I still walk before the evil eye of the media – even though it is often an uncomfortable experience. People who yearn for the glamour of media attention ought to experience the reality of it. This morning I was being confronted on a radio programme with the thorny issue of immigration. A UK national newspaper ran a story last Sunday about Lithuanians taking over a small town in the east of England.
The story was not new, another national newspaper ran a similar story about the same town in 2008. This time the BBC had interviewed several local people who said that “of course, I am not prejudiced” and then uttered the usual mix of xenophobic twaddle. I used to come across the same attitudes in the 1980s, but then the spurned group were women. There is no evidence at all that Lithuanians, Poles or Portuguese workers are taking jobs away from local workers. The unemployment rate in the area concerned is close to the national average and “foreigners” add at least half a billion pounds (600m euros) each year to the local economy.
Of course most English people are descendants of foreigners who came to the country and slaughtered the celtic population before stealing their land. All the poor Lithuanian workers do is come to carry out often back-breaking work for modest wages in order to support their families back in their native land. Lost is the traditional sense of hospitality that the English shared with so many other peoples across the world. Only in cities like London where half the population were not even born in the UK does xenophobia fail to flourish. Most people love their country – and have good reason to do so – but all I see is narrowness and a thinly veiled nastiness, and I am ashamed.