| 11 mins read
Anya Pearson interviews Professor Colin Crouch, the acclaimed sociologist and political scientist best known for coining the term "post-democracy". In his new book Exclusion and the New Politics of Hatred, Crouch argues that at the base of all political conflicts are struggles over which types of people should be included in and which excluded from various rights, including the right to exist at all within a particular society. Deeply opposed as he is to the politics of exclusion, in his book Crouch seeks to understand and explain its rationality.
Who are you writing this book for?
I'm writing it for people who are on my side of the political divide: people who believe in an inclusive society and are worried about the growth of exclusion. But people who rather favour exclusion might be surprised at some of the more sympathetic things I say about them.
Can you give an example of something that is a bit more sympathetic?
Universalists, or inclusionists, like to see ourselves as rational people. One of the things I try to do is to explain the rationality of exclusion and why it is actually often totally understandable on rational grounds. And I also argue that those of us who believe in inclusion need to be much more willing to talk about emotion and feelings.
Why do you argue that conflicts around inclusion are more important than class?
There's a tendency for people on the left, especially if they're Marxist, to want to reduce everything to class. So they say: ‘If people are worried about immigration, it's really because of class’. But something cultural has to lead you to say: ‘It's that Pole trying to get a job I want, or it's that woman trying to get a job I want’ rather than: ‘It's just another human being’. The cultural and the material can't be separated. I see inclusion and exclusion as more basic than class.
What do you mean when you say inclusionary politics can be rational? Should it necessarily be completely rational?
Well, it's rational because essentially we want to be universalists and assume all human beings have an equality of rights. But we also have to feel it. If we want people to support inclusionary politics, we have to make emotional appeals to them. ‘These are all human beings. There's a world out here that we’ve got to care about because we're all part of it.’ And that kind of appeal has to be made often. The great majority of people are good natured. They would prefer to do good than harm. They care about people in distress and at disadvantage. But you have to awaken that by being willing to talk about that openly.
You write that “total inclusivity is an illusion, an impossibility”. Where are your boundaries on the limits of inclusion? What is the role of compromise here?
Well, the primary limits are physical. We can't include the entire world in the good life because the inequalities across the globe are so absolutely enormous. But that has to be our aspiration.
Things like strong development assistance and a commitment to helping poor countries are a core part of a universalist vision.
Then there are more cultural issues as well. We want to respect all religious groups and their different practices, but when a religion includes as one of its fundamental tenets an inferior position for women, we can't accept that. We have a contradiction between two of our values. Then we have to choose which is more important.
You write that it ”is clear that many citizens resent the arrival among them of large numbers of asylum seekers. Not only does this greatly strengthen the hands of those seeking general strategies of exclusion, but it is stretching to the limit the concepts of asylum and refugee status established in very different circumstances in the immediate aftermath of World War II.” Elsewhere, you write: “The last thing we should be doing is aping the exclusionists and demonstrating how closely we intend to follow their path.” Was this a reference to Labour? Do you think that Labour’s immigration policy is getting it right, and why/why not?
No, I think they're going too far. The real problem is, obviously, you can't say anybody can enter any country in the world. Society simply can't take the strain of that, either material or cultural.
So there have to be rules. But it's then about how you frame those rules.
To take a current example, this notion of extending to 10 years the amount of time someone has to spend in the country before they can get full rights is only being done because they’re saying: ‘We think there's something wrong with immigrants. We don't really think they should be any. And we're very grudgingly accepting them’.
I don't think we should say that. We should say: ‘We welcome people. They're all human beings. Some of them have suffered terribly. However, it can't all be done that easily. There's got to be a lot of social support and it’s got to be regulated’. But don’t start by saying: ‘There’s something wrong with immigrants’.
You write that “Today’s exclusionists are intensely nationalistic, but at least until now have not shown any interest in making war” Has your opinion changed recently after developments in Trump’s foreign policy in the last few months?
Yes, it has changed very considerably in terms of whether this new phenomenon is fascist or not. Until the war with Iran, Trump had not actually been interested in military aggression. Real fascists demand enormous sacrifice from their populations. You've got to be willing to go out and die for the fatherland. I still think that Trump's not doing that. Also, at the moment, this isn't an aggressive war and Iran is not occupied by the United States. But I must admit the shift from the MAGA base of isolating themselves from the world has changed, and therefore I have to adjust.
On p.28 you write that public opinion hasn’t had to be mobilised for disabled rights and homosexuals rights. What do you make of activism to repeal Section 28, the first London Pride in 1972, and protests against the AIDS crisis, lobbying for marriage equality, and public protest which directly led to the passing of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995?
Yes, you may be right. Obviously there were campaigns that had extraordinary success, but they weren't mass mobilisations. Attitudes towards gay people, for example, changed very rapidly, not so much because of campaigns as because of government response to the campaigns and legalising gay marriage and so on. Once the state did get behind it, I think it did actually affect public opinion.
How does inclusionism respond to the rise in misogyny?
Misogyny has to be faced. Young men need special attention in education, not to strengthen their macho side but actually the opposite, just as girls were encouraged 20 years ago to start seeing everything as open to them. Young men need to be encouraged to see that they’re not going to be squeezed back into a macho life where you get to wield a sledgehammer. The great majority of ordinary jobs in the services sectors are stereotypically female. Men have got to realise they've got to join that, but they need help.
What are your hopes for the book?
I hope it might influence debate, particularly within the Labour Party. On the right side of politics, Reform UK is an unequivocally exclusionist party and the Conservative Party has been gradually shifting towards being a strongly exclusionist party, especially after this thing this last week with shadow justice secretary Nick Timothy saying that Muslims shouldn’t be allowed to pray in public and the leadership of the party supporting him.
The Greens and the Liberal Democrats really do try hard not to be exclusionary and the Scottish and Welsh Nationalist parties are, strangely, also very inclusionist. The problem is the Labour Party, where I think there is a serious struggle. They know quite a lot of their voters are attracted to exclusionist policies because they feel threatened in their daily lives. And so the heart of the Labour Party has to be won for an inclusionist agenda with those caveats that I raise.
And do you think there's hope for Labour?
Recent changes in the personnel in Downing Street have opened the way to more inclusionist policies. The articulation of exclusionist policies is mainly within Blue Labour and their position has weakened for various reasons in the last three weeks or so. So I think that looks a bit brighter.
Exclusion and the New Politics of Hatred is out now on Polity Press.
