In this blog, Dr Ben Whitham comments on how a centrist discourse coupled with a misguided representation of threat that different political movements pose is enabling the rise of the far right in the UK, and internationally.
In light of the events in London last Friday, people are talking about terrorism again. But this conversation is tightly embedded in the context of the imminent general election. Right wingers, including current Prime Minister Boris Johnson, were quick to exploit the attack – against the explicit wishes of one victim’s grieving parents – to justify more draconian counter-terrorism sentencing measures. It is a febrile political climate as we approach what the ruling Conservative Party would like us to think of as a ‘Brexit election’, and in a context where, just prior to the Brexit referendum in 2016, a sitting MP – Jo Cox – was assassinated in a terrorist attack. The authorities are, understandably, taking care to warn prospective parliamentary candidates (PPCs) of potential dangers.
In their Joint Guidance for Candidates in Elections: When it goes too far, sent to all PPCs last week, the National Police Chiefs’ Council, Electoral Commission, Crown Prosecution Service, and the College of Policing point out that the current national security ‘threat level’, set by the security services, is ‘SUBSTANTIAL’. They go on to explain to PPCs that this ‘reflects the threat from Islamist, Right and Left Wing Terrorism’.
While the terminology may be problematic, there have been many major terrorist attacks in the UK, prior to last week’s, that are deemed ‘Islamist’. In 2017 alone, 35 people were killed and hundreds injured – many of whom sustained serious, life-changing injuries – in the Westminster, Manchester Arena and London Bridge attacks. The latter two attacks were both claimed by the ‘Islamic State’ militant group. The threat of right wing terrorism has a similarly clear evidential basis. Thomas Mair assassinated Jo Cox, a sitting, pro-remain Labour MP, during the Brexit referendum campaign, shouting ‘this is for Britain!’, ‘keep Britain independent!’, and ‘Britain first!’ as he murdered her. His home was ‘stuffed with far-right books and Nazi memorabilia’, and the CPS declared the attack political terrorism. Furthermore, Mair was not – despite media representations to the contrary – a ‘lone wolf’. He is one person is a large, emboldened, and fast-growing transnational movement of right wing terrorists. In the last few months alone, far right terrorists including Jack Renshaw, David Parnhamand Vincent Fuller have been jailed in the UK for attempted, hoaxed, or actual white supremacist terrorist attacks. This is not to mention their comrades’ bloody attacks on churches, synagogues, mosques and shops in the US and New Zealand. In September, the head of counter-terrorism policing in the UK, Neil Basu, described right wing terrorism as the ‘fastest-growing problem’ he faced.
But what of the ‘Left Wing Terrorism’ that the Joint Guidanceputs on a par with Islamist and right wing terror threats? I have tried to think of a single example of an attack, and have to say I am coming up blank. It could be that the authors are privy to specific intelligence about a secret lefty plot – a sort of UK Red Brigades. But I suspect it is actually an example of a toxic ‘centrist’ political imaginary that pervades many of our institutions, drawing false political and moral equivalences as a facile expression of ‘neutrality’. This simplistic ‘both sides-ism’ is a level of political discourse so degenerate that even Donald Trump knows how to effectively exploit it, but its most dangerous proponents are the well-intentioned liberal establishment individuals and organisations who think that their overriding duty is to provide ‘balance’ when they make pronouncements on politics.
Both sides-ism is dangerous because it minimises the very real threat posed by the rise of the far right, in the name of balance. We are supposed to consider what, milkshaking, to be ‘Left Wing Terrorism’ equivalent to the far right’s mass murders and assassinations? The messaging in the Joint Guidance downplays the singular threat posed by an insurgent, transnational far right movement that has developed strong links with ‘mainstream’ right-wing governments, through figures like Steve Bannon, in the UK, the US, and elsewhere. It also suggests an obscene and offensive moral equivalence between those who want a more equal society, and those who want genocide.
