I have had two interesting discussions this week on social media about Brexit and racism.
On one, after being insulted for my views on Brexit, I was told that all remoaners like me called those who decided to Vote Leave racist (an issue that was hinted at one the other, but by someone else). I would like to point out a few things on this. I have friends and colleagues who decided to vote leave, and I do not consider them racist for doing so. While I consider them to be misguided, that was because of the lies that they had been sold as well as well as the failure of people like myself to counter the Social Media campaign part funded by Russia.
However, I do stand by my view that almost all racists would have decided to Vote Leave in the EU referendum.
I do not think that being against too much immigration makes someone racist. The question arises as to what too much immigration is. In the past, the Rivers Of Blood speech occurred due to immigration from the Caribbean and Asia, in the 2010 general election a big issue was immigration from Eastern Europe, and in the EU referendum, the issues that seemed to swing it were fears of millions of refugees coming to the UK as well as a Muslim invasion from Turkey. It is all too easy to prey on such fears, and doing so has won votes and support. But when people have been shown the benefits of immigration, most of the time, they become less hostile. And in addition to this, many forget how our great nation is built on immigration, a big example of this being our Royal Family. For those who doubt this, just Google Phil the Greek. And there is the latest addition of course, from the USA, though it appears that some are less forgiving of her because of her skin colour.
A big fear is that immigrants are coming here to simultaneously steal our benefits and our jobs at the same time. Where I work, I have only come across one immigrant family that appeared to be milking the benefit system, almost all the others that I have seen are here to work.
Which brings me onto benefits (I will return to working afterwards). At a party this summer, the topic of Brexit and immigration came up. During this discussion, the person who said that British workers are lazy later said that immigrants come here as the benefits system here is the best in Europe. Ignoring how that in Germany and Sweden have a better system which was the reason that so many refugees from Syria opted to seek sanctuary there. And he has ignored how thanks to the improvements in the benefit system, homelessness has increased along with in work poverty.
But when it comes to working here, yes, some UK workers are lazy. Most are not where I work, we have two immigrants, everyone else being born in the UK and everyone works hard. Every nation has slackers, and they tend not to leave the nations that they are from. There are lazy Poles, lazy Brits, lazy Australians etc. Those who make a choice to come here to work want to work and in general have a good work ethic. We can get immigrants to leave, it will not be good. And many of those who are against immigration forget that.
Yes, we can force British born workers to work, but I would rather work with someone who wants to work, rather than someone who is forced to do so ‘or else.’