Yasmin Alibhai Brown in odious attack on the poor and unemployed
A few weeks back the BBC’s Evan Davis presented The Day The Immigrants Left, a reality TV show in which unemployed Brits were trialled in jobs more typically done by immigrants. It is something of a commonplace amongst middle class liberals praise the work ethic of immigrants in relation to the more dissolute Brits (this is rarely true self-deprecation, when they talk of “the English” they mean the lower orders, not themselves). And this is just the line that the delightful Alibhai Brown has taken in articulating her response to the programme.
Regaling us with the “uselessness” of the young workers featured on the programme, she tells us “My English husband couldn’t bear to see what the working classes had become – his own class in fact.”
Her husband, Colin Brown, is in fact in a high position at the Financial Services Authority. Whatever background he was born into decades ago, he is not, now, working class. He was not, as she suggests, despairing at the state of his own. Rather he was engaged in the age old practice of indulgently wringing his hands at the decrepit moral state of his social inferiors.
“There are, no doubt, hardworking Brits across the land”, Yasmin tells us, “but too many who will not get out of bed for love or money or a job.” Well the question, really is what job?. I am sure that almost all of us would be happy to get out of bed to write a column for the Independent like Yasmin does. If, however, my main option was to pick asparagus for 8 hours a day for a meagre wage, then I could well imagine saying fuck this. That Yasmin should pontificate on such people for not approaching such a fate with sufficient enthusiasm makes me want to scream.
Yet it seems almost as if Yasmin has anticipated this argument, since she goes on to tell us that she, herself, as an immigrant, can hack the low life as well as the high life.
I have been helping out occasionally at the café in the crypt of Marylebone parish church run by a chef, David Rowles, with whom I am trying to set up a small cookery business. I wash up and serve customers at the table. When I get things wrong Rowles gets mad. That’s fine; I am learning. One customer recognised me and was shocked. How could someone like me be doing this? I’m an immigrant I explained. We never think we are too posh for any job.
Seriously, is she taking the piss or is she actually that naive? Rowles may indeed “get mad” but its not as though he’s going to sack her from a job she actually needs, As she herself says she is “helping out occassionally”, and doing so for a mate with whom she plans to start a business. Does she honestly believe that this demonstrates that she has a superior work ethic, and greater low-stooping-capacity, than those she pillories for being unwilling to do boring low paid mind numbing jobs all day everyday?
While Yasmin says she knows a number of lazy immigrants, she observes “most of us immigrants feel insecure and vulnerable and can never take anything for granted. The survival instinct makes us push the work ethic into our kids.”
She puts this like it is a good thing. People’s work ethic should not be shaped by vulnerability and insecurity, and it shouldn’t need to be. People should not need to be willing to do anything in return for anything. Yasmin demands gratitude for those immigrants who she says are willing to take any job. Instead we should demand an economy and a society in which people need not be quite so desperate before they can enjoy a place at the table.
Reader Comments
At the moment the jobcentreplus is running something called “work trials”, where you work for a month for free (whilst still receiving JSA) and at the end of the month the employer has the option to either take you on full time or get someone else to work for free. The competition for this fairly useless opportunity to do anything rather than just be unemployed (about 25 candidates for the one I applied for) is as good evidence as any that unwillingness to work is not an issue.
spot on Reuben.
Disappointed in Yasmin for this article. She is very good on so much else. Helping out at a cafe in her case is a form of tourism, not a grinding way of life.
It does depress me when I see intelligent caring people (and not just braying Tories) slamming the poor for responding to a decaying environment in appropriate ways. If you prick me, do I not bleed, etc. The Venables case has been a notable release for a lot of this hatred and fear of the class that has borne the brunt of a hoovering up of wealth and all the ladders being pulled up.
We know that in Victorian times there were plenty of privileged people who damned the poor for “fecklessness” etc. Thankfully, there were also some enlightened souls who saw there were ways to change this — both philanthropists from the upper classes and a movement within the class. Seems they were better off than we are now.
Also, the first wave of immigrants is usually so focussed on not falling into penury that they have no time to develop themselves. That’s the luxury they buy the next generation who often have contempt for their elders’ ignorance. If it was such a good thing to be constantly under the gun then the rich would be living that way all the time.
Sadly, I detect self-loathing in the article which has eclipsed Yasmin’s usual compassion and understanding.
Yasmin Alibhai Brown? Never heard of her. I normally just watch X Men cartoons if I want to feel uneasy and bored.
“I am sure that almost all of us would be happy to get out of bed to write a column for the Independent like Yasmin does.”
Nah. If I was writing a column for the Independent, I’d stay in bed to do it.
LOL!
good article
what yasmin lacks in intellectual rigour, she hopes to make up for with good intent. this time it failed.
Great article Reuben. I’m a journalist too, though I did some much more menial jobs when I was younger. They were boring, badly paid and psychologically destructive and, frankly, I don’t know how anyone manages to do that for years on end. I’m extremely lucky to have work which is creative and rewarding enough to make up for the bits that, at worst, get on your nerves. Or maybe Yasmin’s right and it’s not luck at all — perhaps I’m wonderfully hard-working enough to deserve a nice job because my grandparents were immigrants. How long do you think the effect lasts? I’ve got a friend who’s descended from the Normans. She’s got a good job, too.
I’m a ntive from scotland, admittidly of english and irish decent, this isn’t a comment about immigration, more about class, i find it interesting how class is seen south of the border, in scotland im considered middle class (i go to university, my parents are teachers and im not a drug addict) but when i cross the border im considered working class (i grew up in glasgow and speak using coloqual terminology and i have 9 brothers and sisters). i like to think, partly out of my own arrogance, that scotland defines class due to income rather than ones backround and thus logically.
with this logic, the working class that benifitted from the polocies of the conservative government in the 1980s (majoritivly in south east england including readers of “the sun” or maybe im just still bitter? i.e. “essex boy”) can be considered middle class because their personal wealth and lack of compasion towards the working class in the rest of the union.
I enjoy the thought that immigrants are especially welcomed in scotland although this is obviously far from the truth,
in truth the UK has a declining population that needs immigrants to continue functioning regardless of work ethic, i know its fun to blame the lazy cunts in the dole que but rely this is a problem that backdates itself to the last proper labour government
Dom Tom, I think class is about where you are now and, in baby Marx terms, what your relationship is to the means of production. Many of those former working class Tories can fall back into the working class, as I believe some of the more lowly bankers have done. I’ve been hearing stories in the media about poor chaps who used to be on 50 or 100K are now on the dole (what happened to their loot?!!). Weren’t the fascist movements filled with petit bourgeoisie who had fallen on hard times?
So govt health warning: your class status can go down as well as up.