Slower to demonise, faster to fix

Andy Leeds

She is just a rent a mouth. One doubts she even knows were Dewsbury is, like so many in the media - comfortable London lives. She ought to reflect that polices she has so often supported have created these ghettos and the social behaviour characterised by Karen Matthews. So let Alibhai-Brown hold her hand up and plead guilty before she lectures anyone about anything.

seb

I've just read the comments posted below Yasmin's article. 'Scathing' doesn't begin to describe their tone. Whatever faults the 'white working class' may have, it comprises the descendants of people who have been on these since, in many cases, the Iron Age. As Peter rightly implies here, the haemorrhaging of Labour support to racists like the BNP is not going to be in any way stopped by written outbursts of arrogance and condescension.

mac

What a stoic she is, coping so womanfully with that enormous chip on her shoulder. But don't the guardianista self-flagellators just love to hear it? Parading it repeatedly doubtless earns her plenty, too (but perhaps not as much Pollyanna or Mr Rusbridger).

James J

What needs to be addressed is the difference between the attitude of the political class towards nationality: they don’t believe in the concept, and the majority of the population, who do.
If you don’t believe in Nationality then someone who arrives in the UK is immediately entitled to the same benefits as a native born citizen. Even if someone is not in the UK but has some ‘link’ such as a prisoner in Guantanamo, who may have once lived here, he too is thought to have all the rights to settlement and benefits.
Those who believe in Open Borders should openly advocate the policy rather than introduce it by stealth justifying the tactic on the majorities’ perceived ‘ignorance’.

Publius

The underlying problem is the constant and usually self-contradictory attempts to re-engineer people and society according to the latest theoretical fashion. The North-London trendies that dominate the media buy into these theories; the "working class" live by more basic instincts. And while these basic instincts are sometimes thick and ugly and obscurantist, they also, at times, reflect deeper truths that the trendy theorists forget. For example, the "working class" know in their bones that the soul of the world is more than just the economic, whereas the trendies have bought into the false idea that everything is fungible. It isn't.

Forlornehope

The use of "working class" as a synonym for underclass is inaccurate as well as insulting. In a career in engineering I worked with people who were definitely working class. They are highly skilled, intelligent, hard working and responsible citizens, who had no doubt that they were "working class". What is meant too often is the non-working dependency class. This is quite another thing.

Ian C

She is one of the most stupid and unassimilated of the immigrant originating chattering classes. This piece and the comments she has attracted are evidence as such.

The "working classes" (a pretty indefinable grouping but we all know who we are talking about), have had a very raw deal for the taxes they (used to) pay. The appalling standards of State Education, the disincentives to work created by the welfare state, the ability of immigrants to take advantage of unpoliced borders supported by 'Human Rights' with no countermanding responsibilities to assimilate, along with the PC attitudes of officialdom and the positive discrimination, have all served up a disastrous cocktail for those unable to be upwardly mobile.

That Ms A-B should show know recognition of this is another example of how the opinion making classes have ignored a couple of generations while believing that their social conscience concern for the ‘equality agenda’ was sufficient.

Liam Murray

Is there contradiction here between how those on the political right respond to rising crime & extremism in white working class communities and similar outcomes in immigrant communities?

How sympathetic are the right to phrases like "these elements are often a symptom of deeper social and economic problems" when applied to immigrant communities? The explanation holds true or it doesn't - it can't be conditional on the ethnic group it's being applied to surely...?

Pete Hoskin

Liam Murray: I don't know whether you're aiming the questions at me, but I hope I made it clear above that I don't think the "explanation" is conditional on the ethnic group it's applied to. It's (probably) wrong to deny that ethnic groups have their own particular problems, but improving social and economic conditions across the board is a important aim.

Liam Murray

It was just a general question Peter but thanks for clearing up where you stand.

I'm on the moderate right & regularly find myself defending that 'explanation' among right-wing friends & colleagues quick to dismiss it - I hate the binary idea that you either swallow the 'poverty' excuse whole and absolve individuals of blame or you reject it completely & ignore social background or conditions. There's merit and substance to both ideas.

