Immigration and the British Working Classes

The other thing The Daily Politics featured was about the new intake of Polish immigrants. Leading a small life I've noticed nowt around here, but my mom who always has her finger on the pulse has noticed an intake in two of her local supermarkets.

I've never talked about immigration on this blog before (other than in relation to the Tories election campaign last year), but the first thing I would like to say is the respect I have for anyone who immigrates to another country to make a better life for themselves. Think of what they do, leave their home, their friends, their families, leave everything that's familiar to them, and go to another country, where everything is different, and no one speaks like you do, and the food is shit, and everything is so bureaucratic, and the press is hostile, and there are no guarentees. I'm telling you I don't know that I could ever leave my home and family, no matter what the promise. It must be terrifying, and it must take real guts.

I like being surrounded by people from other countries though. I don't know why people get their knickers in a twist about it. I like to hear different accents, and see different types of dress, hear different types of music, and see different restaurants spring up. Alright, I'm not too keen on the Kosovo gangs with their people-trafficking and drugs, or on the odd gun-toting bank-robbing policewomen-murdering Somali, or Turkish gang-masters causing trade-wars, but these people don't make themselves known in my local Asda or down the nearest Weatherspoons. I like the flavour that other cultures bring to an area and have enough faith in my country's own culture not to fear its going to be lost or overwhelmed.

One thing I have to pick a bone with though (oh didn't you just know there was a "but" coming?) is this thing I keep hearing that immigrants do the jobs "that the British won't do anymore." Where the hell has this come from? Where are all these thousands of British people going, no, sorry, I'm not doing THAT!?

For instance the company that runs my local buses WMT are now hiring and training drivers in Poland to come and work here. WMT tell us that they simply can't hire enough people here in the Midlands and they are "forced" to go abroad for their workforce. Will someone please explain to me about this theory that British people suddenly don't want to work as bus drivers anymore, when there is a long tradition of working class men them doing just that?

And go to any school or office block and who now mops the floors and empties the bins? Growing up such cleaning jobs were the stuff of female working class life because the hours fit in around kids' school hours. I reckon every school in the West Midlands has had one of my relatives working in them at one point, whether doing the school dinners, or cleaning, or playtime supervising, or caretaking, or whatever. Now a lot of these jobs, particularly the cleaning jobs, go to the immigration workforce.

So are we just to believe that the British people, or let's face it the British working class, woke up one morning and decided they wanted to do something else? It sounds like the working classes have got completely above themselves and now won't touch anything unless one of the perks of the job involves a company car and use of an executive toilet. Tsk! Ungrateful sods. Should know their place shouldn't they? No wonder we have to get Johnny Foreigner in to keep the country running.

But I've got a feeling it's all bull. It's not about the British working classes being over-educated and all wanting plum white collar jobs really, is it? It's about companies figuring that immigrants will take less wages. Yes, those upperty working classes want fair pay for a fair day's work, but foreigners know their place and won't try and rattle the company's piggy bank like those greedy British pigs. Grateful for what they can get, immigrants, they know what real suffering is. Not like the bolshy British.

But if the old traditional working class jobs paid in real terms now what they did twenty years ago, the British working class would still be working them. It's not the work people won't do, it's stop in a low paid job when they can paid more doing something else they won't do. And this idea that companies are being "forced" to get immigrant labour is a white-wash to hide the fact that these compaines are ready to exploit whoever and however they can to make more profit.

They call it the free market, they call it globalism, but without some kind of conscience being in play doesn't this just fuck everything up for everybody long term? WMT can pay decent wages to local people, or it can misuse the people of a poor country by getting them to do the job at a cheaper rate. Isn't it morally wrong to do the latter? Isn't that why WMT make a big thing of telling everyone they are "forced" into doing this, because they know they simply cannot say "we want to make money by paying shit wages"? And if all the brightest and fittest people are leaving Poland to get a better life in Britain, where does that leave Poland? And I know it's market forces or whatever, but isn't it just damn unfair to pay immigrants less money than they deserve for any given job just because we can?

Yes, I know, I'm being foolish again aren't I? At some point I shall just have to grow up and stop all these silly thoughts about social justice.

I would like however to at least have a little less talk about the British not wanting to do certain jobs, and a little more talk about companies not wanting to pay competitive wages.