Mr Boris Johnson
Mayor of London
Greater London Authority
City Hall
The Queen’s Walk
More London
London SE1 2AA
Telephone: 020 7983 4100
Minicom: 020 7983 4458
Fax: 020 7983 4057
Email: mayor@london.gov.uk
17 5 2012
Dear Mr Johnson ,
Shortly after you were re-elected as Mayor you made a promise to conduct “an honest and unflinching” investigation “ into why London jobs are overwhelming going to foreigners (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9249748/Why-do-foreigners-get-all-the-jobs-asks-Boris-Johnson.html). Let me explain why it is happening.
1. Loss of control of Britain’s borders. Britain has given away control over its borders through membership of the EU, the signing of treaties relating to the European Convention on Human Rights and the UN Convention on Refugees and the passing of the Human Rights Act. Regain control of our borders and the problem is solved, because then foreigners can be excluded from British jobs.
2. The costs and control of workers. British Employers find foreign workers are cheaper to employ (see 3), easier to control and less difficult to lay off.
3. Immigrants generally have less responsibilities than Britons. The rapidly rising property prices and rents and falling wages often make it impossible for a Briton who has social obligations such as a family to support to take those jobs because they do not provide the means to support a family. Most of the immigrants who have come in in recent years, especially those from Eastern Europe, are young men with no obligations beyond supporting themselves. They are able , even on the minimum wage (many are working cash in hand and pay no tax and National Insurance) , to save a few thousand per year and that money in their own country is worth multiples of what it is worth in Britain. Accordingly, immigrant workers can work for a few years in Britain and save enough to buy a property in their own country. (Give Britons the chance to go abroad and earn enough to buy a house in Britain and you will be trampled in the rush). In short, there is not a level playing field between British and foreign workers.
4. Illegal immigrants. A substantial proportion of the jobs, especially the low and unskilled, are going to illegal immigrants who are even more vulnerable to demands from employers . As a retired Inland Revenue officer I can vouch from my personal experience that there are huge numbers of illegal immigrants working in London.
5. Foreign gangmasters . Where gangmasters and their ilk are used they are often foreign and only recruit people of their own nationality, race, religion or culture.
6. Foreign companies and multinationals in Britain bring in their own people . (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9111116/30000-foreign-workers-entered-UK-under-transfer-schemes.html)
7. Companies run by ethnic minorities in Britain. They have a strong tendency to bring in from abroad people of their own ethnic background. Especially strong instances of this are the London Rag Trade and ethnic restaurants.
6. Employment by word of mouth – When foreign workers gain a foothold in a business they recommend people they know for jobs there or encourage their friends and acquaintances to apply for jobs. Being foreign, the people they recommend will normally be other foreigners, especially those of their own nationality. It does not take long for a place of work to become largely or wholly foreign staffed with this type of recruitment.
Sometimes the employer colludes with the foreign staff to exclude Britons, for example, Pret a Manger, who have next to no rank-and-file British staff working in London use as part of their selection process a vote by the staff of a shop where a potential trainee has had a trial as to whether the trialist should be taken on. It does not take too much imagination to suspect that foreign workers will work for other foreign workers if there is a choice between them and a Briton. (http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/article-24030067-why-cant-a-brit-get-a-job-at-pret.do)
8. Corrupt practices. Agencies which supply foreign workers and the British people doing the hiring enter into a corrupt arrangement whereby the Britons ensure foreigners are recruited and receive a kickback for that from the agencies who supply the labour. The agency supplying the foreign workers gains through the fees for finding and supplying the foreign staff paid by the employing company. Public service organisations and large companies are especially vulnerable because of the numbers of staff they employ. ( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2094103/UK-unemployment-As-British-jobless-toll-soars-bosses-recruit-thousands-Romania.html)
Phone-ins, social networking and the individual experience of those around us tell the same story: there are very large numbers of Britons desperate for work, often any work, who just cannot find any. Again and again people who are articulate and sincere tell of how they have tried for dozens, sometimes hundreds of jobs without getting even an interview. Many of those looking for work are graduates.
