Anxieties of Englishness and participation in democracy

This article uncovers the distinction between calls of the far right to address what they consider to be an imbalance in political representation in Britain and local frustrations in Higher Blackley, North Manchester, England about feeling ignored by local and national government. Exploring how voting for the far right is used strategically in an attempt to communicate political disenchantment with the Labour Party, the article explains the shift in voting patterns as a protest against Labour rather than as a statement of affiliation with the core values of the British National Party. The extent of residents' anger is revealed as they explain the "unfairness" of politicians' general neglect of the kind of people who live in Higher Blackley. This is compounded by perceptions of the preferential and "unfair" treatment given to people from ethnic minorities. The article explains how the labeling of residents of Higher Blackley as white working class is rejected as also being "unfair" because it ascribes negative attributes, wholesale, to the very people who were once respected for their participation in a Labour movement of their own making. The ethnographic idea of "fairness" is revealed in the article as the opposite of labeling/fixing and as the acknowledgement of contingency, chance, and choice.