Blame
by Sara Forrest, Commission Member
One of my favourite bible passages is about how Jesus intervened in the case of a woman who had been caught in adultery. According to Jewish law her punishment was to be stoned. The male Scribes and Pharisees wanted Jesus, who had been preaching about love and forgiveness, to confirm his support for the Law. However Jesus said ‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ And bent down and gave each of them an example of their own sinfulness. No stone was thrown. The woman went away with the message that she should sin no more.
When we blame someone else it often means that we are not considering our own role in whatever has happened. Migration has always been feature of human existence. Yet across the world migrants are being blamed for problems within the societies they now live in. The language of blame is spreading throughout politics. Economic woes within the UK are down to poor growth and the off-shoring of many jobs that used to be the providers of growth.
I grew up in Warrington and there were several large manufacturing works who provided most of the local employment; the wire works (hence the rugby league team name of the Wires, now the Wolves), cotton mills and clothing manufacturers, the box works, tanneries, gas cooker manufacturers, train making, Persil manufacture, brewers and the distillery. Only gas cooker manufacture is still a big employer. The warehousing, call centres and small businesses will never replace their contribution to the UK economy. That work is now done in other countries.
Recent migrants are not responsible for that change. Business managers will move their investment to areas where production is cheaper meaning their return on investment (profit) is greater. That’s capitalism. In the short term we had more choice when we spent our money and everything looked rosy except for those who never found another well paid job and who lost hope. Especially when their children found good jobs hard to come by.
Unfortunately some politicians have blamed recent migrants for our current economic woes and many of those who feel forgotten or unacknowledged by the ‘’Establishment’ like that message because it sounds like such a simple solution if we send them home. I feel that this misinformation threatens our democracy.
We need to own up to both the impact of decades of underinvestment in growing manufacturing and exportable services to provide well paid jobs throughout the country and acknowledge the impact of years of ‘austerity’ on Public Services that allow so many people to ‘fall through the gaps’ in services which have been reduced by the impact of inflation.
For example, this morning I went to see a Council tenant who had a kitchen fire 4 months ago. Smoke damaged all the furnishings. Temporary accommodation was provided for that night but the expectation was that they would move back in the next day after Council workers had disposed of the furnishings and washed the walls and ceilings. They left the burnt out kitchen appliances and removed a fuse so the kitchen plugs wouldn’t work. The Council will start work on her replacement kitchen on Monday. It has taken the intervention of her Town Councillor to get these repairs started.
Round the corner, a family were re-housed and given a garden that their children, one of whom was disabled, could play in. The Council promised to replace the fencing so that it was safe for the children. Nothing was done. The parents’ complaints weren’t actioned and they appealed to the Ombudsman who found in their favour. By that time they had had a whole summer where they couldn’t let the children into the garden without supervision.
I find it easy to understand why people with similar life experiences and an ‘uncaring’ State (despite the hard work and dedication of many public servants who often bear the brunt of such dissatisfaction) listen to messages of blame and may vote for those who appear to offer quick solutions.
I hope that Alan Millburn’s second report and recommendations for supporting the young people not in education, employment or training who have often grown up in households in poverty will help the Government to address the lack of good jobs so that school leavers in Warrington, and similar places, will aspire to move into well paid jobs as they could have done 50 years ago.
His first report was clear that our economy has been struggling for growth for decades and that it is time that we looked at new ways of engaging with the way we work together to give children from poor households decent job prospects that enable them to break the cycle of poverty. This is too important to let party politics stop the changes that are needed.
I hope that the Government and Mayors will pay more attention to rates of complaints and of successful appeals as a way of measuring how the public sector is performing. I am sure that such a change would help us to have more informed dialogue about what the people’s priorities are and where services need to change. Telling us how much more they are spending doesn’t give any indication of effectiveness!
And blaming migrants doesn’t help us to reduce poverty and become a fairer society.
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