British working/lower class only

[TinklySnail]

I’m personally not okay with rioting but understand why it’s happening.
What is the best way to fix this issue and do you think it is mass immigration that has caused it?

The closure of the pits and heavy industries had a massive impact on the tight communities tied to those industries. In a generation or two they were completely gone. This has left a vacuum in some northern towns that has been filled by drugs and disillusionment. Many people there have nothing to look forward to after school. What they need (and we all need) is a good education system, an established industry to support secure jobs, and the promise of a future. Successive governments have let them down at every turn. Historically they are not right wing communities - they’re proud, law-abiding people from the old Labour heartlands left with nothing to do but cast around looking for blame, fuelled by lies from millionaires and a right-wing media. It’s tragic all round and important to point out the troublemakers and those with abhorrent views are still in the minority.

^This!!!!

Id also add a general lack of 'belonging', with that gap filled by social media, and being part of a mob filling that very human need to belong to something.

Not racist?? Yes, they are!! Lacking education and opportunities is not an excuse.

Many people who come here work in minimum wage jobs that many born here turn their noses up at.

Nope. You don't get to pin this on the working class. Absolutely not. Our unions are strong on anti-racism. This has literally nothing to do with class but everything to do with cynical manipulation of the easily led and plain old racism. I know a number of people whose views on immigration I find abhorrent. They're from a variety of backgrounds, and they're definitely not deprived or 'forgotten about', irrespective of class. They just don't cope well with difference but will say all sorts to justify their racism and xenophobia. Grim.

THIS,

Yes, closures of factories/pits, nothing to replace the jobs, provision of benefits and an explosion in drug taking, now add in millions of extra people, who are taking all the council houses that were left after being sold to young asylum seekers who came here with nothing but are now doctors under right to buy. The reality is that governments wanted immigration to boost the economy and so that they can pay everyone less in some crazy Ponzi scheme. House of cards falling down now.

The cause of the rioting is shit stirring rich folks diverting attention from their looting of the country by telling us to blame those worse off than us- non white British and immigrants for the bankrupt failing state of the U.K.

👏 👏👏 well said. I think this is absolutely how people are feeling

Tbh, I’m guessing most of the people rioting are in fact Labour supporters. May be one or two Reform ones, but definitely no Tory supporters amongst them, so I really don’t think trying to disrupt Labour was in the forefront of their minds when they took to the streets.

I didn’t know Angela Rayner was an asylum seeker 🤪
Come on, the primary beneficiaries of right to buy were and are white British…

Do they turn their noses up? Freedom of movement saw a lot of British being paid less and less. The EU immigrants were happy to work for less. Is that the fault of the British people? Warehouse work in 2008 was a well paid position and by 2010 it was peanuts because companies could pay EU workers less.
The resentment has been building for years because people lost their standard of living. I do t blame the Polish as we know they are hard workers but I equally don’t blame British workers who have been short changed

I also think a general lack of law and order is to blame. So many of these rioters are the usual suspects. Young males can spend years vandalising, harassing, robbing and attacking before they face any consequences, and then the consequences are weak. The justice system is all threat and no follow-through. Working class people are often derided and dismissed as reactionary for wanting the government to be tough on crime but they are the ones who are most affected by it and least able to insulate themselves from it. They also don't buy into the idea that crime is purely caused by deprivation because they themselves are deprived and would never do it. These rioters have no fear of the police or any kind of justice.

@Livelovebehappy I honestly can't work out if you're being serious or sarcastic.

I was at the time, yes. People expected to get money for nothing and we're turning dien jobs that they thought were too hard, but then complained migrants cane to steal the jobs (that they turned down).
oOfc those benefits dont exist but some lazy people expect payouts because they think if you get rid of all foreigners all of a sudden they will be showered with money.
iOf you think racism had nothing to do with skin colour then....

I’d bet my house that the vast majority of the stupid bastards voted Leave, though.

