The great, the good

and the gullible

help BBC to

rubbish Boston

You would probably be surprised to learn that the question being asked of tens of thousands of Lincolnshire residents last Friday morning was: “Are racial tensions in Boston about to reach breaking point?”
We were certainly surprised to hear the question being asked – repeatedly – on BBC Lincolnshire, with interviews in both the breakfast and mid morning programmes.
The peg for these two items - which also featured in all the morning news bulletins, and which occupied almost half an hour’s worth of airtime negative to Boston, was a meeting “earlier this month” which was linked by the BBC to the explosion at an illegal distillery on 13th July which killed five Lithuanians from Peterborough.
By all accounts, the meeting at the Home Office was a routine one involving organisations from all over the country – and held before the fatal explosion. Local representatives included East Lindsey, South Holland and the health service as well as Boston.
Yet like lambs to the slaughter, the great and the good went along with the question, and dragged the name of Boston still further through the mud.

Making it worse

To make matters worse, the breakfast programme presenter, Melvyn Prior, set the scene by reading out a relatively restrained but still aggressive comment from among the many posted on internet bulletin boards.
This was followed by a clutch of vox populi clips, which were about 80 per-cent anti migrant – including one demand to pass a law banning foreign language speakers from using anything other than English in the workplace, so that their colleagues would not feel “intimidated.” Try suggesting that boot goes on the other foot when the speaker next heads for a fortnight in Benidorm and see what reaction you get.
Step up to the microphone Councillor Mike Gilbert, the borough’s Communities Portfolio holder - and the man whose declared intention after the explosion was to make sure that everyone knew that Boston was no worse than anywhere else when it came to this sort of thing.

"Not ambassadors for Boston"

“It’s very disappointing the fact that some local people don’t recognise the tragedy associated with a loss of life surrounding the explosion," he lamented "It’s also disappointing that people harbour those very hard and hostile views. I mean, I don’t think that those individuals, whilst their views may be very deeply felt, are representative of the people of Boston in general. I mean, they’re not ambassadors for Boston on the whole, no more so than some of the individuals who come here with difficulties from Eastern Europe are representatives of their communities.”
Councillor Gilbert said they were working hard to bring English and migrant communities together.
He said the council had produced a “myth busting” leaflet and that the myths were mainly related to benefit entitlements.
“Unless someone’s actually been here for a significant period of time, has acquired a National Insurance number and has worked, they‘re not actually entitled to any benefit, and the commonly held view locally is that the migrant community comes to this town and immediately signs on and starts taking money our of the public purse – that’s absolutely not the case. You have to have worked and paid into the national purse before you can take anything out.”
Next to the microphone was Paul Elliott, chief executive of Just Lincolnshire - the county’s equality and human rights council.
Asked if racial tensions in Boston were reaching breaking point, he at least admitted that he didn’t know if breaking point was the right term:
“We are welcoming to tourists and so on and it would be so lovely if we were welcoming to everybody. But it’s not a new phenomenon in Boston. This has been going on literally for centuries.”
Really? We be that not many people know that.

It was "them and us" 200 years ago

But for the benefit of those who didn’t, Mr Elliott produced a cutting from the Boston Gazette dated 21st September 1811, which referred to the “seasonal migrants, the harvest workers whose spirit of laborious industry was commended as against the greedy Lincolnshire labourer who desires to make excessive wages to the necessity of the farmer to whom half a guinea a day at the height of the season will not satisfy and who was further reproved for looking on the Irish auxiliary with jealousy.”
Thanks for that, Mr Elliott. Painting Lincolnshire workers as shiftless and greedy and their migrant counterparts as virtuous and industrious enhances our local sense of equality immensely.
He went on to say: “The interesting thing is that in those days and until recently, migrant workers came into the county and then went. The difference we have at the moment is that people are coming and have settled and making their life here. The 20,000 or so people who were here in 2005-2005 may not be the same 20,000 people that are actually here now in Boston.”

"Not taking our jobs"

What would he say to people who claim that migrants are taking our jobs? “I would say they are not taking our jobs. There’s not a sign at the Jobcentre door saying 'no English.' I’m saying they’re doing the jobs that people locally in this area aren’t particularly interested in doing. We don’t want to be picking cabbages or onions or putting them into boxes in factories. And the people who are taking these jobs are actually highly qualified on the whole - they’re more qualified than they need to be. They are coming in with multi lingual skills and they are well educated. But they are here for economic reasons. The term migrant worker is the clue. They are here to work, not to scrounge. “
With so much time and words spent blackguarding local residents and workers, the reason for the meeting was almost lost – thanks largely in part by BBC Lincolnshire’s sensationalising of the subject and asking all the wrong questions.

The real message

The actual message was that the Home Office really doesn’t know how many migrants live in Boston – and if the true numbers were known, the borough would receive government funding based on the real population figure.
In a sensible point that addressed the real issues, Andy Fisher, Boston Borough Council's head of housing, property and communities, said that the results of the 2011 census could be crucial to gain funding to deal with the issues raised by immigration.
“If we could have one answer, it would be a statistically robust figure for the number of people that live in our local community. At the end of the day for the public sector, the number of people you’re delivering services to is critical. To know that number and to actually have that fed into appropriate funding formulas means that you’re resourced at a fair and equitable basis - and that was my clear message.”
But it sounds as though we shouldn’t hold our breath.
Rev Alan Robson, the Agricultural Chaplain for Lincolnshire, said he could see why tensions still existed.

Nothing's changed

“The issue about numbers has not changed. Five years ago I was at the Home Office with Jim Knight (then Parliamentary under Secretary for Rural Affairs) with the exact same questions. We need the figures, we need the proper funding and resourcing. So I can understand the frustration and the anger and all of that - and local residents saying ‘well, what’s moved on?’”
There are a few loose ends to be tied up from the points raised by Councillor Gilbert.
Yes, there is a “myth busting” leaflet available on the borough council website – but appears to have been the creation of South Kesteven District Council in January 2008. An update is well overdue, we think.
And whilst not wishing to contradict Councillor Gilbert, we would suggest that his information on benefits is now out of date.
According to the Migrants Rights Network, the worker registration scheme affecting A8 nationals – people from the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia – ended on 1st May.
What this means, according to MRN is: “Any A8 national will be able to access income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit by signing on as a jobseeker at Jobcentre Plus and meeting the requirements imposed on British Citizen jobseekers. Any A8 worker in work will be able to access in-work benefits regardless of whether he or she has registered with the WRS. Many A8 workers who are out of work who could not access benefits in the past because they had not registered or had not completed enough time in registered work will be able to access benefits.”

Figures say differently

And again, his statement that: You have to have worked and paid into the national purse before you can take anything out” is not borne out by the figures.
NI registrations in Boston for the past three years were: 2007/08 – 2,160; 2008/09 – 2,140; and 2009/10 - 2,170 are the far and away the highest in Lincolnshire. The area has definitely not seen more than 6,000 new jobs created in the last three years - but someone has been allocated these numbers.
And whilst Councillor Gilbert is critical of some local people who don’t recognise the tragedy associated with a loss of life in the explosion – there is also the point raised by many others.
That is that the explosion resulted from criminal actions carried out by people who rented an industrial unit in another county from the one in which they lived – and that had the explosion not been contained,  the consequences for local industries and residents could have been far worse.  As it is, many local firms lost thousands of pounds of business  after being forcibly shut down for ten days - and who has offered them any sympathy?
There is also the fact that the illicit vodka being manufactured contained ingredients that could have blinded or even killed anyone who drank it.
Even tragedy is sometimes a two-way street.


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