IAN Rankin’s first published novel, The Flood, chronicles the decay of Carsden, a former mining community in Fife. The inhabitants find it hard to come to terms with the impact of pit closure on their lives and sense of self-worth. There is a festering mixture of confusion, resentment and anger against those responsible for consigning them and their community, literally and metaphorically, to the scrap heap.
Their rage however, is not directed against the nebulous, unjust and intangible nature of post-industrial Scotland or against the service and market economies that make their skills and community redundant. The inhabitants of Carsden look nearer home for the cause of their hollowing out.
Against that background, Rankin explores a range of issues that include scapegoating. The locals turn on outsiders or those who appear different. As Rankin writes, “that made the villagers feel better in their hungry bitterness. They fed on it like a fire feeds on coal.”
Although The Flood was first published in 1986 its themes of alienation and a sense of being left behind are as relevant today as they were then. The bitterness of Carsden is shared by the populations of areas in the north of England that decisively rejected the EU and all its works. In the US, the dispossessed and disaffected provided President Trump with the key to the White House.
On both sides of the Atlantic “the left behinds” were easy prey for politicians on the make. As in Carsden, they sensed their problems were caused by outsiders. Brussels bureaucracy and uncontrolled immigration threatened the British way of life. Taking back control would result in an NHS awash with cash. In the US, the Trump campaign convinced the “rust belt” that full employment could be restored through tariff barriers and ending disadvantageous trade deals concluded with wily foreigners.
In time, the Brexit and Trump election campaigns will be exposed as massive con tricks. The NHS will still be cash-strapped. Foreign workers will remain essential to our hospitals, care homes, agriculture and transport. In the US, Bruce Springsteen’s lyric, “these jobs are going boys and they ain’t coming back”, will be nearer the truth than Trump’s pledge to revitalise American coal and steel.
Of course, no one likes to feel conned. New scapegoats will be required. They will be found amongst the enemy within that undermined Brexit and frustrated the United States’ born again greatness. We cannot expect moderate responses from foreign-domiciled press barons who label judges enemies of the people. The Prime Minister, despite scant evidence, claims foreigners are attempting to influence the general election. The Foreign Secretary calls black children “piccaninnies” and likens the aims of the EU to those of Nazism. An overwhelming Tory victory in the forthcoming election presents very real dangers, particularly as Brexit unravels. Widespread demonisation and scapegoating can only be avoided through a principled and coherent parliamentary opposition. The question is, can that opposition forgo internecine squabbling to resist the real enemies of the people?
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