Immigration to the UK - do you have concerns?

[MickiQ]

My local trust still do them, at eye clinics in Brighton, Chichester, and Shoreham.

Note to MickiQ as well.

Duly noted, my mate told me that his optician told him that they don't here in the East Mids but that this company now did them on their behalf. He was very happy with the service by the way.

 

[Dystopiary]

Of course loads of younger people think about class ffs. Plenty of them have no choice - it's there in their face every day.

 

[lengualo]

And this is exactly what is wrong with contemporary left wing politics.

The thing is, stuff around race, gender and climate is more prevalent these days because it is less threatening to capital and to the propertied classes so it is more tolerated and even encouraged by some amongst the upper classes.

Is it though? Or is the focus on race and gender just a natural progression from civil rights movements and a change in perceptions and increased university intakes that brings people from different cultures together? Is climate not such a big talking point because its a really big problem.

That class is less mentioned is because it is more threatening to the establishment and therefore more eagerly shut down. In some ways it is the elephant in the room which people don't dare mention, and it's absence from the conversation is merely testament to its explosive relevance.

This might have some merit though.

Of course loads of younger people think about class ffs. Plenty of them have no choice - it's there in their face every day.

I never said people don't think about class, I'm not talking in absolutist terms fgs. I said it isn't the number one priority in discussion and ones class is not as important as it may be here. There is a very strong emphasis on it here. Heck, it can be difficult to even identify what is working and middle class at times these days.

 

[Saul Goodman]

Of course loads of younger people think about class ffs. Plenty of them have no choice - it's there in their face every day.

The ones who don't think about it are the ones who aren't (negatively) affected by it.

 

[Dystopiary]

The ones who don't think about it are the ones who aren't (negatively) affected by it.

Exactly.

 

[lengualo]

The ones who don't think about it are the ones who aren't (negatively) affected by it.

I'm from a working class background who class climbed, and had the snobbery that came with it, and don't like to sit defining everyone by their social class. I wish the class system would die out in this country and felt it really refreshing living in a country that doesn't have the same kind rigid ideas about class as we do here.

We've had someone manage to say that dealing with prejudice is easier if you're middle class. While not meant with any malice, its where this kind of thinking leads, and isn't really true. Having money doesn't make a lot of prejudicial shit easier to deal with.

And I think the left being the exclusive domain of the working classes is a bit out of touch. Did we miss the fall of the Red Wall, Brexit, Trump, LePen, the council estates rallying around Reform, the casual homophobia in the playgrounds of working class schools?

 

[brogdale]

It kinda brings it all back to my original point. If you accept "concerns about immigration" as a valid starting point for discussion you're conceding the agenda to the far-right. Who, in turn, will be far better position to build on this agenda - even from a distance - (as we're seeing here) than we are to turn the conversation to more progressive or class-based perspectives.

I don't for a second believe that the likes of Spy and Edie are far-right or racist, but simply by entertaining their arguments as as "reasonable" we are amplifying and legitimising fundamentally far-right lenses

I think this post, and your original point that you refer to, are correct. Earlier, I posted a link to Maya Goodfellow's Guardian piece which expresses very well why it is correct to challenge such views when they are presented as "reasonable' or 'natural".

Are concerns about immigration “legitimate”? Demonstrably, no. People who arrive in the UK aren’t to blame for an economy designed to benefit the richest while exploiting and abandoning the poorest – immigration is not a significant causal factor of low wages and it’s not why people have insecure jobs. Anti-immigrant feeling isn’t a natural, inevitable reaction to change either. One study found areas with low levels of immigration had some of the highest proportion of leave voters in them – a vote that was at least partly motivated by anti-immigrant concerns. No: it is mainstream politicians and certain sections of the media that summon these feelings. They characterise certain groups of people, usually those who aren’t white (or not-quite-white), as a cultural threat – often targeting Muslims, no matter where they were born.

The “legitimate concerns” in this case are illegitimate. Admitting this doesn’t mean dismissing what people are saying. Equally, engaging people with these views need not lead to legitimisation. The choice is not ignore or accept. Politics is about persuading people of another way; to think this can’t be done is patronising as well as dangerous.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I'm interested - would you take the same view of private education?

(Personally I have paid for private healthcare but would never send my kids to private school)

No. There's no equivalent level of desperation in education. Not even close.

 

[PTK]

I'm from a working class background who class climbed, and had the snobbery that came with it, and don't like to sit defining everyone by their social class. I wish the class system would die out in this country and felt it really refreshing living in a country that doesn't have the same kind rigid ideas about class as we do here.