The BBC, of course, has become Both Sides Central in recent years – a process exacerbated by the Brexit referendum and subsequent political ‘debate’ – obliviously drawing an identical equivalence between antifa and neo-fascists to Trump’s famous ‘both sides’ remark on Charlottesville. If they interview a prominent climate scientist, they’ll scour the land for a climate change denier. If they interview an anti-racist commentator, campaigner or columnist, they’ll be sure to find an openly Islamophobic racist to ‘balance’ those views. This is a lamentable trajectory for journalism and leads to a situation in which, as Tory journalist Peter Oborne has pointed out, the Prime Minister can openly and repeatedly lie without real challenge. What’s more, political issues don’t have only ‘two sides’ (Brexit is perhaps the multi-faceted issue par excellence, splitting views within and between political parties, spawning new parties, floor-crossings and expulsions), and amplifying obscure, hateful voices is not a path to ‘neutrality’ or a sensible response to ‘bias’.
Centrism has enabled and continues to enable the rise of the far right. The far right knows that centrist liberal discourse can be exploited, as is evident from the openly white supremacist social media users who use ‘classical liberal’ in their bio, and from the endless stream of Islamophobic and alt-right columns on ‘free speech’. That the centrist imaginary shapes how the police think about their responsibilities to protect political actors from terrorism during an election campaign is deeply troubling, and like all ‘both sides-ism’ today, actually plays specifically into the hands of the political right. As Boris Johnson, whose extensive racist, sexist and homophobic comments are a matter of public record, plays for far right votes – especially through Islamophobia, the unifying hatred of the new far right – he knows he can rely on such portrayals of his left wing enemies as somehow equally morally bankrupt.
Dr Ben Whitham is Senior Lecturer in International Politics at De Montfort University and a member of the Centre for Urban Research on Austerity. His current CURA-supported research project explores the intersectional politics of austerity and Islamophobia.
Student essay winner: A Transport Solution for Congested Leicester – That’s right, Monorail!
By Chris Whiting / @ChrisRWhiting
CURA is proud to publish outstanding student contributions pertaining to pressing issues facing cities today. In today’s blog, @DMUPolitics MA student Chris Whiting discusses an innovative solution to transport problems in Leicester, asking whether a monorail system, based on the city’s forgotten tram network, could address a wide range of issues in the city.
Leicester’s Urban Transport Problems
If you have anything to do with Leicester, you will know one thing; being beaten by Nottingham at literally anything is totally unacceptable – yet it is the reality on transport.
The seven miles from the outskirts of the Leicester urban area (UA) to the city centre takes around 58 minutes by bus. In Nottingham, where public transport is more readily provided by an extensive tram network, the same journey will take just 32 minutes. As well as this, Nottingham-dwellers can use these service roughly every 10 minutes whereas those in places like Cosby are forced to wait up to 45 minutes between journeys.
In fact, it isn’t just Leicester’s regional rival having an easier time with transport. Of the thirteen major urban areas in the UK, Leicester is one of only two to not have an urban rail system, with the other being the incongruously centred Southampton-Portsmouth UA. This deprivation in reliable public transport means Leicester is the 9th most congested city in the UK and in the top 100 worldwide[1].
With this lack of available transport comes a myriad of issues for Leicesterians; little affordable housing, even less suitable housing stock, a disassociation with the urban community and concentrations of wealth and deprivation. As the city council ploughs ahead with its flagship waterfront redevelopment project, concerns over working class displacement and detachment with the city centre have mounted, as was warned in 2017[2].
Worse yet, with other transport solutions, such as the new A46 expressway connecting Hinckley with Charnwood via Eastern Leicestershire, there are concerns that green space on the urban fringe could be sacrificed to accommodate for lazy solutions to transport capacity problems[3]. This problem alone should encourage the city to look to less environmentally destructive, and more innovative transport solutions.
Monorail – solution and challenges?
