Obscene narrative

The Tories and their Ukip protégés run on an empty platform of hatred against our country’s most oppressed—from migrants to the working poor to ethnic minorities and the disabled.

 
In a cynical bid to distract voters from the real culprits of economic crisis—themselves—the political and moneyed elite will stop at nothing to weave spurious narratives about their pet scapegoats.

 
One of the most common narratives—the migrant worker (usually eastern European) draining the public purse and stealing UK jobs—has been exposed as one big lie in a new study by University College London.

 
Far from being perennial benefits tourists, migrants, in fact, have contributed billions to the economy in the past decade, the study found.

 
European migrants made a net contribution to the economy that amounted to ÂŁ20bn from 2000 to 2011. Migrants from countries which made up the EU before 2004, including France, Germany, Italy and Spain, contributed ÂŁ15bn more in taxes than they received in welfare, while eastern European migrants again contributed more than their fair share by ÂŁ5bn.

 
In response to the study, Unite assistant general secretary Steve Turner said, “This report smashes the hate-fuelled lies being peddled by Ukip, the Tories and their friends in the media.

 
“Their lies are a desperate attempt to shore up their votes and shift the blame for a crisis – caused by the failed, ideological economics of austerity–on anyone but the cosy, out-of-touch political elite itself,” he added.

 
Turner compared the “obscene narrative” of migrants “taking our jobs, stealing our houses, living off welfare and swapping our communities” to the same lies peddled against ordinary working people who are struggling to make ends meet.

 
“Just as hateful language of the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor, the ‘shirker and the striver’ was exposed with the working poor struggling on low pay, zero hours contracts, little security and the destruction of much of the social solidarity offered by the welfare state and public services, so too does this report show migrants are not the problem,” Turner explained.

 
The “obscene narrative” Turner speaks of, however, was not dispelled in reports of the UCL study in the shameless right-wing press.

 
In an obvious attempt at distorting the study’s findings, the Telegraph, for example, ran with the headline, ‘Immigration from outside Europe cost £120bn.’ The paper cherry-picked one fact in the UCL study – that, since 1995, non-EU migrants used £120bn more in welfare than they contributed in taxes.

 
But the newspaper failed to mention that there was a likely reason for this cost – many of those counted in 1995 had already been in the country for some time and had been paying taxes. This cohort aged and simply required public services in line with what an ageing population requires. The authors note that the £120bn would likely have been nullified by contributions made by this cohort’s children.

 
The Daily Telegraph also failed to put the £120bn figure into its proper context. Over the same time period, the UK-born population made a negative contribution that was almost five times greater than migrants – £591bn. This fact was presented toward the end of the Telegraph article, only as an afterthought.

 
Turner hoped that the report would help dispel myths so that working people understand the true source of their eroded living standards and the solutions needed to tackle them.

 
“The reality is we need a million new social homes, not so-called ‘affordable’ ones,” Turner said. “We need proper funding for our NHS, schools and services, and direct investment in our communities and infrastructure providing decent, secure jobs on negotiated rates of pay to get workers off benefits and into jobs paying taxes.”

 
“It’s not rocket science,” Turner added. “In the six richest nation on our planet, don’t be fooled into thinking we can’t afford to do it – we can!”