We've had someone manage to say that dealing with prejudice is easier if you're middle class. While not meant with any malice, its where this kind of thinking leads, and isn't really true. Having money doesn't make a lot of prejudicial shit easier to deal with.

And I think the left being the exclusive domain of the working classes is a bit out of touch. Did we miss the fall of the Red Wall, Brexit, Trump, LePen, the council estates rallying around Reform, the casual homophobia in the playgrounds of working class schools?

I think a problem with this discussion is that people have different definitions of class. There is class in all coutries of the world at the moment in the definition that I adhere to, that is to do with your relationship to the means of production.

 

[brogdale]

Yeah, sorry my post was about Immigration to the UK and concerns and all that.

 

[kabbes]

The problem, lengualo , and I say this with all due love and understanding, is that you don’t understand why class is relevant to all the topics you mention, not that it isn’t relevant. And that’s understandable, because the neoliberal flavour of capitalism has created a way of understanding the world that starts and ends with the individual. The individual is responsible, the individual is actualised, the individual makes decisions, the individual has opportunities, strengths, weaknesses, successes and failures. Structural analysis of social problems has become just… forgotten. But don’t worry, urban is here to gradually guide you through it.

First things first — a class isn’t “thing”, it’s a relation. A class cannot exist without another class to compare it to. One class controls a social field, another is controlled. It’s this relation between classes that matters, not the class in and of itself.

Second, forget “middle-class” as one of those relations. It’s meaningless for structural analysis, it’s just something made up to sell things. What matters in class analysis, in class relations, is what interests the class has as a consequence of its power or lack thereof. Are you selling your labour wherein you provide a bit of a larger process, without making decisions about where that process begins, ends or operates? Do you have a level of control over your own activities but not over anybody else’s? Do you tell other people what to do on behalf of the owners? Or are you an owner? These groups are fundamentally in opposition to each other.

And all that has implications for what decisions are made by whom and when. Hell, it fundamentally sets the parameters of what is defined as a problem in the first place. Take climate change — who gets to decide what the nature of that problem is? For example, is the problem the individual consumers’ choices? Or is it the way that the nature of property and ownership are defined and put into legal practice? These are inherently class issues — they derive from the structures of capitalism.

 

[lengualo]

I think a problem with this discussion is that people have different definitions of class. There is class in all coutries of the world at the moment in the definition that I adhere to, that is to do with your relationship to the means of production.

The problem, lengualo , and I say this with all due love and understanding, is that you don’t understand why class is relevant to all the topics you mention, not that it isn’t relevant. And that’s understandable, because the neoliberal flavour of capitalism has created a way of understanding the world that starts and ends with the individual. The individual is responsible, the individual is actualised, the individual makes decisions, the individual has opportunities, strengths, weaknesses, successes and failures. Structural analysis of social problems has become just… forgotten. But don’t worry, urban is here to gradually guide you through it.

First things first — a class isn’t “thing”, it’s a relation. A class cannot exist without another class to compare it to. One class controls a social field, another is controlled. It’s this relation between classes that matters, not the class in and of itself.

Second, forget “middle-class” as one of those relations. It’s meaningless for structural analysis, it’s just something made up to sell things. What matters in class analysis, in class relations, is what interests the class has as a consequence of its power or lack thereof. Are you selling your labour wherein you provide a bit of a larger process, without making decisions about where that process begins, ends or operates? Do you have a level of control over your own activities but not over anybody else’s? Do you tell other people what to do on behalf of the owners? Or are you an owner? These groups are fundamentally in opposition to each other.

And all that has implications for what decisions are made by whom and when. Hell, it fundamentally sets the parameters of what is defined as a problem in the first place. Take climate change — who gets to decide what the nature of that problem is? For example, if the problem the individual consumers’ choices? Or is it the way that the nature of property and ownership are defined and put into legal practice? These are inherently class issues — they derive from the structures of capitalism.

These are related and maybe part of my problem getting this. I grew up on a council estate in the 80's and 90's and my parents purchased their council house. My mum was a carer and my dad worked manual labour. To us, middle class functionally always meant being educated (like, a degree), having a professional career, owning your own home or being in a position to do so (particularly in a nice area) with access to good schools and facilities, having disposable income and savings. Not always ownership of production and definitely not being self employed because that doesn't mean you have financial independence beyond anyone else.

If thats not the definition of middle class, then most people in this country are working class, even those who are considered middle class and doesn't seem to fit the definition I and my peers grew up with. And the people who own the means of production for the wider part of society often aren't even middle class, they're upper class.

Doesn't that illustrate what I was getting at though? Or am I misidentifying class?


And as a broader point about social attitudes, the council estate I grew up on is the place we encounter the most prejudice and I see multi-millionaires setting the poor on each other.

