I doubt I would have had your courage to speak up. I would agree with your point of view, though I’m not great at having the facts close to hand. My response would probably to have noted their arguments, go home, look up the facts, think about blogging on it, but never getting around to it.

When I do try to speak up, it tends to be with those I know. My line manager tried to convince me the other day that all Polish immigrants are committing benefit fraud and that that’s where all her tax money goes. I was able to point out that benefit fraud is just 0.7% of the total social security cost, but she just flatly refused to believe me. I probably ought to add, she is also Polish.

I’m sorry you got verbally abused for your efforts. You did absolutely the right thing. The best thing. ‘Bystander intervention’ is extremely difficult, for many and varied reasons. It doesn’t matter in the slightest that you didn’t convince the two men. What you did accomplish was demonstrate to everyone within earshot that some people challenge the immigrants-are-parasites narrative – either affirming or challenging THEIR own beliefs. Someone has to speak up and speak out. And as the ones who’d agree with you sit/stand there on the train, thanking their lucky stars that someone else spoke out and saved them from having to do so, surely at least one of them will recall this incident the next time when there’s no Dave around and they wonder: Should I say something? And that’s huge!
Your interjection maybe also helped an immigrant within earshot have a significantly less sh&tty day.
Thank you for standing up for FACT and truth.
And, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for standing up for immigrants. Especially in the UK in these recent years…

The view being peddled at the moment in so much of the media is damaging for numerous reasons. Firstly, as you point out, it simply isn’t true. Then there’s the fact of it frequently targeting the already vulnerable. Silencing the voiceless and amplifying the loud. It is also part of a narrative that relies on sowing the seeds of mistrust, division and selfishness.

With so much of this going on, I keep murmuring Philippians 4:8 to myself like a mantra just to stay sane. It sounds like you actually acted it out.

And if you didn’t affect the views of those you were talking too, who knows who else overheard snippets of truth, and caught a glimpse of a different way of looking at things to that presented by the media?

Can’t fault you.

Well done Dave. You absolutely did the right thing!

These lies spread and ultimately gain influence because too few people are prepared to stand up and challenge them. For these two men on the train it may have just been a mouthy conversation, but there are serious injustices occurring right under our noses in the cause of this kind of false ideology.

“All that it takes for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing.”

Hi, well done for standing up for your principles and trying to get them to see things from a different point of view. However, without wanting to turn this into a major political debate which I’m sure is not your intention, there is an argument against the mass immigration we’re experiencing & it’s about people coming here to work rather than claim benefits. Let me give an example – the top jobs in the nhs, BBC, other corporations have huge salaries, often maligned by the taxpayers alliance etc. The argument given for offering such salaries is that they want to attract & employ only the best possible candidates for the job. On the flip side look at the minimum wage jobs that become available – 50, 100+ people going for 1 or 2 jobs. This keeps minimum wage down because demand for jobs is higher than job availability. If there were less people going for these jobs then businesses would have to increase wages to entice people to their company, thus giving people a higher standard of living.

@Aaron

Ok, in the spirit of Dave’s blog let’s rationally analyse that point of view.

There are two elements of this I’d like to discuss; firstly the issue of whether or not immigrants increase competition for jobs, and secondly the idea of whether or not immigrants drive down minimum wage.

1. Do immigrants increase competition for jobs?

It is easy to presume that this is a simple question. Large numbers of people come from outside of the UK looking for work, so surely this increases the number of applicants per job?

It would if we were to presume that the total number of jobs in the UK were fundamentally limited, in which case we could point in alarm at any cause of population growth. The biggest driver of population growth in the UK remains births (not immigration). Net population growth due to births vs deaths was 254,400 in 2012, compared to net migration which was 165,500. Of course, no-one is terrified of this ravenous mass of children out to steal our jobs! Why? Because population growth leads to an increase in consumption, which in turn leads to growth in the jobs market.

The same reasoning can be applied to immigration. Immigrants coming to the UK do take jobs, but they are also increasing the number of UK consumers which means they will drive up demand for everyday goods and ultimately help to increase the size of the job market.

This remains true even for immigrants who are sending money out of the UK to support families elsewhere. Although it initially looks like that is money leaving our economy, actually because the UK has its own currency that money must always eventually come back (you can’t spend sterling in many places outside of the UK), ultimately helping to drive up the UK’s export market and thus also helping to promote job growth.

