Department of the Bleeding Obvious

Every now and again a Guardianista gets to tell the truth about the betrayal of the despised white working class.

A new book discusses (among other things) how the welfare state is kinder to a poor immigrant than to a native. How else do new arrivals live in Britain's most expensive city ?

Kate Gavron and Geoff Dench :

"There was also a more general dismay at the way that British society appears to be changing. The evolution of the welfare state had turned it from a mutual aid society writ large into a complex, centralised and bureaucratic system, run by middle-class do-gooders, "those big-hearted ones who've got their own big houses and make these rules", as one interviewee put it. The system, it was felt, gave generously to those who put nothing into the pot, while making ordinary working people who did contribute feel like recipients of charity when drawing their entitlements.

Interestingly, few respondents saw the immigrants themselves as being at fault. Few whites, for example, deny that Bangladeshi families endure greater real poverty than themselves. A number who strongly resented the present welfare system were nevertheless friendly with Bangladeshi neighbours. What they object to is the way this need is allowed to over-ride rights and claims arising out of an earlier, more directly exchange-based welfare state ethic. Respondents hostile to immigrants were no less condemning of white people who they considered to be living off the system.

For if what one gets out of the state is determined solely by need, rather than what one has put into it, then a little dignity has been taken out of citizenship. Dependency is encouraged, the principle of reciprocity has gone, and welfare has simply become a new form of charity."