DON’T LET CRUNCH TURN US RACIST

SCOTTISH Secretary Jim Murphy will today warn against “credit crunch racism” in Scotland, in the face of rising unemployment.

In his closing speech to the Labour conference in Dundee, he will say the recession has not been caused by “Polish plumbers” but by bankers in Scotland and elsewhere.

His comments follow protests last month at the influx of foreign workers, with thousands walking out at sites including the Grangemouth oil refinery.

Mr Murphy will say: “This is the first recession in a genuinely global labour market. European workers, including Britons, have freedom of movement and the UN estimates 176 million people are outside their country of birth.

“All of this creates additional pressure points that were not so prominent in previous recessions. The way through this is fair immigration rules, strong border controls and a tolerance towards those whom we welcomed.

“This crisis wasn’t caused by Polish plumbers or Bangladeshi shop workers. It was precipitated by international bankers some of whom are very close to home.”

His warning came as Liberal Democrat economic affairs spokesman Vince Cable warned that unemployment in the UK could reach four million this year.

He is also due to make a “patriotic case for the Union” and a bid to reclaim the Saltire from the SNP. “No political party has a monopoly on patriotism,” he will say.

“The Saltire is our flag as much as anybody else’s.”

Meanwhile Labour’s Holyrood leader Iain Gray launched a scathing attack on Alex Salmond, describing the First Minister as “impossibly smug”.

He also repeated his stunt of ripping up the SNP manifesto, which he first performed at Holyrood last month, and declared that Scottish Labour were “back”, ready for an election.

He said: “Alex Salmond likes to take the credit but he never shoulders blame. Alex Salmond is always in the picture but he’s never in the frame.”

And he claimed that the SNP had tried to steal Barack Obama’s key election message.

“The [television news] switched to a windswept roundabout on the deserted edge of Glenrothes.

“To Alex Salmond and some other guy holding up a small poster with ‘yes we can’ hurriedly scrawled in marker pen across the bottom.

“Impossibly smug, impossibly naff, just frankly impossible. Not just stealing Obama’s slogan, but claiming he had invented it.”

However, a spokesman for Mr Salmond described the Scottish Labour leader’s address as “unremittingly negative” and “entirely focused on the SNP”.

Elsewhere, two of London Labour’s rising stars yesterday pleaded with the party not succumb to infighting as it wrestles with economic “turmoil”.

Amid dire poll ratings and signs that senior figures are already jockeying to succeed Gordon Brown, Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell delivered a call for unity. continues here

“Don’t let the crunch turn us racist”, perish the thought, except it’s a lie or at the very least a twisting of facts, the argument against “Polish plumbers” has nothing at all to do with race, how can it, it’s all to do with economics and culture, whereas the argument against, “Bangladeshi shop workers”, does indeed have racial and indeed cultural implications. There has been and is a move, to link white economic immigration with race issues, an endeavour I believe to take the heat away from the real issues, “Polish plumbers” have a better chance, (in small numbers) of integrating, whereas “Bangladeshi shop workers” do not, this is quite simply because, “Polish plumbers” are genetically similar whereas “Bangladeshi shop workers” cannot be considered so.

White immigration threatens us economically, whereas non-white immigration threatens us both economically and genetically, culture not withstanding, to try to link Eastern Europeans to the race-issue, is duplicity of a most unpleasant kind and the problem must be tackled separately within rightist circles. Their big worry, their nightmare, is that their house of cards will fall down, that in this economic crisis questions will be asked and the peoples patience tested, to that end shackling economic immigration to race is a bluff, a deceit, one that I hope will go unheeded. 14

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