 

[Gramsci]

In a desperate attempt to bring the thread back to the topic I started to watch this last night. He covers government policies on immigration post war.

So far got this from it

1. Post war the people in colonies were defined legally as British subjects with right to come here

2 historians looking at declassified government papers found however there was a two tier system. Formally people from non white colonies were British subjects with right to come here. Informally they weren't Ours. He refers to this ours several times. This conception of ours comes up in documents

3 post war UK had severe labour shortages. The non public government discussion was to stop black migrants coming here. Instead they tried to get white Europeans from Europe. As they didn't want miscegenation as it was called then. This was all under Labour government Even though the Europeans weren't part of the Empire.

4 Windrush really worried them . Government papers show they wanted to keep fiction the Empire was one big happy family. But the practice was to try to deter black people from coming here.

 

[lazythursday]

I'm from a working class background who class climbed, and had the snobbery that came with it, and don't like to sit defining everyone by their social class. I wish the class system would die out in this country and felt it really refreshing living in a country that doesn't have the same kind rigid ideas about class as we do here.

We've had someone manage to say that dealing with prejudice is easier if you're middle class. While not meant with any malice, its where this kind of thinking leads, and isn't really true. Having money doesn't make a lot of prejudicial shit easier to deal with.

And I think the left being the exclusive domain of the working classes is a bit out of touch. Did we miss the fall of the Red Wall, Brexit, Trump, LePen, the council estates rallying around Reform, the casual homophobia in the playgrounds of working class schools?

You are just completely failing to get my point. I'm not saying that you can't experience horrendous racial, or other prejudice, as a middle class or even upper class person.

What I'm saying is that taken as a whole, the impacts of racism on your life are likely to hit harder if you're also poorer. Because that class position magnifies everything else. If you're already disadvantaged in the job market thanks to your class background, discrimination based on race layers on top of that. Surely this is obvious? Your position in the class structure makes a fundamental difference to how racism, sexism, etc impact on your life.

 

[PTK]

.

 

[lengualo]

You are just completely failing to get my point. I'm not saying that you can't experience horrendous racial, or other prejudice, as a middle class or even upper class person.

What I'm saying is that taken as a whole, the impacts of racism on your life are likely to hit harder if you're also poorer. Because that class position magnifies everything else. If you're already disadvantaged in the job market thanks to your class background, discrimination based on race layers on top of that. Surely this is obvious? Your position in the class structure makes a fundamental difference to how racism, sexism, etc impact on your life.

I think it can but I think the line where there might be any meaningful difference is higher than working class/middle class at least how I understand class. But people are trying to bring it back on topic so I'll stop.

 

[PTK]

.

 

[Gramsci]

I pointed that out in one of my posts way back. That receptionists are meant to ask every patient how long they have lived in the UK, and that I ask my receptionists not to do that because I disagree with it.

Ok

So I take it you want the Hostile Environment dropped?

 

[Gramsci]

I think this post, and your original point that you refer to, are correct. Earlier, I posted a link to Maya Goodfellow's Guardian piece which expresses very well why it is correct to challenge such views when they are presented as "reasonable' or 'natural".

I have her book on my kindle not got around to reading it yet. She makes the kind of points that posters like you and me have been derided for here.

So in that way I was cheering when I read this. So I'm not that out of touch then.

Unless one classifies her as an Islington Woman.

Looking up more I found this old glowing review of the book by David Lammy.

Really I should be a Labour party voter. I was a while back accused by another local community person I know of being "a bit Labour party"

Reading old review of the book by Lammy and its a reason I don't vote Labour. He's saying all the right things then. So what has happened?

Hostile Environment by Maya Goodfellow review – how immigrants became scapegoats

From Winston Churchill to Windrush ... a champion of migrant justice turns the spotlight on UK policy

www.theguardian.com

 

[brogdale]

I have her book on my kindle not got around to reading it yet. She makes the kind of points that posters like you and me have been derided for here.

So in that way I was cheering when I read this. So I'm not that out of touch then.

Unless one classifies her as an Islington Woman.

Looking up more I found this old glowing review of the book by David Lammy.

Really I should be a Labour party voter. I was a while back accused by another local community person I know of being "a bit Labour party"

Reading old review of the book by Lammy and its a reason I don't vote Labour. He's saying all the right things then. So what has happened?