Media reports of employers getting large numbers of applicants for even menial jobs are a regular feature( http://www.londonlovesbusiness.com/25-people-chase-every-job-in-some-areas-of-london/423.article). Many new graduates are finding that they have been sold a pup about the increased employability of those with a degree and are lucky to find any sort of job. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jan/26/fifth-graduates-unemployed-ons).
The claims by British employers that they are employing foreign workers because they cannot find suitable people is hard to credit. Even if there was a problem with the attitude of young Britons, for which I see no evidence as a general problem, it would not explain why older workers with a good work history are being overlooked. In particular, it is implausible that foreign workers are better equipped for jobs dealing with the public because experience tells any Briton living in London that many foreigners employed in such jobs have wholly inadequate English and a lack of knowledge about British culture.
During the Blair/Brown bubble years there may have been an element of Britons being unwilling to do some of the menial low paid jobs, but in our present dire financial straits that cannot be the case now even for low-skilled workers.
As for people not being prepared to do run-of-the-mill jobs for all of their lives, this is what used to happen routinely and, indeed, many people continue to do just that today. Nor is this something restricted to the unskilled. Any skilled craftsman – a builder, plumber or carpenter – or someone with a skill such as HGV driving will do the same basic job all their lives unless they choose to go to another form of employment. The fact they are skilled does not necessarily make the job intrinsically interesting , although it will be better paid generally than those in a low or unskilled employment. It is also a mistake to imagine that skilled jobs which are non-manual are generally fulfilling or prestigious. A country solicitor dealing largely with farm leases and conveyancing or a an accountant spending most of their time preparing final accounts are scarcely enjoying working lives of wild excitement . The truth is most jobs, regardless of their skill level, are not intrinsically interesting to the people who do them, the interest in working arising from the money reward and the social interaction which comes with the work.
Nor is it true that unskilled and low-skilled jobs are diminishing. The large majority of jobs today, require little or no specialised training. Very few retail jobs involve a detailed knowledge of the product; driving a vehicle other than an HGV comes with the possession of an ordinary driving licence; undertaking a routine clerical task can be done almost immediately by someone who is literate.
The existence of low-skilled or unskilled work has a positive benefit beyond the work itself. It provides a means of independent living for the least able. In Britain the average IQ is 100. Because of the way that IQ is distributed – in a good approximation of normal distribution – 10% of the population has an IQ of 80 or lower. An IQ of 80 is thought by most experts in the field of intelligence testing to be the point at which an individual begins to struggle to live an independent life in an advanced industrial society such as Britain. Without low-skilled and unskilled work the low IQ individual is left with no means to live an in independent life. That means in all probability a heavy dependency on benefits with a likelihood of antisocial behaviour because they cannot live a life of normal social responsibility. Full employment is a social good which goes far beyond the overt material product of the employment.
The first responsibility of a government in a democracy must by definition be to promote the well-being of its citizens above those of foreigners. The most fundamental part of that duty is to ensure as far as is humanly possible that jobs are available to its citizens which capable of supporting a person in a normal life, including raising a family. To think of the world as a single marketplace with labour, goods and services drawn from wherever is cheapest or most immediately available, is to reduce Britain to no more than a residence of convenience which can be used for the purposes of the individual without any concern for Britain as a society.
Yours sincerely,
Robert Henderson
And here is Johnson’s non-reply:
RE: MGLA210512-2961 Why foreigners take all the jobs
Dear Mr Henderson,
Thank you for your email to the Mayor of London regarding a recent article that he wrote in the Telegraph seeking to address why Londoners are failing to compete successfully for the jobs created by this great City. Please accept my response on behalf of the Mayor.
London is the most prosperous city-region in the UK and a key driver of the national economy, drawing in talent from across the globe. London’s openness to ideas and to people is essential to continuing our economic success. Yet too many Londoners are not sharing in the city’s opportunities. To understand why a large number of Londoners are currently not able to compete successfully the Mayor announced in the Telegraph his intention to commission further work through his Education Inquiry, led by Munira Mirza, Deputy Mayor for Education and Culture, to further focus on why young Londoners are not getting the jobs they need. Additionally he has asked his business led London Enterprise Panel to explore how the Greater London Authority working with stakeholders can enable Londoners of all ages to compete successfully with both international and domestic migrants for employment opportunities.