With these things in mind, it is crucial that the city addresses the issue of poor connectivity to its urban centre, without limiting urban space or undoing the council’s admirable push for pedestrianisation – but how? Simply, Leicester should reconsider the visionary idea of 1960s city planner Konrad Smigielski and construct an urban monorail system.
The benefits of this specific type of urban rail system compared to others are two-fold; one, its elevated operation means that already limited street space does not have to be surrendered to install it and, less importantly, its uniqueness among UK UAs would make it marketable from a touristic perspective.
More generally, however, A 2007 ESPON report gave Leicester score of 3.33 (out of 10) for transport, embarrassingly less than much smaller towns like Ipswich, Newbury and Rugby[4]. In fact, Leicester’s transport rating was the joint-worst of the aforementioned ‘big thirteen’ UAs, and third-worst among the country’s 16 largest metropolitan areas (see Figure 1).
Figure 1 – Transport Score of the 16 Largest UK Metro Areas
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20150924002318/http://www.espon.eu/export/sites/default/Documents/Projects/ESPON2006Projects/StudiesScientificSupportProjects/UrbanFunctions/fr-1.4.3_April2007-final.pdf.
Whilst increasing the road capacity of Leicester’s metropolitan area may be the most conventional response and recovering the forgotten Leicester tram network (see Figure 2) would be the easiest, the installation of a monorail system would address more of the multi-faceted problems of modern Leicester where the other two ‘solutions’ cannot. For instance, a monorail would be less disruptive to the preservation and future expansion of Leicester’s limited green space.
Better yet, Leicester and Leicestershire’s Transport Board only scores two out of ten points for providing choice in modes of transportation, and 4.4 out of 10 for sustainability. An electrified rail system would make great strides to addressing both of these shortcomings. However, what is the most debilitating hindrance to such a project is the lack of funding for local transport. In the 2015-19 period, the central Department for Transport budgeted just £16.1m for Leicester and Leicestershire’s transport schemes, a tenth of Greater Manchester’s budget[5].
Of course, the confidence to pursue such a radical re-imagination of a city’s transport network is contingent on examples of success in other cities. In the pacific north-west of the United States, Seattle has reaped tremendous rewards from the introduction of its own monorail system. The rail’s newest line generates an 8% economic return, is more than twice as fast at peak times than the bus, and because of its elevated status reduces disruption to road users, and costs less in land acquisition than other forms of urban rail, like a tram[6].
The cost-effectiveness of their scheme even expands to reductions in costs associated with road accidents, parking charges and returning more time for users to be economically active elsewhere. Given, it would be a huge public investment, Seattle’s success was contingent on winning public support for the project, as the report showed. Leicester would need a similar seal of approval from its citizens but examples of monorails in similar sized urban areas like Wuppertal and Dresden indicate that it is achievable.
After all, Leicester’s city centre population has risen by 145% between 2002 and 2015 – the sixth highest rate of growth in the country[7] – and is now home to 14,700 people. This has several substantial effects; namely, the reduced capacity in the city centre means many residents are either pushed away from the urban centre or, to accommodate for them, space in the city is severely restricted instead.
Figure 2 – A Map of Leicester’s former Tram system
Source: Wikimedia Commons (2012). File:Leicester Corporation Tramways.jpg. [image] Available at: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Leicester_Corporation_Tramways.jpg [Accessed 8 Mar. 2019].
And as city centre living becomes the only viable choice for those making their lives in Leicester, the price of housing booms and displaces those on low incomes – a monorail would go some way to lessening those impacts[8] by making the idea of commuting from outside the UA far more viable than it is currently[9].
Whilst, Leicester itself is locally infamous for its often frustrating design, a monorail would promote the formation of an integrated hub of intelligently designed towns, suburbs, and the city itself. This radical congestion solution is exactly the sort of innovation that encompasses the thinking behind 1993’s Congress of New Urbanism.