Hostile Environment by Maya Goodfellow review – how immigrants became scapegoats

From Winston Churchill to Windrush ... a champion of migrant justice turns the spotlight on UK policy

www.theguardian.com

And let's not forget Olusoga's magnificent piece that preceded Goodfellow's by 3 days:

To put the violence directed at British Muslims, Black Britons and asylum seeking down to “legitimate grievances” is to fall for one of the most toxic and intentionally divisive falsehoods in the populist handbook: the myth that class and race are diametrically opposed, the assertion that non-white people have no class identity. In this distorted world view, the true working class are the “white working class”, and the difficulties they face are not a consequences of political choices that affect everyone, irrespective of ethnicity, skin colour or faith, but of “elites” putting the needs of minority communities first. As if those minorities are not themselves working class. Boris Johnson’s disastrous government pushed that falsehood whenever it got the chance.

And offers a brilliant rebuttal to those that seek to deny the vermin's role in creating the society that spawned the racist hate of the riots:

The Britain of 2024 is by some measures the most unequal society in Europe. Real wages have not increased since 2008 and the lowest-income British households are 20% poorer than the lowest-income families in France. But those bleak realities are the result of long-term political choices, not asylum seekers huddled terrified in hotels.

The ideological fanaticism of the Thatcher government that limited the ability of local authorities to use income generated from the sale of council houses to build new properties, the ideologically driven impoverishment of local government by the Cameron-Osborne government and the self-inflicted wound of Brexit: these and other factors are what lie behind the shocking lack of access to basic resources – social housing, doctor’s appointments and dental surgeries. Immigration, rather than worsening that situation, is one of the few levers we have to increase access to medical care.

 

[Gramsci]

Here is Lammy on the review of the Windrush scandal and the lessons that should be learned

In 2020

Third, the hostile environment must be replaced by a humane environment. By turning teachers, doctors and landlords into border guards, the government manufactured an “us and them” culture that led to gross discrimination across the public realm. The review calls for an immediate end to the “right to rent laws” and says the department must take “urgent action” to review every hostile environment measure. The implications are clear. We should scrap the entire hostile environment

The Windrush report shows the Home Office is broken. Here's how it must change | David Lammy

The hostile environment must go – and officials must recognise their primary duty is to resolve people’s problems, says Tottenham MP David Lammy

www.theguardian.com

I agree but as Maya Goodfellow says of Starmer:

This big, macho talk is supposedly the stuff of serious politics; it would be laughable if it wasn’t so dangerous. Labour has carefully curated a message that it will not be “soft” on asylum. That it will ditch the Rwanda scheme but forge on with tough plans. That it is different from the Tories, but not too different.

Starmer’s macho talk on asylum seekers will only lead to more tragedy. Where is his humanity? | Maya Goodfellow

The way to ‘stop the boats’ is to create safe routes of travel. Instead, the Labour leader is obsessed with trying to appear tough, says the academic and author Maya Goodfellow

www.theguardian.com

What is worse about Labour is that they don't really believe this macho stuff. They think they have to do this to be taken seriously.

 

[newme]

Your definition does exclude those who were born and raised elsewhere and went through the process of becoming a British citizen.

To tell someone whose gone through the long process of becoming a British citizen that they aren't :
.


To someone whose done all the effort to get British citizenship it might be a bit annoying to be told yes your British but you aren't "ours".

Going on the citizenship exam tester things I'd have failed. Happening to be born in a specific geographical area always seemed a weird qualifier. Someone who does all that shit, pays a fortune to get it all sorted and learn a load of stuff cos that's what they had to do should get free passports for life so they keep getting a fuck yeh you did it reminder (obviously with opt out if requested) Did huge amounts more for it than I did. I just happened to turn up here.

 

[Gramsci]

And let's not forget Olusoga's magnificent piece that preceded Goodfellow's by 3 days:


And offers a brilliant rebuttal to those that seek to deny the vermin's role in creating the society that spawned the racist hate of the riots:

This can work both ways unfortunately.

The Council ward I live in ( the boundaries have changed recently ) was the most deprived in Lambeth. White British ( me) are a minority of the population of the Ward

A lot of the Afro Carribbean British in my area regard racism as cause of the deprivation. They are second generation and born in area. So understandably they see inequality as largely race issue. Not class.

Coming from outside London I don't see it that way. A while ago I looked up the stats of the Council wards in Plymouth where I was born. One of the whitest towns in England. The level of deprivation ( top ten percent in country ) was exactly same as the Council Ward in London I live in where majority are not White British

I was glad David Olusoga said the following

Those who live in Britain’s long list of neglected towns – such as Gateshead, where I grew up, which ranks as the 47th poorest of England’s 317 local authorities – have no shortage of entirely legitimate grievances. But that is true irrespective of their race or religion

It's really important that this is said.

