To actually be worried about UKIP/Britain First?

[Sahkoora]

I'm so surprised to see so many "friends" posting anti-Muslim Facebook posts, mostly things from Britain First. I have a firm deletion policy on this, but it's getting to the stage where it's family members and people I would consider close friends.

Last night DSis and BIL came over and conversation wended around to the fact they were both planning to vote UKIP. To be fair, DSis is shockingly ignorant, has never read a newspaper in her life and seriously couldn't name a single person in the government beyond David Cameron.

Their argument is that they used to live in Barking and it's "spot the white man", and the Muslims are rude and stare at you all the time. Apparently if we'd lived there, we'd understand. I am shocked by this!

On the news I see Nigel Farage interviewed as if he's a serious contender with a chance of getting some real power. Is this so?

Do lots of people really feel this way, and will it likely make a real difference in future elections? I am a bit terrified to think that people I love really feel this way about other human beings, and are attributing it to race and religion.

UKIP will split the Conservative vote. So a vote for UKIP is a vote for a Labour government. Have I got that right? I know plenty of UKIP voters but don't wish to get into political debates.

UKIP is the respectable face of the racist right. I don't this can be stated too often.

Well I'd rather live in a society that my child didn't have to fight for 2 minutes of a teachers time because half the class do not speak English because it's not spoken at home or encouraged. Or that health services were not so stretched that it's a 3 week wait for a GP app. The courses are over population & under investment

*causes

People are not "illegals" (and the origin of using that term for people is rooted in racism and anti-Semitism). We don't say people who murder are illegals, we don't say people who steal are illegals, we don't say that people who speed are illegals. We don't say illegal drivers even though being an uninsured driver is illegal. No person is illegal, being an undocumented migrant or a migrant breaking their visa conditions is illegal.

Undocumented migrants can often become documented migrants - and most undocumented immigrants enter this county documented. The vast majority of undocumented immigrants are those whose visas have run out (and with the current system, many of those are waiting for the paperwork and increasingly high payments to be dealt with by border control). And border control is often interlinked with racism, the two are not mutually exclusive territories just like school catchment areas can be (the circles for catchment areas are ridiculously easy to spot this).

Maybe Britain should crackdown on their citizens that end up undocumented in other countries, I've had a few tell me there is no I could stay because they got kicked out of another country for being undocumented.

Arabella - UKIP will probably split both Conservation vote and Labour vote. There is a good change of a new coalition government with UKIP as the coalition partner. I'd guess they'd be more comfortable in bed with the Conservatives. It's difficult to predict though. European election (where UKIP did so well last time) are often used to make protest votes in a way that I'd hope a general election won't.

My predominantly (98%) white corner of NE England isn't free from crime and anti-social behaviour, either. High crime is a symptom of poverty and disaffection, not a matter of race.

rainbowfeet - the state schools here with a high numbers of pupils with English as an additional language are doing better than the ones that don't. Your fears are not matching the life many are leading. Might consider how baseless they are?

And immigration control has a long history of racism, openly discussing that history and how controls can be put in place to prevent such things is part of the solution. But as people refuse to admit that borders controls can be racist (when anyone who has gone through border controls knows who is going to 'randomly' get extra attention, let alone the official issues that are inter tangled with it) it can never be really fixed.

I agree, OP. I actually posted something on Facebook about who Britain First truly are - a splinter group of the BNP - after seeing a few (not many) shares by family and friends of their stuff. Funnily enough it seems to have worked.

UKIP voters = just plain ignorant.

rainbowfeet Your concerns about the amount of attention your child gets from her daughter and how long you have to wait to see a doctor are legitimate. The say that these problems arise because of recent immigrants using up all the resources is just ridiculous and frankly racist.

Great post OTheHugeManatee - I think you have it spot on.

OP, I think you're right to be concerned about UKIP. I loathe them with a passion, and some of their 'policies' (if you can call them this, as they constantly seem to change) are frankly terrifying. Once you look behind their ideas about immigration and Europe (which, as distasteful as I might find them, are attractive to many), you see what they are truly about, and it isn't pleasant.

