claim that there is, is pathetic conspiracy theory, used to excuse the fact that the British left is equally clueless and incoherent.

Useless?

They've been in power for the best part of 50 years. They've achieved aim after aim. Breaking the power of the unions, privatising nationalised infrastructure, elevating selfish individualism to "common sense", massive redistributions of wealth into the hands of the already wealthy and so on...

If you read, say Milton Friedman, you can see the blueprint and how much of it they've achieved.

Individually, sure, most of frontmen are indeed fucking useless. That they've won so much, so relentlessly, for half a century with barely a blow from our side landing despite that suggests that as a social, political and economic force they are far from useless.

 

[krtek a houby]

a load of people were discussing it. maybe you fell asleep?

Possibly, it's after 1am.

 

[redsquirrel]

Now everything is shit, and definitely getting rapidly worse with no hope of slowing, nevermind changing,

You think on the socially liberal perspective too?

The 'anti-woke' stuff is crap and needs to be fought against but part of it is the last bile spittled gasp of those losing (in many senses).
The movement on LGB issues has been huge, 10 years ago you'd have 'gay' used as an insult now you never hear that. The situation w.r.t. to trans is much less positive but it's worth remembering that polls showed that the majority of the Scottish public favoured making transitioning easier (even if when it came to specific measures support dropped). Of course there's still plenty of misogyny around but I think back to the 90s/00s with lad mags and crap like it. And look at the large protests in support of BLM and opposition to violence against women.

I'm not trying to pretend everything is fine and dandy of course it isn't, we have to keep fighting, and there are some areas that things have not got better (or even got worse - immigration springs to mind).
But I think the volume of racist, sexist pricks like these pub owners, their mates, cunts like Fox, GBNews etc can sometimes make us think they represent more people than they do.

 

[krtek a houby]

You may have missed my mention of it

Ah, seen it now

 

[seeformiles]

Not even Trevor MacDonald? He was a client of my parents Travel Agency back in the 70s, they were always booking him flights to Belfast.

N.Ireland was (& still is) one of the whitest places in the UK. I must have been into my teens before I saw a black person in the flesh. They tended in the main to be soldiers who married local women.

 

[tim]

They are and they aren't. It's important to make a distinction between Tory factionalism and the broader project of Toryism. They do have a general they agree on, if they didn't they'd not have a party.

They are a ramshackled political block as is the Labour Party. They are held together primarily by the desire to get reelected. Thatcher was charismatic but she didn't fundamentally change what the Tory Party was, anymore than Corbyn, Blair or Benn fundamentally changed what Labour was.

 

[krtek a houby]

You think on the socially liberal perspective too?

The 'anti-woke' stuff is crap and needs to be fought against but part of it is the last bile spittled gasp of those losing (in many senses).
The movement on LGB issues has been huge, 10 years ago you'd have 'gay' used as an insult now you never hear that. The situation w.r.t. to trans is much less positive but it's worth remembering that polls showed that the majority of the Scottish public favoured making transitioning easier (even if when it came to specific measures support dropped). Of course there's still plenty of misogyny around but I think back to the 90s/00s with lad mags and crap like it. And look at the large protests in support of BLM and opposition to violence against women.

I'm not trying to pretend everything is fine and dandy of course it isn't, we have to keep fighting, and there are some areas that things have not got better (or even got worse - immigration springs to mind).
But I think the volume of racist, sexist pricks like these pub owners, their mates, cunts like Fox, GBNews etc can sometimes make us think they represent more people than they do.

Feels like the volume be amped up to 11 with the aforementioned. They do seem to hoover up a lot of (social) media coverage.

Want to see more coverage like that time in Liverpool when a community ran some fash dick out of the area.

 

[likesfish]

Is white flight actually a real thing though?
Most of the people I know who have left London or other major conurbations have done so due to getting priced out of the housing market largely by property developers and landlords, not because someone of different ethnicity moved in next door.
Now I can see how this might have resulted in a little angry enclave hitting out at the wrong target not far from London, but it doesn't go all the way to explaining how this can happen in an area.

Lots of Londoners ended up on the council estate in Brighton in the 60s

 

[krtek a houby]

N.Ireland was (& still is) one of the whitest places in the UK. I must have been into my teens before I saw a black person in the flesh. They tended in the main to be soldiers who married local women.

It was one of the whitest places in Ireland, for certain but that's changed a lot since. The racism, unfortunately, is not gone away.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

None of the people I've known who got involved in Calais refugee stuff would say it's anything to do with White Privilege I don't think.

