I have just read "Prgressive patriot" - I enjoyed it (I grew up in Dagenham too) and I agreed with most of what Billy said - it read very well.He's a nice chap.The last page contained again the bits I don't agree with. When people talk about the working class perceiving threats to their quality of life I feel quite angry.The threats are not perceived in my case, they are as lived.Mass immigration has meant that both houses either side of me (I live in a small terraced house) have too many occupants. The room next to the wall where my children sleep now has a whole family and obviously noise can be a problem.Buses which used to be full on a Saturday are now often full throughout the day everyday. It is difficult to get a seat and it is not unusual for me to be the only English person on there.Most of these people will want to pass their driving test i'm sure as soon as they can.It is much easier for me to buy Asian or Polish food than English, if I didn't make a big effort my children would know very little about British culture let alone English(I think the last thing Billy writes in his book is a thankyou to his Dad for instilling a sense of history in him)...I could go on and..a thing that really pissed me off is that I wrote a poem and entered it for a competition and I received an email asking if I was black or Asian - I thought no but I'm working class and just as in need of encouragement.What I want to say is that even putting aside all the culture clashing, parrallel communities issues' I would vote for the party that would limit immigration substantially (it won't be the BNP here - even all our Tory candidates were Asian).I really don't think I'm a nasty person , no more rascist than anyone else, but I think mass immigration has meant immigrants have no need to assimilate.. I find it incredibly patronising that the GLA spend money telling us our much Londoner's love their multicultural city.Surely if that is the case why would we need to be told?If Billy cares about wealth redistribution doesn't he realise immigration is good for the rich and business owners and immigrants but not for ordinary people who do suffer a drop in quality of life.A little honesty (or realisation) by good people may stop the rise of the far right.

I really agree with you about immigration helping the rich - or Capitalists anyway. What good does it do to the working class of the country? It only drives down wages and I'm sure that the divisions it causes benefit internationalist Capitalism too. Because you get a division in the working class so that there isn't the same sense of unity. Multiculturalism really is the weapon of the internationalist capitalist.

For a revolution to happen there had to be class divisions, but now we have racial divisions within that it totally stymies a socialist revolution. It ends up with working class whites feeling that the immigrants are an enemy - those whites that the BNP targets. So now we don't really have a possible class war because race has gone and totally ruined that.

http://www.redaction.org/race_and_class/race_attack.html
What do you think of this marxist critique of multiculturalism?

I think marxism is soooooooooo 1917

I hope that's a joke..... I think Marxist theory remains enormously relevant to understanding the world, even if some of its adherents have abandoned it and most have given up on the idea that revolution is inevitable.

I'm afraid I don't know much about Marxist ideology - I was just making the point that if people like Billy tell the white working class to choose hope not hate then I think they should admit that mass immigration has had a negative effect on poorer communities quality of life.I think people who care about equality in this country (and around the world - third world countries need their people to help them raise their standard of living) should support a strong limit on immigration.