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> > I would argue that in essence, immigrant-bashing and > > hooliganism by 'England supporters' are in fact just two sides of the same > > coin. > > Yes, but is that coin the result of the racism and > nationalist fervour being whipped up by Straw, Widdecombe > et al and those who echo those sentiments in the media. Or > the result of the way (white) working class men are > socialised in this society (as you seem to be suggesting)? I think they both feed off each other don't they. The socialising of white working (and middle) class men in this country, clearly is important in creating a culture in which alcoholism and violence are commonplace. The comments of various politicians, and perhaps more importantly tabloid newspapers regarding immigrants / asylum seekers / continental Europe / foreigners in general, certainly does not help, by seeming to provide some sort of moral, or at least popular, support for nationalistic and racist violence. A lot of this 'support' is much more subtle than the headline-making comments of Hague, Straw, Widdecombe et al, though. The use of the imagery of war in the build up to the England - Germany match was quite staggering. Yesterday I passed a large poster on the side of a chain pub/restaurant, combining advertisement of saturday's game with a 1st World War style recruitment banner - "Your country needs you etc" and "Now is the time for revenge". Even the BBC's Radio 5Live coverage sounded more like the run up to a minor war as opposed to a football match. In regard to Chris Haylett's comments (& some of Paul Kent's): >Your identification of racist troublecausers at home and abroad as >"people from the 'poorer' estates who were probably poor because >they spent a significant proportion of their money on beer, fags etc >or just couldn't be bothered to seek a life outside the benefit >system" is downright offensive. It's also part of the same racist >mentality that accuses immigrants of scrounging on welfare. Have >you been reading too much of the Daily Mail recently? It would help if you read my original message properly before jumping the gun. My comments referred to the specific case of Dover. On that point I was not generalising at all. In the case of Dover I think this is correct, but of course Dover is a largely working-class town. (I used to undertake questionnaire surveys in the town and know the place very well. One of the surveys was on beer consumption and I was often surprised by how much respondents either in very low paid jobs or 'on the dole' could afford to buy each week - but I digress!). I'm sure that if most of the immigrants were arriving in the middle of Surrey there would be similar problems, and as I have indicated elsewhere, in general, this isn't a class-related problem. ( A significant number of the troublemakers in Belgium appear to have been well-paid bankers, accountants etc) Also as I said later in my message, immigrants often have no choice but to 'scrounge' (your word, not mine!) off welfare because of the way the system is set up. Finally (again!) on the question of whether our society is or is not becoming more violent ( particularly at weekends), I believe the view from the ambulance service who have to pick up the pieces each Friday and Saturday night is that it is, and that it is not confined to 'working-class' areas, but is endemic in almost every town and city in this country. This does not appear to be the case in some other European countries, who have a different attitude towards alcohol. Perhaps we should follow the Dutch approach: water-down the beer and give everyone cannabis! (Not an entirely serious suggestion, but why should alcohol be so much more acceptable than cannabis?) __________________________________________________________________ Tony Jarvis - [log in to unmask] School of Earth Sciences and Geography Keele University, Keele, Staffs, ST5 5BG. Tel: 01782 583095 Fax: 01782 715261 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%