As I see it they just see an urgent need and are trying to help out. A lot do also get involved more locally but trying to shift entrenched local issues can get pretty demoralising.

I don’t want to diminish that, but you could simply join your local church who are presumably doing similar.

 

[Tanya1982]

That's brilliant. I laughed, and watched it again, and laughed again.

 

[chilango]

You think on the socially liberal perspective too?

The 'anti-woke' stuff is crap and needs to be fought against but part of it is the last bile spittled gasp of those losing (in many senses).
The movement on LGB issues has been huge, 10 years ago you'd have 'gay' used as an insult now you never hear that. The situation w.r.t. to trans is much less positive but it's worth remembering that polls showed that the majority of the Scottish public favoured making transitioning easier (even if when it came to specific measures support dropped). Of course there's still plenty of misogyny around but I think back to the 90s/00s with lad mags and crap like it. And look at the large protests in support of BLM and opposition to violence against women.

I'm not trying to pretend everything is fine and dandy of course it isn't, we have to keep fighting, and there are some areas that things have not got better (or even got worse - immigration springs to mind).
But I think the volume of racist, sexist pricks like these pub owners, their mates, cunts like Fox, GBNews etc can sometimes make us think they represent more people than they do.

I dunno.

I think we're looking at increasing polarization regarding this kind of thing. "Live and let live"* appears to be less of a common (or at least visible) stance with these issues now driving massive fucking wedges between people.


*Not that I'm saying that's the right stance to take, but it's certainly better than wondering whether anyone in the Women's Toilet has got a penis.

 

[brogdale]

Is white flight actually a real thing though?
Most of the people I know who have left London or other major conurbations have done so due to getting priced out of the housing market largely by property developers and landlords, not because someone of different ethnicity moved in next door.
Now I can see how this might have resulted in a little angry enclave hitting out at the wrong target not far from London, but it doesn't go all the way to explaining how this can happen in an area.

This is a really thought provoking post Epona

I'm always wary of easy tropes about the places where our class live being called sh1tholes etc. and I've often worried that 'white flight' receiving areas get treated in such a 'crap towns' way. I think the fact that you've related non-racist anecdotal drivers of outward migration from the inner city is important; clearly a great many poorer people are being forced 'centrifugally' towards outer London and beyond and censal data reveals that many of them are not 'White/British' (non WB):


Causing many outer London areas to become as, or even more, diverse than inner city areas. Anyone who has walked from the white/middle class 'island' of Clapham down towards Balham, Tooting and then Mitcham will have experienced just such an increase in diversity.

That said, i do think that the notion of 'white flight' has been and is still a real concept. For the younger, professional class white cohorts this flight has often been inward to the increasingly gentrified inner London boroughs, but older cohorts that will probably carry more conventionally racist views have traditionally re-located outward. Whether such outward relocations are driven by economic necessity, by overt racism or other factors, I suspect that considerable %s of such cohorts will harbour some degree of resentment at being 'forced out' from their traditional manors. That combined with the increasingly diverse nature of more recent incomers might offer some context (though never excuse) for the racist attitudes associated with some parts of outer London & beyond.

Has there ever been a thread on this topic?

 

[redsquirrel]

Worth comparing the results of the recent polling on this issue with that from 2017.
14% drop in those that think it is acceptable to display or sell a golliwog doll - at a time when arseholes are running with the 'anti-woke' stuff.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

Is white flight actually a real thing though?
Most of the people I know who have left London or other major conurbations have done so due to getting priced out of the housing market largely by property developers and landlords, not because someone of different ethnicity moved in next door.
Now I can see how this might have resulted in a little angry enclave hitting out at the wrong target not far from London, but it doesn't go all the way to explaining how this can happen in an area.

dunno really.

people moving out of inner london has been a thing for a century or more, combination of private developers and the london county council building in the outer suburbs (in the case of the east end, the becontree / dagenham estate was significant) and this included the jewish community round whitechapel shrinking as many people moved out to gants hill / stamford hill / golders green.

then post 1945 there was movement to the new towns (harlow, basildon etc) and london 'overspill estates' (there were certainly a few of them round the thurrock patch)

and in more recent decades combination of people cashing in having done 'right to buy' on council homes and moving somewhere further out that's cheaper, yuppification pushing house prices / rents up, and so on.

yes, there are probably people who have moved out of inner london because they don't want to live among minorities, but not sure how many of them would have had that as their main motivation, and if so, how many of them would admit it in any sort of survey.

the 'home counties' are an odd mix. it's not all leafy streets with big houses lived in by wealthy commuters - i've not been to the thurrock patch for a while (i went for a job interview there must be 20 years ago, and decided before i even got to the interview that i didn't want to live round there) but there's bits of the home counties that were very industrial (thurrock being one of them) and have a fair bit in common with the 'left behind' post industrial places that policy makers and journalists assume are all up north somewhere...