Chuck Unsworth

This woman is a dangerous extremist. Each and every article she writes is profoundly biased against the indigenous white population. If she were at all serious about peaceful integration she'd understand that her routine and deliberate provocation does nothing to help. As such it is clear that her sole interest is in being a well-paid 'personality'. That is a remarkably dubious moral position - but maybe one could hardly expect her to understand that.

Faceless Bureaucrat

Courtesy forbids me from suggesting where Ms. A-B might store her rants. Does The Independent actually pay her for this stuff or do they just print it as an act of benevolence on her behalf?

Paul B

For me, the article says more about the predujice and bigotry of the writer, than of the subject she is writing about.

James J

The point is we are not:” …free to question Muslim, Asian, Arab, African, Caribbean, Polish, Lithuanian, Russian behaviour...”or even “Travellers”- without the risk of criminal charges.
We are free to criticise Britons’ behaviour as long as they are from the majority ethnic group and as the “Working Class” (to distinguish them from journalists?)Don’t have the means to reply they are fair game. In fact they are the only group it is safe to criticise.

C Powell

"Their culture is proud; they are noble; what they believe – however stupid or vicious – must be awesome. Oh, and they are never to be called racist".

Well the same statements might just as easily be made about the Muslim community but you will not hear YAB (or any of the other members of the commentariat) saying so. There is never, for instance, any criticism of the anti-Semitism displayed by too many in the Muslim community or the fact that vicious anti-Semitic literature is openly on sale in many mosques.

And then people like Hazel Blears wonder why they are losing white working class votes. Perhaps it's not just because of the dishonesty of the political class about immigration but also because the working class has been able to make the connection - unlike the commentariat - between immigration from very different cultures to ours and the growth of a minority within Britain which is hostile to our culture, mores and values and which contains individuals who are actively plotting to harm Britain and its citizens. The working class - and not just them - are fed up with the political class's dishonesty over this issue: multiculturalism should have died when the fatwa against Rushdie was issued but the penny only finally dropped with most ordinary people on 7/7/05. Unfortunately, too many people in power still believe in and are actively promoting this dangerous and deluded nonsense.

Laura

It's not just the white working class that's against the Labour party's open door mass immigration policy. There are plenty of middle class people just as angry and hostile to immigrants. In fact the most hostile class to immigrants is the so called aspirational working class/lower middle class/suburbanites. The mondeo man/essex man who voted Thatcher come what may in the 80's and kept Labour out for 18 years. The Tories need this section of societies support in order to win the next election not guardian readers but they are not offering them anything.

Angry man in the street

I am p*ss*d *ff with vote tart politicians, overpaid political 'commentators' such as Alibhai-Brown and the grotesquely biased BBC constantly telling me we live in an inclusive multicultural society, sorry community. It's perfectly bleeding' obvious that we do not.

I would offer every encouragement to anyone who aspires to making their way - working for a living and paying their dues - but I am as opposed to non-working class whites as I am to any other non-working class resident of this country getting their comforatble lives funded by handouts paid for by rest of us who are all, by definition, working class.

The likes of that woman who kidnapped her child should be sterilised after the first bastard is produced.

Rhoda Klapp

Immigration? We were never asked, nor will we be. What I personally dislike intensely is the fact that there is nothing in one's treatment by the government/council/whoever which is any different if you are a long-term resident, taxpayer, citizen compared to anybody who has just got off the boat or plane. This is not a racist comment. I think the UK authorities ought somehow to give preference to UK citizens. But it counts for naught. Which is what they found when they surveyed the 'white working class' (a categorisation I find offensive on many levels). The only surprise is that the results weren't obvious. That the politiacl classes are so detached that they cannot empathise with the people who live at the front line of immigration, but were never asked.

Susan Hill

The woman Hazel Blears, who is almost as patronising as Yvette Ballsup, replied to the recent discovery that there are a lot of 'beliefs' about immigrants among the white working classes (funny they don`t mention white other-classes, many of whom hold same beliefs but have not the same courage to voice them) that are in fact 'myths.' She said it was a myth that immigrants go to the top of the council housing list the moment they get here. 'Oh no they don`t, ' says la Blears, 'as a matter of fact most immigrants are housed in the private sector.' Indeed they are. And the rental bill (market rates) is footed by the taxpayer. How dare she think we are so stupid as not to know that -working class or any other ?

