48% of English would support Anti-immigration English Nationalist Party

[Manic Impressive]

Can someone explain to me why increasing the reserve labour pool at a time when there is record youth unemployment is a good thing for the working class?

Can someone answer this, I am having serious difficulty understanding your support for immigration. Yes I know it has massive benefits and culturally immigration is fantastic. But economically increasing the reserve labour pool is extremely damaging to the working class. I would support for a while 0 economic migration to the UK, of course still granting asylum but actually allowing them to earn a living and an amnesty on "illegal" immigrants who have to live in constant fear and inhumane conditions. Economic immigration is a by product of capitalism and a tool against the working class, that's my position.

I can feel a restriction coming my way

[Queercommie Girl]

Can someone answer this, I am having serious difficulty understanding your support for immigration. Yes I know it has massive benefits and culturally immigration is fantastic. But economically increasing the reserve labour pool is extremely damaging to the working class. I would support for a while 0 economic migration to the UK, of course still granting asylum but actually allowing them to earn a living and an amnesty on "illegal" immigrants who have to live in constant fear and inhumane conditions. Economic immigration is a by product of capitalism and a tool against the working class, that's my position.

I can feel a restriction coming my way

I'm an immigrant from China in the UK. Do you plan to drive me out of the British Isles?

[Delenda Carthago]

Something is funky with this gallop.You need to tell me there is 48% of people who would vote for that dick Nick Griffin if his party was not so...violent?So people want to get rid of the immigrants but not to get physical with them?Even for a shithole like England,that's too much.

[Dimentio]

Indo-Europeans generally had better rights for women (and better rights for queer people during their pre-Christian pagan phases) than many other ethno-linguistic groups, such as Altaic and Afro-Asiatic.

In fact, I hypothesise that one reason why the Germanics were less systematically brutal than the Huns in Europe was partly due to the status of women. The Germanic tribes had many female warriors, as ancient Roman historical sources attest, unlike the Huns under Attila. And when women are more involved in warfare, warfare tends to become less brutal towards women, children and unarmed civilians in general.

The Germanic tribes actually had a better status for women than the Latin-speaking Romans. The modern English word "family" comes from the Latin term familia, which literally means household slaves belonging to one man.

And the Roman conquest of Celtic Gaul, enslaving over 1 milliion people, was more brutal than the Germanic conquest of the same region centuries later.

Well, among white European ethnic groups perhaps, (the Anglos used to call the Irish the "niggers of Europe") but Celts still face less racism in Britain today than Blacks, Muslims and Asians.

Yes, but about since the nineteenth century, there have been little discrimination against "indigenous" ethnicities. Non-white immigration groups are a pretty recent phenomena. Now, they are at the bottom of the ladder.

[Manic Impressive]

I'm an immigrant from China in the UK. Do you plan to drive me out of the British Isles?

Nope not at all, I didn't say anything about driving anyone out. I said culturally it's been wonderful and it's one of the only things I like about this country.

But

more people = more competition for jobs = more unemployment = lower wages

fuck it since you gave me a shitty comment have one back.

Do you support lower wages and more unemployment for the poorest in society while capitalists get rich of off immigrants who are forced to work for lower wages? well do you?

[Sasha]

as i just wrote in an PM to you:

i'm afraid i do think we consider an restriction of the free movement of people reactionary and ground for restriction.
after all, its not the influx of economic imigrants that is damaging the workingclass, its capitalism. if the cheap/precarious workers dont come to north/west the jobs just move to the south/west. not to mention that since imigrants are suposed to work under western labor/union laws and for the same pay an "native" worker would get its not an case of "them taking our jobs" its "them doing jobs we dont want to do anymore thanks to our progessing educationlevel combined with worsening paylevel for bluecolar work"
if anything, imigrant workers doing "imigrant" work here are an big improvement over 2nd/3th world workers doing the work over there completly out of sight of labor/union laws.

i advice you to re'evalute your naive position or you may very well be restricted indeed

[Queercommie Girl]

fuck it since you gave me a shitty comment have one back.

How did I give you a "shitty" comment?

Do you support lower wages and more unemployment for the poorest in society while capitalists get rich of off immigrants who are forced to work for lower wages? well do you?

No, but the key is to organise the immigrant workers together with the native workers to struggle for better wages and working conditions.

The problem at the moment in the UK is that not enough immigrant workers are properly unionised, so they are disorganised and not fighting against the capitalist system. Immigrants from many countries who did not have a socialist tradition also tend to lack the consciousness to fight against the system.

I personally know some immigrant workers from Africa. They don't really seem to care about poor working conditions and low wages and bullying bosses, as long as they can put food on the table. This rather servile attitude ("as long as I can survive I don't mind being exploited") is a major obstacle to the effective unionisation of immigrant workers.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I doubt this poll is actually representative of the population, though. Polling doesn't really get the nuances of a complicated field like politics and personal opinion.

I know, from having worked in telephone polling, that questions can often be leading. I was doing a survey about waste dumping in Cumbria once, on behalf of the government, and it was quite clear that the survey would produce only one 'public opinion' outcome.

[Queercommie Girl]

Yes, but about since the nineteenth century, there have been little discrimination against "indigenous" ethnicities.

Some Irish posters here on RevLeft may disagree with you here!