We are very grateful for the time you have taken to outline your views and suggestions and will take these into account when exploring these very important issues further over the coming weeks.
Yours sincerely
Chandri Peris
External Affairs
England calling 
In regards to number 3: European immigrants also have no intention of staying in Britain so dont require a home just somewhere to live for a few years. I am buying a home for me and my family. I have worked with numerous East Europeans who live six or more to a four bedroom house paying £50-£70 a week in rent. This cost covers their share of the rent/electric/gas/water charges etc. Thus their wages dont need to be as high as mine at over £100 a week just for my mortgage so they can work for minimum wages, I cannot.
What Boris should also consider is the long term effect of driving down wages by employing foreign workers who send a good deal of their wages home. Lower wages = less spending.
British workers would (apart from holidays abroad) spend most of their money in Britain.
Finally what are the most successful new businesses on the high street? Well next to Pound Shops it is East European superstores selling east European goods, so yet again more money is being lost to European countries. Britain is supplementing foreign aide by buying foreign workers and foreign goods.
Businesses, in the race to employ ‘better’ (cheaper) workers are undermining their own income.
East European superstores?
Well said Andy. All the best with your house purchase.
You highlight an important problem. Stand alone English family units cannot possibly hope to compete with immigrant workers 5, 10 or more to a house.
We need to adapt to the new circumstances we find ourselves in, and fast. Clannish, group behaviour and solid, pro-English support networks are needed. Forget individualism and selfishness, we must start working together and back each other up as much as we possibly can.
This is how our competitors operate, and this is why they are out-performing us in our own homeland.
House share, car share, pass on job vacancy information and opportunities to the ‘in’ group, multiple generations living under the same roof so as to provide childcare for the workers. We need to regress in a sense, in order to match the level of civilisation of our adversaries.
For adversaries is what they are and nothing less. They are here to attempt to dominate this space, our country, and if they succeed we are finished. An ethnic group such as the English needs to be the dominant force within its own borders, this is just the natural way of things and always has been.
If we fail, we will lose this land, of that you can be certain. We have been pitched into a battle for survival by our own treacherous, treasonous ‘elites’ who care not for our well-being or prosperity.
The English stand alone.
Just the way we like it.
A good letter but you forgot to add, at the end, ‘of course you are, despite the sums spent on your education, too stupid to understand any of this.’
That notwithstanding, I wish you’d stop talking of Britain and Britons. Britain was killed off fifteen years ago when the little nations of this disunited kingdom were offered an opportunity to determine its future that was denied to the overwhelming majority of Britons, thankfully, although mass immigration and multiculturalism had been strangling its roots for decades before then. Consequently, a Briton is merely someone with an almost worthless British citizenship living in England who is not English. ‘I have a right to your things because I am British’, they say, and as things stand they do. We must work to change that, fort the sake of our great, great, great grandchildren.
PS: Simply regaining control of our borders is not sufficient to alleviate the problem; we must repeal the multitude of pernicious anti discrimination and anti hate laws that have been inflicted upon us over the past fifty or more years.
So tell me, why should we be more concerned that Londoners rather than non-Londoners get jobs in London? Surely our obligations are as much to our fellow men as to our fellow country men, or fellow city men? Why should we discriminate? On what basis exactly?
I directed the piece at Johnson because he had made a great fuss about, in effect, getting British jobs for British people. What goes for London does of course apply to the rest of the country.
Good article, but the bare fact is that they don’t care. Britain is controlled by bankers and the governments are just the puppet administrators fulfilling the banker’s agenda. The bankers want Britain flooded with immigrants so that they can dilute the population’s unity and national identity, and to provide masses of cheap labour. Whoever is in government, the same agenda rolls on, because all of the political parties are in the pockets of the bankers. They are not there to listen to the people and work for the best interests of the nation, they are there as the banker’s bitches and nothing we say will make a jot of difference. Time people woke up to this.
The reply was from a foreigner, lol.