Two David Lammys?
| Author | Klemperer, David |
David Lammy, Tribes: How Our Need to Belong Can Make or Break Society, Constable, 2020
Who is David Lammy? One of only five black men to have ever been elected as a Labour MP, the political identity of the new Shadow Justice Secretary has long been hard to pin down. An early enthusiast for 'Blue Labour', Lammy's 2011 book Out of the Ashes blamed the London riots on an erosion of community. He argued that the economic changes of 1980s and, more controversially, the social changes of the 1960s, had combined to create a 'hyper-individualistic culture'. But since 2016, Lammy has attracted notice as an outspoken opponent of Brexit, and of what he sees as the 'ethnic, populist nationalism' behind it. His high-profile campaigns on Windrush, Grenfell and university admissions have also shown him to be a passionate crusader for racial justice.
For many commentators, these are simply two different David Lammys. Erstwhile admirers of a Blue Labour persuasion see Lammy's recent campaigns as evidence of a profound shift in his politics that they are quick to condemn: Paul Embery laments how 'someone who was prepared to defy conventional wisdom and challenge orthodox liberal thinking' has 'turned into a hysterical, race-baiting alternative version', while David Goodhart complains that the new 'progressive' Lammy has 'become an uncritical channeller of black anger'. (1) But when, on St George's Day this year, Lammy published a column on the importance of English identity, and called for 'civic nationalism', it was hailed by some Labour activists as a sign that 'the old Lammy is back'. Which raises the question: did Lammy really change, or has he simply been misunderstood?
In his new book, Tribes: How Our Need to Belong Can Make or Break Society, Lammy draws together the threads of his life and career to show that the two Lammys are in fact one and the same. Defending a pluralist politics of belonging, Lammy's progres-sivism and his communitarianism are deeply intertwined: he wants to strengthen the communities and identities that can successfully ground an open society.
The central thesis of Lammy's book is that we all share a human need to belong, but that the economic forces unleashed by Thatcher and Reagan, along with rapid technological change, have undermined many of the communities we once relied upon. As a result, people have instead turned, for belonging, to dangerous, unhealthy communities and identities - whether those be white nationalism, criminal gangs or even ISIS. To make his case, Lammy takes the reader on a journey through his own life, showing us the places that defined it, and the kinds of belonging they gave him.
Lammy's story is a striking one. Growing up on a council estate in the Tottenham constituency he now...
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