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

Has there ever been a thread on this topic?

Don't know about a specific thread but there definitely was a lot discussion around it on the various Brixton Gentrification threads back when that was a major topic here.

 

[bimble]

The white flight thing has reminded me of my very racist great uncle (or something not sure that was our actual relationship) who I haven't thought of for a very long time.
He came from Poland originally, and lived in notting hill worked nights at the Heinz factory, until he white-flighted it to eastbourne, must have been in the mid 80s or so.
I remember his saying it was about wanting to be around other white people.
Bet his old flat in notting hill is worth a million now, hope he lived to think about that.
Just a pontless anecdote, not suggesting drunk uncle is representative of anything at all.

 

[brogdale]

Don't know about a specific thread but there definitely was a lot discussion around it on the various Brixton Gentrification threads back when that was a major topic here.

I suppose I was more thinking more about the whole 'white flight' concept rather than just the inward, gentrification bit.

 

[brogdale]

The white flight thing has reminded me of my very racist great uncle (or something not sure that was our actual relationship) who I haven't thought of for a very long time.
He came from Poland originally, and lived in notting hill worked nights at the Heinz factory, until he white-flighted it to eastbourne, must have been in the mid 80s or so.
I remember his saying it was about wanting to be around other white people.
Bet his old flat in notting hill is worth a million now, hope he lived to think about that.
Just a pontless anecdote, not suggesting drunk uncle is representative of anything at all.

I've known quite a few folk from families that moved out from Battersea, Wandsworth, Tooting etc. to Outer Sarf London, who have then gone on and on about how "Sutton has changed" and then made the leap down to Worthing etc.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

I suppose I was more thinking more about the whole 'white flight' concept rather than just the inward, gentrification bit.

Yeah, the argument used to be that Brixton was a 'white' area before it was a 'black' area IYSWIM. Of course the inward bit was the core but it was all gone over pretty regularly iirc.

 

[Dystopiary]

I think the dynamics differ somewhat in the US, where I suspect the theory stems from, than the UK. Which confuses it somewhat given how UK centric this board is.

Yes. I think it might have been the Combahee River Collective, a group of Black women in the US, who came up with the term intersectionality. I know they did put out a explanatory statement in the 1970s about what is supposed to mean. Gonna read that again now it's come up, it shouldn't be hard to find online.

edit: See post #602.

 

[ElizabethofYork]

I've known quite a few folk from families that moved out from Battersea, Wandsworth, Tooting etc. to Outer Sarf London, who have then gone on and on about how "Sutton has changed" and then made the leap down to Worthing etc.

My white working class family moved from Clerkenwell to Palmers Green in 1972 because we could get a nice council house with a garden in P.G, rather than a very small high rise flat. We thought we'd moved to "the countryside".

 

[brogdale]

My white working class family moved from Clerkenwell to Palmers Green in 1972 because we could get a nice council house with a garden in P.G, rather than a very small high rise flat. We thought we'd moved to "the countryside".

Yeah, I think the point Epona was making about centrifugal migration within our metropolitan urban areas is that there's more to it than one dimensional 'white flight' racism, though to deny that such motivation has been a significant driver would be naive in the extreme.

 

[Elpenor]

I believe there’s been a lot of non-white flight from the inner city to the suburbs too lately. I remember reading about it somewhere and the attractions were presumably more space, leafier etc, and better schools - particularly for boroughs like Bexley, Bromley etc with grammars.

 

[andysays]

"White privilege" is a polarising term, though I don't think that many people would disagree with statements like "White people can drive around in expensive cars without worrying that the police will stop them because of the colour of their skin."

Assuming they can actually afford to drive around in expensive cars...

In other words it isn't the worry that they'll be stopped by the police which stops most people, of whatever colour, driving around in expensive cars but their material reality, aka class

 

[seeformiles]

It was one of the whitest places in Ireland, for certain but that's changed a lot since. The racism, unfortunately, is not gone away.

Sadly true. When people visit and say “Oo it was lovely! Like stepping back 25 years!” - that’s not in a good way. The only other place I found like that was the Isle of Wight.