However, part of me can see where UKIP's current momentum is coming from. I live in an area where support for UKIP is growing, principally among working class white voters. Labour seems to have focused its energies on the immigrant and metropolitan middle-class vote, and this group - previously its core support - is feeling abandoned.

While I disagree with many of rainbowfeet's sentiments, she is right in saying that parts of London (notably those suburbs that are traditionally inhabited by working-class voters) have undergone a demographic shift that makes them almost unrecognisable to people who have lived there for years. Either they have been gentrified and 'hipsterfied' so that ordinary people can no longer afford to live there (Hackney/Peckham/Brixton) or they've experienced a large influx of immigrants who are either new to the country or who can't be housed in more central areas (Croydon/Enfield/Havering). This has left many white working-class voters feeling disenfranchised. It's difficult to deny that the presence of many new immigrants puts pressure on services - I've worked in schools that are on the front line of this, and it is a genuine and pressing issue. However, this isn't the immigrants' fault, but rather that of a string of governments that have failed to invest in key infrastructure such as school places, GP surgeries and public transport.

Whatever else he may be, Nigel Farage is shrewd. He is targeting a swathe of Essex and Kent that is core 'white flight' territory - many disgruntled working-class voters who left suburban London because they dislike how crowded or run down or multicultural their old areas had become. Some of my extended family, who now live in Essex, fall into this category, and are planning on voting for UKIP at the next election. As much as I disagree with the vast majority of their opinions, I can't refute the overriding sentiment - which is that no one else seems to speak for them.

I agree that dismissing UKIP as a bunch of middle-class golf club bores is naive and dangerous - as scary as the prospect is, with the current unpopularity of Labour and the Coalition, I think they have the potential to become a real electoral force.

teacher not daughter.

"UKIP will split the Conservative vote. So a vote for UKIP is a vote for a Labour government. Have I got that right? I know plenty of UKIP voters but don't wish to get into political debates."

Mostly.

Their targets:

South Thanet: Labour/Tory marginal, held by Tories since 2010, Farage will stand
North Thanet: safe Tory seat, Labour in second
Boston & Skegness:safe Tory seat, Labour in second
Great Grimsby: Labour/Tory Marginal, held by Austin Mitchell for 37 years, he's retiring
Eastleigh: Lib Dem/Tory marginal
Sittingbourne & Sheppey - won strongly by Tories in 2010, previously Labour
Forest of Dean: Labour to 2005, since then Tory, strong win in 2010
Aylesbury: Safe Tory seat, from Lib Dems
Great Yarmouth: Tory/Labour marginal
East Worthing & Shoreham - safe Tory seat, Lib Dems second
Thurrock: very marginal Tory seat, won in 2010 from Labour
Portsmouth South: Lib Dem/Tory marginal

So basically all of the seats they are targeting are ones the Conservatives need to win for a majority.

And about half of UKIP voters are ex-Tories

yougov.co.uk/news/2014/02/24/where-ukip-gets-its-support/

Their voters are not in fact working class Labour supporters, but rather working class Tories.

Also old people. They get most of the support from old people.

"I agree that dismissing UKIP as a bunch of middle-class golf club bores is naive and dangerous - as scary as the prospect is, with the current unpopularity of Labour and the Coalition, I think they have the potential to become a real electoral force."

I'm not dismissing them, I'm saying that despite their popular image as men of the people their leadership and policy makers are right wing, middle class, white men who are only really serving their own best interests. Yes, they are dangerous because too many of their supporters have been duped into thinking otherwise.

I agree Saskia. I think many UKIP votes do think it's amount bureaucracy and lack of accountability in the EU. It's not really that's a cover story so a much more sinister tale.

Oh, and meant to say that I also agree with OTheHugeManatee and others that a big part of the UKIP problem stems from classism.