The theory of New Urbanism is premised on the idea that amenities and culture be almost immediately accessible to all urbanites no matter their income bracket[10]. The resurrection of Leicester’s urban rail system would offer that and even provide incentives for greater cohesion between the city’s often fragmented points of interest instead of digressing with the ‘geographies of nowhere’ that have informed Leicester’s urban sprawl[11].
Where amenities are not immediately accessible to the urban population and commuting in and out of the city centre to access them is considered too much of a chore, Leicester begins to fail on several metrics. A monorail system is not a one-size fits all solution for Leicester’s extensive issues, but would be far from a marketing gimmick in turn.
New Urbanist thinking calls for cities to reform as ‘regionally important’, ‘culturally diverse’ and ‘transit-oriented’ – Leicester is only lacking in the latter category[12].
Of course, in the age of austerity, a new urban rail system will be hard for local authorities to devise but should financing arrangements be made by a purportedly supportive central government[13], Leicester could make real progress in alleviating some of its crucial problems with a single word – that’s right, monorail!
[1] Traffic Index 2018. 2018. Ebook. TomTom. https://www.tomtom.com/en_gb/traffic-index/ranking/?country=UK.
[2] “Leicester Has An Opportunity ‘To Do Regeneration Differently’ — University Of Leicester”. 2017. Www2.Le.Ac.Uk. https://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/press/press-releases/2017/march/leicester-has-an-opportunity-2018to-do-regeneration-differently2019.
[3] “‘A46 Expressway – The Road To Ruin’ Says CPRE – CPRE Leicestershire”. 2019. Cpreleicestershire.Org.Uk. http://www.cpreleicestershire.org.uk/campaigns/strategic-growth-and-a46-expressway/item/2299-a46-expressway-the-road-to-ruin-says-cpre.
[4] EPSON. 2007. “ESPON Project 1.4.3 Study On Urban Functions”. EPSON. https://web.archive.org/web/20150924002318/http://www.espon.eu/export/sites/default/Documents/Projects/ESPON2006Projects/StudiesScientificSupportProjects/UrbanFunctions/fr-1.4.3_April2007-final.pdf.
[5] Where The Money’S Going: Are The New Local Transport Bodies Heading In The Right Direction?. 2013. Ebook. Campaign to Protect Rural England. https://bettertransport.org.uk/sites/default/files/research-files/LTB_report_250913_web_FINAL.pdf.
[6] Bisers, Dan. 2010. “Monorail – Transportation Benefit-Cost Analysis”. Bca.Transportationeconomics.Org. http://bca.transportationeconomics.org/case-studies/monorail.
[7] Mukadam, Ash. 2018. “Leicester Has Sixth Fastest Growing City Centre Population In UK”. Leicester Updates. http://leicesterupdates.com/leicester-sixth-fastest-growing-city-centre.
[8] Pegden, Tom. 2017. “Why House Prices Have ROCKETED In Leicester”. Leicester Mercury. https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/business/leicester-house-prices-rocketing-75-944285.
[9] Martin, Dan. 2017. “‘Eye-Watering’ Numbers Of New Homes Needed Across County Revealed”. Leicestermercury. https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/leicester-news/revealed-eye-watering-numbers-new-753730.
[10] Carswell, A. (2012). The encyclopedia of housing. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE Publications, pp.513-516.
[11] MacLeod, Gordon. 2013. “New Urbanism/Smart Growth In The Scottish Highlands: Mobile Policies And Post-Politics In Local Development Planning”. Urban Studies 50 (11): 2196-2221. doi:10.1177/0042098013491164.
[12] González, Erualdo Romero, and Raul P Lejano. 2009. “New Urbanism And The Barrio”. Environment And Planning A: Economy And Space 41 (12): 2946-2963. doi:10.1068/a41360.
[13] Martin, Dan. 2018. “Plan Unveiled To Build City Tram Network – If Tories Win Election”. Leicestermercury. https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/leicester-news/plan-unveiled-build-tram-network-1478321.