How have British people been short changed?
Some jobs were always minimum wage. Always. No workhouse ever paid £20 per hour. There were vacancies. Eastern European, Indian, Nigerian etc workers came to fill them in. But some people think that if they hadn't, hotel's, factories would have to pay double the salary to British workers. No, the workplaces would have gone bust and that would be the end of it. But there would be no migrants to blame...

Well said Esma

This civil unrest has been coming for ages, I don’t know why people are surprised. If they are, it just goes to show how out of touch they are with what’s going on in the country, how it’s NIMBY and they comment on things that don’t affect them.

Unfortunately we are turning on each other. Others are right, that we’ve been gaslit. I utter detest this violence, but I do think the whole of our country needs to come together in protest and say enough.

Before we do anything, let’s start with the elephant in the room, the class system. I mean WTF, you are WC, you are MC, you are upper MC. What TF. We comment on the medieval practises of other countries and here we are with our own caste system. No more rich people or rich companies skimming off the cream of this country. No more lies. No more Eton/ Harrow Elite running our country, or people with their own ideological agenda.

We’ve had enough of being lied to, and being everyone else’s cash cow whilst our own kids go without and are kept down by the rich or the upper classes of this country.

This is about British people not skin colour.
Skin colour and religion is not the issue for the majority because there are many different races who are caught in the poverty trap.
The fact that you think that this is to do with skin colour shows you have no idea how hard it really is for people to pull themselves out of the poverty.

@EsmaCannonball

There's a feeling that public safety is secondary to economic interests...

I agree 100% with this.

The perception (and personal experience) that the police don't care/ won't respond to issues bearing directly on quality of life for ordinary citizens creates a massive level of despair and desperation in a society where persons and property are not safe, whether the perpetrators of crime are white British or non-white of all national origins.

Responsive policing that serves and protects the citizens would make everyone feel a lot safer. It's a basic task of government, and failure to accomplish it always leads to vigilantism and daylight thuggery.

You can shout this all day long, but it no longer works. No longer has an impact. Because once being called a racist would shut down peoples’ valid concerns about immigration, and mute people so they could no longer voice their worries. That has lead to the year on year deterioration of the UK. And now here we are.

OK people keep on using the label immigration but what are the actual facts that they are working off

Surley people are not just parroting what they read in the papers, tv or on the internet?

I’ve lived in grinding poverty, but I still believe that refugee families, living five to a mouldy room with no cooking facilities, whose children have malnutrition from lack of fresh food, who aren’t allowed to work and escape their misery and have no idea how much longer they’ll have to wait to have their asylum claims assessed have EVERY right to moan.

They don’t want a ‘free’ room. They want to rebuild their lives.

I'm working class as were my parents, their parents and no, i don't understand the protest. I'm doubtful they actually "work"

Were you in the workforce in 2008? Did you have a family member that saw their earning potential drop due to freedom of movement?

You are right that they don't know how to. They also don't think that many of the things offered to them are for them so they don't engage and they resent those who do. I have a friend who ran the local family centre until she was made redundant this spring. The local library was long gone so she arranged for the mother's group to visit the library in the next door more affluent area. No one came to the sessions. When she asked why they said that it wasn't for them, that they didn't go to that area. They stay where their mothers and grandmother's are. They have multiple children by men who treat them like dirt.I taught for many years in the local primary school. The children came from families with generations of illiteracy and no work. Once you start missing school because your home is chaotic then you have gaps in your understanding. A day or 2 here and there isn't the end of the world but years of poor attendance creates gaps that can never realistically be filled. If you can't read to a level of 8 years and 9 months you can't function in the way that rest of society can. Your options are under- belly jobs that will get you prison sentence. Once you've got that you are unlikely to ever get a job of any kind. You want more for your life but you have absolutely no chance of accessing any of it. You can't access college courses, you can't apply for jobs because you can't read. If you were working in a heavy industry you wouldn't have the energy to set fire to libraries after a 12 hour shift. Those industries are long gone.