Inventory

Lindsey workers show their anger in a demonstration yesterday

Tuesday June 23,2009

By Patrick O'Flynn

THE growing estrangement between the Labour Party and working people, one effect of which has been the rise of the BNP, is rapidly turning into a formal separation.

Mass demonstrations are taking place at industrial sites such as the Lindsey oil refinery in Lincolnshire in protest against the hiring of foreign labour while local dole queues are lengthening.

They are greatly frowned upon by Government ministers such as Peter Mandelson, whose primary loyalty appears to lie with the European Union as a whole rather than with the United Kingdom.

He has spoken out against such “pro-tectionist” outbursts, saying they are fuelled by “the politics of xenophobia”.

In fact they are a rational protest against the failure of Labour to live up to its name by representing British working- class communities.

They could even be seen as an admirable expression of solidarity by British tradesmen for their out-of-work
compatriots.

Many lies have been told during the New labour era.

The allegation that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction takes some beating.

Labour’s manifesto pledge that “we will not introduce top-up fees” will be regarded as particularly outrageous by thousands of new graduates emerging into a  decimated jobs market with average debts of £20,000 after being stung for three years worth of the very same. (跳票!)

But in this new age of mass unemployment the pledge to create “British jobs for British workers” has become the falsehood central to political life. (跳票!)

In a speech to the GMB trade union – the very body organising the lindsey protests – in June 2007, on the very cusp of starting his  premiership, Gordon Brown said:

“It is time to train British workers for the British jobs that will be available over the coming

few years and to make sure that people who are  inactive and unemployed are able to get the

new jobs on offer.” (當初政客的說辭)

What Brown did was the precise opposite.

He failed to impose Labour market controls on people from the new European Union member states, scattered around work permits for foreign nationals like  confetti and generally acted as if his claim to have “abolished the cycle of boom and bust” was indisputable fact.

But the new jobs Brown predicted have not materialised.

Instead we are seeing the fastest increase in unemployment for a generation while foreign workers continue to arrive
in their thousands.

Rather than British workers being trained to match the vacancies on offer we now have one in six British 18-year-olds categorised as “Neets” – not in education, employment or training. (尼特族.....)

Young people at a formative stage of their lives are drifting into drug dependency, crime and the sort of chaotic lifestyles that will mitigate against them ever having a successful working life.

The Government’s failure to reserve powers to shield our Labour market from foreign

workers in a recession is symptomatic of its elevation of European citizenship above British

citizenship.

The men demonstrating at lindsey and elsewhere clearly take a different view.

Until the recession began to bite about a year ago the  primary impact of the flood of plumbers, carpenters, electricians, production-line workers and agricultural labourers from Eastern Europe was to depress pay rates in these occupations.

British workers derided by metropolitan socialists as belonging to the “white van man” fraternity became increasingly disillusioned with Labour and fed up with being accused of racism for wishing to protect employment conditions.

But at least they were still in work.  

Labour’s guilty secret was that the bulk of those out of work were not actively looking for jobs.

Most were either on incapacity benefit or women following the Karen Matthews template of bringing children into the world for the sake of an endless stream of benefits.

What has happened over the past 12 months is that  thousands of self-reliant, hard-working people have lost jobs
through no fault of their own.

They are desperate for work and willing to accept positions below those they have lost.

This rapid change in labour market conditions is seen in the thousands of applications received for seasonal jobs at zoos and theme parks. (心有威"焉)

Displaced British workers have found to their horror that the jobs market, especially at the lower end, has been stitched up by Eastern Europeans.

For companies whose production lines are now entirely staffed by Poles it makes for an easy life to fill any vacancies with friends of their existing foreign workers.

In Boston, also in Lincolnshire, hundreds of jobs at a  vegetable packing plant were offered to Eastern Europeans last week without locals being invited to apply. as one unemployed local, Andy Pearson, explained: “In the past a lot of
people turned their noses up at these sorts of jobs.

"It is hard work and not very well paid. That’s why all the farmers started getting foreigners in. But times have changed. If they advertised these jobs locally they’d get some takers.”

But thanks to the arrogance of Gordon Brown, the man who claimed he had abolished the Trade cycle, our jobs market is  open to all-comers.

It is a biting irony that people protesting for the “right to work” – a slogan once used in a bid to

mobilise the working-class against  Margaret Thatcher – must now direct their rage against a

Labour regime. (這大概是我們年紀愈大,會恨政治的原因吧....)