Verity

The Gramscis/Trots specifically set out to deconstruct Britain, and they have accomplished an astonishing amount in a mere 12 years.

The voters share the blame. They were too easily bullied by cries of racism. If a burglar comes invades my home, and I call the police, if that burglar is black, do the police accuse me of "racism"? In today's Gramscian skewed reality, it would actually not be surprising. I might even be arrested for "racial hatred" while the burglar makes an appointment with Jarndyce & Jarndyce with a view to suing for infringement of his human rights and hurt feelings.

It is no surprise that it was Cherie Blair, a militant socialist lawyer, who pushed her husband into the EHRA. It will take a real Conservative of conservative convictions, not a Tory Lite, to extricate us from this nightmare that is being prepetrated on our ancient land.

Never forget, David Cameron is attached to the EUSSR Projekt. Europe is a huge part of our problem and we have to lance that abscess before we can get our country and our own laws and own way of life back.

Although the Gramscis have managed to embed so much in our legal system and civil society, don't forget, it is only 12 years. They can be reversed with a few strokes of the pen, if the will is there.

Wilhelm

The Facist left have always hated their own country and wanted to radically change and alter the make up of Britain. The multicultural fanatics have been squeeeeling racist for 40 years to anyone who dares disagree with them. The liberals love immigrants but they never live in the ghetto. Funny that.

'' Its like a nation busily heaping up its own funeral pyre. ''

The 60 murders and 300 injured on the Londonistan underground have been the result.

Wilhelm

What gets me is that the British people were never, never, ever, ever, asked '' would you like a tsunami of immigration into Britain ?''

The old folks who fought in the war, worked all their lives and paid tax, get a pittance of a pension.

Meanwhile some immigrant from Africa or Asia ,just off the plane, who has never paid into the tax system gets the red carpet treatment. council house, benefit , free health.

Hitler shouldnt have bothered with armies in 1940, he could have flooded the country with German immigrants and taken over by stealth.

Wilhelm

The liebour junta said that 5000 Poles would emigrate to Britain.

Yeah more like 5 million. I like Poles they have suffered a lot in their history with the nazies and commies, but I dont want Camberwick Green turned into Warsaw, do you ?

seb

Ms. Alibhai-Brown is obviously too simple to realise that people drop excrement and bombs through the letter-boxes of immigrants because their betters, the Labour politicians who patronise them, have mishandled every single aspect of immigration policy with colossal incompetence and arrogant disdain for the older populations of the United Kingdom. I assume Yasmin always votes Labour. She wants to address her article as a private letter to her Labour pals rather than make matters worse by publishing racist tripe such as this.

Commondog

"Nobody seeks to find out what life is like for the incomers living in the fog of nativist bitterness."

Alibhai-Brown's severely blinkered view seems to have prevented her from observing the rise of what must by now be one of our most vibrant industry sectors, making sure we are reminded at every turn, of the need to tolerate, to embrace and to include 'incomers'.

Just how she continues to be called upon to fill the pages of a national newspaper with such embarrassing and strained imagery, I cannot understand. She has people 'living in the fog of nativist bitterness'. Beg pardon? And antimacassars being cried into? If she knew anything about the British white working-class, she would know that we never cry into anything of more than three syllables. Preferably one.

Her article is written with the aim of reclaiming, on behalf of immigrants, the status of victim.

What she knows well and of course avoids mentioning, is that the real victim is the one who has to watch powerless as his/her country is being stolen. To the sound of incredulous giggles.

A Betts

I am one of the mongrels forced to live in exile for decades whilst she, not only lives in the country of my birth, but also tells its people how they should live or be subject to criminalization!

HFC

The flavour of the posts here suggests that a party adopting policies including greatly increased immigration controls, deportation of all immigrant criminals and a suppression of 'uman rights legislation might gain some traction.

Couple those with deep cuts in government spending (starting with foreign aid) and climate taxes and the working white electorate's vote is secured.

Taxpayers money thus saved can be directed, amongst other things, to educating teachers to teach the fundamentals so that school leavers can express themselves adequately in their national language and do some simple maths.