BY HAJERA BLAGG


Like many port towns in the UK, Southampton has a rich history of immigration dating back more than 500 years.


Lucas Szlek is part of a more recent wave of immigrants. Arriving from Poland in 2000 at 16, he quickly integrated into the community. He attended City College, studied IT and eventually became a senior health care assistant. Now, he’s a Labour candidate standing for the local council elections.


“I’ve spent most of my adult life in the UK and became a British citizen. It’s something I’m very proud of,” he says.


But if UKIP is to be believed, Lucas would be considered an anomaly. According to UKIP, immigrants are a drain on the system. They steal jobs and snap up benefits. They don’t integrate into local communities and they don’t speak English.


Far from being a rarity, Lucas’ story is the norm. In reality immigrants are less likely to claim benefits than UK nationals, and most are in work. Just 0.1 per cent of foreign-born residents in the region where Lucas lives do not speak English.


And as for the claim that migrants steal jobs, they’re actually at the forefront of job creation in the UK. Indeed, companies founded by migrants have created over a million jobs.


Although we know UKIP stands on an anti-immigration, anti-EU platform, the rest of their policies aren’t widely publicised. And for good reason – UKIP’s popularity would plummet instantly if more people knew what the party is really all about.


Lucas argues that, although UKIP’s slick media image has all the trappings of working-class politics, the party is decidedly against working people.


It has vowed to end most of the employment rights we take for granted, such as maternity and redundancy pay.


Lucas was first inspired to join a trade union and later to participate in politics, after his wife was denied her entitled


maternity pay. The case went to an employment tribunal, and Lucas’ family won.


“I thought if union involvement and political action can help my wife, it can help other working people, too. “We must stand up against UKIP – they’re the biggest threat to all that working people hold dear.”


Elsewhere in Southampton, Derby Road in is a story of struggle, perseverance and triumph. Home to the port city’s red light district in the 1980s, over the past decade the community has worked tirelessly to clean up the street’s reputation. Now, it’s a bustling, vibrant place where you’d be proud to raise your family.


Sensationalism But all of that is poised to change, since producers of a TV ‘reality show’ Immigration Street, descended into the community – stoking the flames of division with the sort of sensationalism that UKIP traffics in.


Rashid Islam, a solicitor for a local food market on the street, said the community had been misled about the show.


“They never told us the name of the show until afterwards,” he explained. “Most of the people living here were actually born here, and many of their parents were too.


“The show will create a certain stigma about this area,” Rashid added. “It will make outsiders wary of coming here.


As we go to press the show has just aired. Rashid says that it’s already created division, with whispers that the EDL, a far-right group, has requested permission to protest against immigration on the street.


Unite community member Joe Dukes, (pictured) who has been heavily involved in a campaign to stop the show from being aired, argues there’s an intimate connection between the implicit agenda of Immigration Street and UKIP.


“Southampton was once a huge industrial centre. Dock work and manufacturing were massive,” says Joe. “But then in the 80s the area was transformed into a service-based economy, and most people weren’t given


27 uniteWORKS Spring 2015 the skills to cope with that transformation.”


“So you had people’s livelihoods taken away very suddenly. When you’ve lost everything, you look for something to hold onto, to help make sense of it all. And that’s what parties like UKIP offer – very simplistic answers to very complex problems.”


Joe and his friends are not alone in their fight. In Thurrock, Essex – another port town – Labour ‘s prospective candidate, Unite member Polly Billington, is at the forefront of fighting off the UKIP threat.


It shouldn’t be underestimated – Polly is up against UKIP prospective candidate Tim Aker MEP, the party’s former policy chief.


“Thurrock is a community that’s been rapidly transformed in the past few years,” she explains. “This


includes


casualisation of labour and the growth of low-skill, low-pay jobs.


“I know there are people in Thurrock who are concerned about immigration. That’s why it’s vital we discuss frankly and openly the truth about immigration and not the myths.


“This is not what UKIP has offered,” Polly adds. “It has no real answers. All it’s done is stir up anxiety about difference.”


She fears the world we’d inherit if UKIP became a real contender.


“Pulling out of the EU is not going to stop immigration,” she says. “If UKIP was in charge, the NHS as we know it would be completely dismantled.


“The ships I see outside my window might not be going anywhere. We’d have fewer jobs,” she says, explaining that an EU exit would be disastrous for the economy.


“Our relationship with the EU is far from perfect, but I really believe most people understand that we’re better together.


“UKIP operates under a philosophy that propagates the notion that to prop up some people you have to kick others down – usually the most vulnerable in society. This is not the society that any of us wants.”


• See page 30 the


Mark Thomas


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