For years, the white working class (and underclass) has been 'fair game'. The issues facing them (poverty, chronic unemployment, lack of educational aspiration) have been at best glossed over, and at worst used as ammunition against them - witness caricatures such as Vicky Pollard, books like Chav Towns and recent programmes such as Benefits Street. While, quite rightly, we've become very hot on tackling racism, sexism and homophobia, class has been largely ignored.

I'm probably in a slightly odd position, as (thanks to a great grammar school and ambitious parents), I'm personally a member of the professional middle classes, but my wider family and the area I grew up remain firmly working-class. Social mobility has largely stalled in this country, and many of those who are born into my background have no prospect of achieving what I have. I think, sadly, this sense of hopelessness feeds into UKIP, and immigrants are becoming the scapegoats. I too hate the facile and xenophobic arguments that are often employed to justify a vote for UKIP (I studied German and Spanish at university, so can hardly be called anti-European!) but to dismiss every UKIP voter as an ignorant racist is both patronising and overly simplistic. And it does not address the wider problem - UKIP has not sprung from a vacuum.

Sorry Saskia, that comment wasn't directly aimed at you - it's just that I do often hear people dismissing their support base as fusty old men in the Shires, when actually it is increasingly working-class voters they are appealing to. I agree with you that the whole 'we're on you level' thing is a façade - its leadership are just as establishment, if not more so, than the mainstream parties.

The pressure on resources, from increased population is a direct result of the dishonesty of successive governments in pretending they are "tough on immigration" whilst simultaneously shipping in loads of extra labour to keep wages down.

As we can see in the 21st century, bosses still don't want to pay a living wage. It's obscene that somebody can get a job that pays less than benefits would. That's not a fault of the benefits system. That's a fault of the bosses.

TempsPerdu Sorry - yes, I can see we're on the same page

Ukip is how tory used to be it is scary the support they have they are racist bigots who hate inclusive education basically waste money going to brussels but dont actually do anything nigel and his croonys are old boys who slap each others back laughing at what a jape it all is yet people are supporting them . BRITAIN FIRST are yobs connected to Edl I think and just as scary as ukip but not the same I have deleted folk from my facebook that share their posts

Oh and the fact nigel sups pints and smokes fags and is the everyman is fucking laughable yey he has support,

Just have to stick my two cents in RE areas of London being overrun by immigrants.

I have lived in:
Lewisham
Peckham
Hackney
Catford

And I'm about to move to Tottenham.

Some areas of some of these places are run down and you could certainly not skip down the street waving your iPhone, but to suggest they are being made that way by immigrants is unfounded IMO. I utterly love the fact I can buy food from all over the world, much of it I had never come across in my dowdy Norfolk childhood. I love that I can walk down the street and hear a mix of different languages and see different national costumes.
It is an education and IT IS A REFLECTION OF THE WORLD AS IT ACTUALLY IS!

If you don't like being a white minority, then move to another PLANET because that's the way this one is. Sorry.

I also work in schools and can say if the children of immigrants are ruining our education system, I've yet to see it. The school with the worst behaviour issues I've ever encountered? Westminster Boys School. Not even joking, they were rude little sh*ts.

So please don't feel motivated to speak on behalf of all white Londoners. We don't all agree with you.

How's that Ghoul... So if the UK had stricter border control policy & not so many illegal immigrants were able to get in & a similar policy to Australia for immigration then we wouldn't be so overcrowded & services stretched. There would be more public money to invest... We just can't keep letting migrants in just for the opportunity of educating themselves, earning money legitimately or via cash in hand or crime just to send home.

Despite what you might think I'm not stupid I do understand that the majority of migrants to this country come to work here & pay into the system they are taking from but however the ones that are all take take take are causing this country huge finally hardship & what worries me if it is allowed to continue then actual real racist groups with extreme views will carry on gaining supporters & votes.

Totally fine to say you would like to see say, smaller class sizes or efforts to recruit more GPs. Not fine to blame these political issues on recent immigrants. They are not the root of these problems. They are service users the same as you are.