Before maternity leave I used to work as a youth worker. Get to know these people. The majority of them have been abused, should have been diagnosed with a learning disability, missed childhoods, they never stood a chance. There’s a difference between working class and underclass.
Mock them for not having any GCSEs, or teeth, or having to live on £70 a week benefits, for not understanding how voting works, that it’s not their foreign colleagues fault for competing for the same zero hour shift (imagine turning up to work at 5am and being told that there’s no work today) but actually the shareholders/government policy for allowing zero hour ‘contracts’, laugh at the guy who blames foreigners for stealing his job when he’s got a criminal record (obviously got learning disability too but who cares), how do you expect them to be able to form a debate or understand how our government works as it’s not taught in schools? All they know is that they regularly don’t have hot water and have never stayed in a hotel but ‘those’ men are put up in ‘fancy’ holiday expresses.
Once upon a time we used to throw the British underclass into work houses and it was seen as charity work. The underclass was seen subhuman, children separated from mothers to be trained to go into service, men and women worked to the bone 6 days a week for literal gruel.
I wonder how many people on here have turned up to work and there’s no shift/sent home penniless? Been on the housing list for years? Not ever stayed in a hotel? Not got a working shower? Zero opportunity for social mobility? Live on £30 a week? Not supported at school? Never told to brush their teeth as a child? The only book they were forced to read at school was Shakespeare and wondering why they don’t value the only resource they’ve got?
You’re expecting a members of our society living on crumbs to share those crumbs nicely. And when they say ‘why are we having to share our crumbs?’ Or ‘I’m not racist as I’ve got friends that are foreign but my housing block is half foreign and my sister has been waiting for eight years.. and number 7 only arrived here five years ago’.
But nobody has ever listened to them. The only way they know to get attention is bad attention. Keir telling them that they’re all going to get thrown in prison for ten years if they don’t go back to their grotty little lives whilst the rest of society continues to laugh at them. It’s not the way to de-escalate the situation. It’s like telling the naughty kid that he’s going to be thrown out of school unless he start behaving, but he doesn’t care as he can’t read the worksheets, feels everyone hates him and told it’s a waste of time. At least he’s got some attention being told he’s about be thrown out. They need someone to put their hand on their shoulder and feel listened to. At the moment they’ve only got Tommy and Nigel.