Labour's big jobs giveaway betrays our working class

For years we were told by Labour ministers that the destruction of our borders was the route to prosperity. T

hose of us who warned that the uncontrolled migration would cause not only social dislocation but also economic catastrophe were condemned as blinkered xenophobes unwilling to embrace the exciting prospects of ultra-globalised Britain.

But now the disastrous fallacy of the Government’s approach becomes ever more clear as the economy sinks into depression and unemployment soars. Far from boosting growth, unfettered immigration has brought only misery to our country.

As well as adding an immense new burden to our taxes, infrastructure and public services, the vast influx of foreigners to our shores has grotesquely distorted the labour market, throwing millions of Britons on to the scrapheap.

Yesterday it was announced that the official jobless total has reached 1.92 million and is likely to increase to more than 3.5 million by 2010.

While tens of thousands of British people are being forced out of work every month, the migrants are still flocking here. The heavy import of foreign labour at a time of deepening crisis is more than dangerously foolish. It is a contemptible betrayal of the British public.

Two stories this week have exposed the hardship inflicted on British workers by unrestricted immigration. The first occurred at Staythorpe, Nottinghamshire, where the building of a new gas-fired power station was meant to create 850 jobs in the local construction industry.

But now it turns out that, despite the availability of a skilled workforce in the area, most of the jobs are going to Hungarians, Poles and Spaniards.

The second controversy arose on the Lincolnshire coast, where a giant floating hotel has just been moored at Grimsby to house hundreds of foreign labourers who are said to be replacing British employees at the giant Lindsey oil refinery, run by the French firm Total.

The trade unions have reacted with outrage to these moves. Derek Simpson, the firebrand leader of Unite, said of the Staythorpe decision: “It’s a disgrace that local workers who have years of experience are being locked out of the job.”

Simpson is absolutely right. At last his eyes have been opened to the destructive consequences of mass immigration. But it is a bit late for the unions to start bleating now. If they had been more robust in protecting their members’ interests rather than acting as propagandists for the destruction of our nationhood, we might not be in such a mess.

The scandals at Staythorpe and Grimsby are hardly unique. They are part of a pattern of disdain for the British working class, whose needs are crushed by globalisation.

It is telling that in the two years up to October 2008, supposedly the peak years of our economic boom, unemployment among British-born adults actually declined by almost 400,000. Yet, at the same time, the number of foreigners in work in Britain rose by 900,000. In total, more than 80 per cent of all new jobs in Britain now go to immigrants.

The continuing support by the Government for immigration makes a mockery of Gordon Brown’s notorious pledge to create “British jobs for British workers”.

Indeed, all his noisily-trumpeted employment schemes, such as the recent promise to create 100,000 jobs in green technologies and public works, are rendered absurd when the indigenous population is increasingly excluded from the labour market.

It is remarkable that the Labour Party, which was founded in the Edwardian age to represent the working class, should be indulging in this betrayal of the very people who form the backbone of Britain.

Great Labour figures of the past, such as postwar foreign secretary and former union boss Ernie Bevin, saw their job as protecting British workers, not subjecting them to exploitation and marginalisation.

Today, on the contrary, Labour practises open prejudice against the indigenous working class in its eagerness to enforce globalisation and diversity, what Labour’s deputy leader Harriet Harman has described as “a new social order”.

In fact, under Harman’s mis-named Equalities Bill, direct discrimination against white men is to be become legal, as firms will be allowed to reserve jobs for women and minority ethnic groups.

If we had a government that cared at all about the working class, we would be helping the British people instead of discriminating against them.

To achieve this, we should impose an immediate and absolute freeze on all immigration both from Europe and the wider world.

At a time of mass unemployment, it is absurd to be importing labour from overseas. Second, we should suspend the EU rule that all our jobs have to be open to anyone from the European Union.

After all, that is precisely what other major European countries did when the former communist regimes joined the EU in 2004. With joblessness rising inexorably here, such a step is entirely justified. If the EU doesn’t like it, then we can just suspend our membership. The interests of our nation must come before those of the Brussels bureaucracy.

But there is no chance of any of these measures being implemented by Labour. The spirit of treachery runs too deep.