Non-white immigration groups are a pretty recent phenomena. Now, they are at the bottom of the ladder.

Agreed. And at the moment Muslims are at the very bottom, worse than Indians or Chinese, or even Blacks.

[Manic Impressive]

How did I give you a "shitty" comment?

It felt like you were trying to make me out to be a racist. I want to make it completely clear that I have absolutely nothing against immigrants themselves and that the only people that do really profit from immigration are capitalists.

No, but the key is to organise the immigrant workers together with the native workers to struggle for better wages and working conditions.

unionising would be great and I agree with you. But increasing the labour pool drives wages even lower for those those people who are now part of the working class.

As I just said to Psycho my position is not unmoveable, I just don't understand how people can support something which harms the working class (recent immigrants included) and benefits capitalists.

but I do understand the rules of the board, guess I'm off to the gulag

I just hope people know that my position is purely economic and has nothing to do with nationalism or racism.

oh and just one more thing I'm hoping to be leaving the UK permanently this year so pretty soon I'll be an immigrant

[Vanguard1917]

Do you support lower wages and more unemployment for the poorest in society while capitalists get rich of off immigrants who are forced to work for lower wages? well do you?

Do you support lower wages for workers in poorer countries? Evidently you do, since you think they should only be allowed to seek work in their own countries, and feel that the British working class should have a privileged status in Britain's labour market. That's reactionary nationalist nonsense dressed up in left rhetoric.

------------

As for this 'finding': it shows yet another 'anti-fascist' organisation at pains to prove just how much the British working class is supposedly made up of disgusting impressionable racists. It says less about reality -- which is that Britain today is a less racist society than it has been for many years -- than about a degraded elite view of the masses: essentially a mindless and intrinsically backward mob easily manipulated by tabloids and clever politicians.

Furthermore, there is indeed a lot of anti-immigration sentiment in Britain, but what you'll find is that it is supported by prejudices popularised not by tiny groups on the extreme right, but by mainstream politics, particularly of the left-liberal variety connected to environmentalism. Anti-immigration politics is less and less justified along traditional racist lines, and more and more along the lines of 'overpopulation', 'finite resources', 'carrying capacity', etc. The eco-liberals created the language through which immigration today can be respectably attacked.

[Manic Impressive]

Do you support lower wages for workers in poorer countries? Evidently you do, since you think they should only be allowed to seek work in their own countries, and feel that the British working class should have a privileged status in Britain's labour market. That's reactionary nationalist nonsense dressed up in left rhetoric.

No of course not but obviously we can't have it both ways at the present time. I tell you what I do support though I support 0% unemployment, labour movements across the world, better living standards for everyone, better working conditions for everyone and the emancipation of working people across the world. What I don't support is members of the working class being used as a weapon against other members of the working class for the profit of a privileged few. Oh yeah and you forget to mention what I said about immigrants who are already here but deemed by the state as being illegal making them a hyper exploited labour group unable to find legal work and without access to any health care.

God you're right I'm such a fucking Nazi, I guess that makes you an anti working class bourgeois student hipster who is completely out of touch with people who are living in poverty in Western nations.

[synthesis]

What I don't support is members of the working class being used as a weapon against other members of the working class for the profit of a privileged few.

As psycho noted, if there is no immigration, there will be "outsourcing" in its place. Capital will seek the lowest possible price for labor regardless of the nationality of the worker. I think that economic nationalism, even with working class interests in mind, can't really be seen as any less reactionary than any other form of nationalism.

I genuinely believe that in the modern day, full support for immigration is precisely in the spirit of Marx's implications regarding the revolutionary value of reformist struggles.

[Tim Finnegan]

I often wonder why the UK is so susceptible to working class divisions based on race. Class consciousness today and historically has always been higher than in a country like the United States of America...the neighborhoods are economically segregated on a far more visible scale, and the design of labor vs professional skill/capital ownership is much more accented.

Partly it's because Anglo-Britons have long been used to ruling over what they often see as a small private empire in the British Isles, so the idea of the superiority of a particular culture and ethnicity, i.e. Protestant English, is very deeply engrained in the culture. There are a still a lot of Britons who see the Irish War of Independence as an act of Fenian hubris, which rather sets the tone for their treatment of those ethnicities not even native to the archipelago.

[Manic Impressive]

As psycho noted, if there is no immigration, there will be "outsourcing" in its place. Capital will seek the lowest possible price for labor regardless of the nationality of the worker. I think that economic nationalism, even with working class interests in mind, can't really be seen as any less reactionary than any other form of nationalism.

I genuinely believe that in the modern day, full support for immigration is precisely in the spirit of Marx's implications regarding the revolutionary value of reformist struggles.

Thanks for not attacking me and actually I think that's the only good point that's been raised so far. All I can say to that really is that it's happening anyway so I don't see it as a major issue, It's part of globalization.

As to charges of nationalism against me I don't even have a British passport and I've been seriously looking into the implications of officially renouncing it. I'm not really the type of person who paints the george cross on his face and yells INGGERRLAND

[progressive_lefty]

I think this does show that immigration has been poorly organised, mostly in the name of the free market. In Australia, it was the centre-right leadership of John Howard that made it easier for legal immigrants to get permanent residency and citizenship. And now a lot of the centre-right in Australia are trying to move against multiculturalism.