Every
morning I wake up in a country that is less welcoming and more racist. Every
morning there’s something new, whether it’s scaremongering about people
from EU countries coming here (you don’t even need to pay the Sun money to
read its xenophobia – the cartoon tells a thousand words, with masses of
sinister yellow-eyed dark figures gazing towards poor old white father time) or
another politician, of whatever persuasion, pandering to racism and fear.
Earlier
this week it was Tristram Hunt doing his bit for the Labour Party, explaining
without evidence that migration was
responsible for low achievement among ‘white British boys’. Today the
Coalition Government – that’s the “Liberal” Democrats and the Conservatives – moots an idea to charge ‘migrants’ for NHS
services. Is it kite-flying ahead of the backlash against our supposedly
open borders and the much vaunted tidal wave from Bulgaria and Romania? Is it
pandering to Ukip voters who might have abandoned the Tories? It doesn’t
matter. There will be something else tomorrow. And tomorrow, and tomorrow.
This
isn’t my Britain. This isn’t my idea of Britain. We are not overcrowded. We are
not overloaded. The Daily Mail the other day described Britain as being
‘a crowded isle’, although somehow that meant making England into an island
and ignoring the wide open spaces in Scotland and Wales – conveniently enough.
The narrative keeps going. We’re full up, we can’t continue. We have no more
room. There isn’t anywhere for newcomers to go. But we’re not full up.
Wages
are low and jobs are not secure – but migrants didn’t do it. People are being
ripped off and forced to work zero hour contracts – but migrants did not do that
either. Thirty years of anti trade union legislation from the Conservatives and
New Labour, cheered on by our friends in the press, helped sort all that out,
and we didn’t lift a finger to do anything about it. Now we’re stuck with
terrible pensions, useless working rights, abysmal wages and if we want to take
an employer to a tribunal, we have to pay £1000 for the privilege. All that
happened, on our watch. It wasn’t the migrants who did it. We did it to
ourselves. Labour, Lib Dem and Tory, we all played our part in making that
happen. When we’re working well past 70 and getting nothing for it, we should do
well to remember that.
