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Working class turns on Labour over immigration and housing
The official at the housing office was typically blunt. His third customer of the day, a blonde with a northern accent, the pinched face of poverty and a baby in a buggy, looked crestfallen when she heard the news. 'You'll have to wait between one and ten years for a flat from us,' he said, blithely, from behind his desk. 'There are 18,000 people on the waiting list and, as of today, only 30 homes to go round.'

No wonder that when the young woman left, pushing the buggy out of the door into the sleeting rain of the shopping precinct in Salford, Greater Manchester, she looked near to tears. In her haste, she almost collided with Jason Hedgecock, a 20-year-old chef, who has also been queuing at the city's Home Search office.

Support for the BNP is rising as disillusioned working-class voters turn against Labour
'My family come from Salford, and I was born here,' he says flatly. 'I have been waiting three years for a home, ever since I left school. I've put my name down for one on the eighth floor over there,' he points to an ugly blue and white tower block, called Fitzwarren Court, across the busy road.

Jason is desperate to move out of the home he shares with his parents, John and Eileen, where he has to sleep on the sofa. Also living there are his two brothers, Scott, 24, and Adam, 19, as well as Adam's pregnant girlfriend, 20-year-old Jade - none of whom has anywhere else to go.

But the chances of a generation of young people such as Jason and the disappointed blonde ever getting a council home in Salford are next to zero. They are living in one of many places in England where a dire shortage of state housing has become the most controversial political issue of our time.

The statistics are stark. One in 12 council homes in England are now lived in by migrants, while the list of people waiting for social housing has doubled during Labour's time in power to 1.7million.

Last week, a government report from the Whitehall department of Communities Minister Hazel Blears warned that the crisis has resulted in a surge of popularity for extremist groups, including the British National Party.

Communities Secretary Hazel Blears has cautioned her own party not to ignore the concerns of the white working class
After interviewing 43 British families in Birmingham, Milton Keynes, Liverpool's Runcorn and Thetford in Norfolk, the report concluded that the white working class think they have been 'betrayed' and 'abandoned' by mainstream politicians who make them 'come second' to immigrants on the housing ladder.

The report provoked an instant response from a seemingly repentant Ms Blears herself. She admitted that white working-class people 'sometimes just don't feel anyone is listening or speaking up for them', adding that they should be allowed to voice their worries 'without fear of being branded racist'.

In the furore that followed, Frank Field, Labour MP for Liverpool's Birkenhead and joint chairman of the Cross-Party Group on Balanced Migration, agreed that the Government was riding roughshod over the working class at its peril. He predicted that Labour policies on housing would turn local people to Far Right parties in the next general election, echoing a dire warning he gave last year. 'Slowly, but determinedly, the white English working class - and I guess, some black Britons, too - are voting against unlimited immigration by embracing the BNP,' he said back then.
Posted by: Fred 2009-01-11
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=259559