And this by him

The Britain of 2024 is by some measures the most unequal society in Europe. Real wages have not increased since 2008 and the lowest-income British households are 20% poorer than the lowest-income families in France. But those bleak realities are the result of long-term political choices, not asylum seekers huddled terrified in hotels

It's what our Labour politicians should be saying.

 

[SpookyFrank]

What is worse about Labour is that they don't really believe this macho stuff. They think think they have to do this to be taken seriously.

Whether they believe it or not is irrelevant. I don't suppose Murdoch believes even 5% of the shit his papers print but it gets printed just the same, as a means to an end. For labour, allowing themselves to be led by the tabloid agenda like a pig on a string is a means to an end. Who fucking cares if they believe that what they're doing is right. People can justify just about anything to themselves. What matters is the consequences.

A lot of the stuff labour does these days is just cargo cult logic, doing arbitrary performative shit that they think will win them a pat on the head from the Telegraph or the Mail. And of course Starmer's insecurity about his vague mandate and indifferent popularity is both cause of and consequence of this endless craven shit. If he offered something real, that he believed in, and told the trolls and the ghouls and the grifters with a vested interest in everything remaining shit to get lost, maybe he'd have won an actual mandate not just the by-default one he now has.

 

[newme]

Whether they believe it or not is irrelevant. I don't suppose Murdoch believes even 5% of the shit his papers print but it gets printed just the same, as a means to an end. For labour, allowing themselves to be led by the tabloid agenda like a pig on a string is a means to an end. Who fucking cares if they believe that what they're doing is right. People can justify just about anything to themselves. What matters is the consequences.

A lot of the stuff labour does these days is just cargo cult logic, doing arbitrary performative shit that they think will win them a pat on the head from the Telegraph or the Mail. And of course Starmer's insecurity about his vague mandate and indifferent popularity is both cause of and consequence of this endless craven shit. If he offered something real, that he believed in, and told the trolls and the ghouls and the grifters with a vested interest in everything remaining shit to get lost, maybe he'd have won an actual mandate not just the by-default one he now has.

No worse than its been for the previous government apart from lacking a decade of leading us into a huge mess.

 

[SpookyFrank]

No worse than its been for the previous government apart from lacking a decade of leading us into a huge mess.

No I suppose not. Getting fucked over by someone who'd rather not fuck anyone over- but is too blinkered, corrupt or dim to even realise that that's an option- isn't really any better than getting fucked over by people who just like fucking people over. Arguably worse, because out of the two options this is supposed to be the better one. This is the version we're expected to hope for.

 

[newme]

No I suppose not. Getting fucked over by someone who'd rather not fuck anyone over- but is too blinkered, corrupt or dim to even realise that that's an option- isn't really any better than getting fucked over by people who just like fucking people over. Arguably worse, because out of the two options this is supposed to be the better one. This is the version we're expected to hope for.

Yup this is what I hoped for. Tories out, had no more expectations, who expects something positive now? Its not better but it's not actively worse. They are all crap I'd say but there's square wombat poo v dog shit wrapped in cat shit covered in diarrhoea that's on fire.

 

[Rimbaud]

And I think the left being the exclusive domain of the working classes is a bit out of touch. Did we miss the fall of the Red Wall, Brexit, Trump, LePen, the council estates rallying around Reform, the casual homophobia in the playgrounds of working class schools?

The Red Wall used to be hard left, there's a small mining town near me where the main streets are named after Marx and Lenin. That they've fallen to the right (although nowhere near as completely as the media narrative tells it btw) is a consequence of the mainstream left's retreat from class and socialism. Similarly Le Pen is popular in places that used to be Communist Party strongholds.

 

[PTK]

That surgeon is able to do what they like in their free time. To suggest that doctors should be forced to only work for the state is frankly insane.

This comment reminds me of the thinking that led to the incarceration of dissident intellectuals in mental hospitals in the Soviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s. Those who criticised the existing dispensation must be insane, it was argued. The present condition of society was the best that it could be, and was improving. To claim that there was something greatly wrong with it was to deny reality, and therefore the complainant must be insane.

Human beings are naturally social beings. This is why solitary confinement is regarded as a draconian punishment. For human beings to engage in activities that are contrary to the interests of their society could be regarded as being pathological. It could be argued that a doctor in Britain who was trained in, and works for, the NHS and wants to engage in private practice is suffering from a form of anti-social pathology.

 

[Elpenor]

Just on the surgeons, if I read the posts from an NHS worker correctly, they’re simultaneously exhausted from working the long hours an NHS contract demands, but also should be able to work for private providers in their free time?

If I was tired from as well paid a job like surgeon, I probably wouldn’t look to spend my free time doing a second job