The former British Prime Minister Harold McMillan once famously complained that one of his better known successors, Margaret Thatcher, “preferred Estonians to Etonians”.
His point was that Thatcher didn’t care too much for the traditional tribal privileges of the English upper classes and was just as happy to have the backing of indigent East Europeans as she was to be supported by the more traditional bedrock of the Tory party: English toffs.
Given that Britain’s current Prime Minister David Cameron is now one of the most prominent specimens of the latter variety of conservative, one can’t help but wonder what he made of last week’s headlines from those two ugly sisters the Daily Mail and the Daily Express – who are currently exploiting prejudice against those perennial easy targets “East Europeans” to the full – in order to promote their agenda of taking Britain out of the EU. These, after all, are the very same newspapers that helped put Mr Cameron and his friends in power.
Much of their ire is directed at migrant workers from Central and Eastern Europe, including the many Russian-speakers who have come from the Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia). Central to their xenophobic campaign is the pathetic claim that the relaxation of benefit rules from May of this year onwards will lead to hordes of East Europeans coming to our shores to take advantage of UK social security benefits.
The truth is of course a very long way from the message of hate conveyed by the Mail and the Express’s disgraceful headlines. With their economies in freefall due in no small part to misguided neo-liberal economic policies, (policies which incidentally the bankers would dearly love to implement here in the UK, as the leading economist Michael Hudson describes here) workers from the Baltic States may well look upon the UK as an attractive option. Recently, the grim conditions faced by Latvia’s population, in particular its Russian-speaking population, were vividly described in this compelling account by North West based journalist Allan Tunningley. Tunningley writes movingly that amongst Latvia’s Russian-speaking population:
So it is hardly surprising that the number of Latvian migrant workers coming to the UK has increased over the past few years. However the reality is that all too often such migrant workers, like the fruit pickers of West Lancashire, fall prey to unscrupulous employers whose activities can border on the criminal. Some, like Latvian citizen Sergejs Pacejs, who was stabbed and left fighting for his life after a gang of cowardly yobs overheard him speaking Russian on a Salford street , fall victim to racist hate crime. Others, isolated and miles from home facing homelessness and destitution with no support in this country, have even tragically taken their own lives.
Blogger Ruth Grove-White has posted an excellent response to the tabloid campaign against East European migrant workers in which she comprehensively refutes their hysteria about so called “benefit tourism“. Her article, together with a detailed guide to the law and the impact of the likely changes can be found here.
Gillray's 18th century cartoon of Britannia steering a perilous course past the Scylla of democracy and the Charybdis of dictatorship
Older readers may recall how the good ship of the last Tory government came to grief between the Scylla of EU policy and the Charybdis that was the poll tax. Today divisions over migration and European policy seem to yet again threaten the stability of the Conservative-led coalition. Is Mr Cameron a true liberal capitalist, one who supports equality of opportunity, hard work and entrepreneurship, all qualities that Eastern Europeans living in the UK have in abundance? Or is he one of the myopic Little Englanders beloved of the Mail and the Express who seem hell bent on putting up a “Closed for Business” sign on UK Plc in the mistaken belief that this will protect our sceptred isle from the storms and squalls of global economic recession?
Politicians ranging from the former PM Gordon Brown to the Coalition government’s Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith have been quick to point an accusing finger at foreign workers as a way of explaining away growing unemployment amongst the indigenous population of the UK. Paul Vallely, a journalist with The Independent, recently explained with great clarity the reasons why they are plain wrong. Vallely’s excellent article can be read here.
As for the Mail, (whose owner Lord Rothermere is a man so deeply patriotic that he has opted for non-dom status and can thus reduce his tax bill by paying it to the government of France rather than that of David Cameron) and its coverage of all things East European, I think the last word should go to Martin Belam, whose funny and incisive blog post on this topic can be read here.
Related links:
Migrant Workers Employment Rights Service, Manchester
Baltic Association, Nelson, Lancashire
Blackpool East European Festival 2010
Reaching out to migrant workers in Lancashire
“Keeping out Johnny Foreigner… unless he can lend us a tenner”
Neil Davenport on media stereotypes of East Europeans
January 9, 2012 at 10:58 am |
[...] workers. We have responded in the past to this misleading, divisive and pernicious propaganda (see here, here and here) and will not do so now in any detail. Besides, the reasons why these latest figures [...]