It is hard to provide statistical evidence for this as the nature of this relationship is inherently indirect, but you could look for instance at the historical employment rate in comparison to population growth for a start. If you do this you’ll see that over the past few decades (the period during which we are told that all this mass immigration has happened – let’s use the last 30 years as a reference) UK population has steadily risen (from around 56M to approx 65M), yet the long term trend in unemployment is that it has fallen (from around 11% to now around 6%). The employment rate during this period is very volatile, but if it bears any relationship to the immigration rate it is a positive one. Economic factors such as the global financial crisis in 2008 (where there was a large and marked rise in unemployment) are much more important.

The underlying point of all of this is that there are less unemployed people per job today than there have been at many times in our past, so any attempt to point the finger at immigrants and suggest that they are making things worse is misguided. We’ve yet to fully recover from 2008, but it is very hard to argue from an evidential stand point how that has anything to do with immigration.

2. Do immigrants drive down the minimum wage?

To answer this question we first need to appreciate that the UK has never experienced the Utopian reality of full employment. In fact no economy has ever attained this.

You rightly understand the mechanisms of supply and demand, and particularly of scarcity. In a world where there are always more job seekers than jobs employers will always hold the better hand in wage negotiations, particular at the bottom end of the scale where jobs require no specialist skills. This changes as you climb the career ladder as jobs further up require experience and skill sets that are held by proportionally fewer people, reducing the number of potential candidates so that ultimately there is a switch towards the employee (rather than the employer) having the stronger negotiating position.

What needs to be understood here is that once there are more candidates than jobs – which has always been (and probably always will be) the case for unskilled labour positions – it doesn’t really matter how many more candidates there are. Unless we can acheive full employment, which has never been done, employers will always be in a position to pay their bottom rung labourers the lowest they can get away with.

Of course in the UK that minimum wage is determined not by the markets (thankfully) but by government as it has been enshrined in law since 1998. Seeing as minimum wage is set legally in this way it is hard to see how immigrants can drive (or hold) it down.

You did a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, from how you described those men talking, I think it was always doomed to turn out this way, however politely you spoke to them. Some people people think they are having a discussion when all they are doing is parading their opinion and expecting it to be accepted without caring about or acknowledging anyone else’s. They will inevitably upset you whether you engage them or not and I never know how to deal with them. Taking those awful men out of the equation, you made the woman you saw feel a little better so I would say it was worth it.

I was surprised, I thought most westerners would be open minded and welcome other people’s opinion and wouldn’t mind others taking opposite side. In the culture where I come from, if the 2 people were older than me, I’m not entitled to speak anything ‘against’ them, including openly voicing out different opinion.

I may not be from eastern Europe like that lady, but I too would thank you for speaking up. An Indonesian, I came here last year to study a 1-year prestigious, postgraduate business program (the most expensive in the entire university), only to realize that my presence is not really wanted, especially after I completed my course and as I seek to work and settle here.
-Apart from your point that we contribute to the UK economy with our spending, course fees (mine was 25k pounds), accommodation, shopping spree, etc, I and the international students here also make positive impacts to the society: companies are getting aware that diversity in their workforce is an important asset to have, a ‘colorful’ classroom also has good dynamic for both local and international students themselves.
-A redeemed believer myself, I personally believe that the West needs people like me coming here to re-evangelize the West. I love living here, the European culture, the architecture and landscape here, yet I do think that the West has taken for granted Christianity that blessed them with all these. Had the angel told Paul to go to Asia (Acts 16:9), the gospel would’ve done the same to where I come from as what it did to the Europe and the US — the power of the gospel that changed every sphere of life. http://ejdaniella.wordpress.com

Totally agree with what you said but what has this got to do with ukip as suggested by the headline? I’m not necessarily pro ukip but I’m struggling to see the association of outright bigotry and intolerance to them when the people mentioned do not identify themselves to a political party. I would have expected this of the bnp but not ukip. Perhaps I’m being naive!

Nevertheless I can encourage your actions commend Him

As an idealist who will die a frustrated man, and one who at going-on-66 should know better, I am still willing to get involved whenever bigotry , racism or intolerance of any form rears its ugly head. You did however make your own argument against involvement when you mentioned the terminology being used by these geniuses; common sense should have told you to walk away. I applaud your courage, sir, but I question your temerity.