CentreRight

By Paul Goodman

Readers will be following the row about Anjem Choudary’s Islam4UK and its proposed march through Wootton Bassett.

I can now reveal exclusively a recent transcript of an Islam4UK committee meeting, which has fallen into my hands.

ConservativeHome has kindly agreed to publish it in the public interest:

Choudary: Order, order.  OK, now.  We need exclusives.  We need scoops.  We need the front page.  I want ideas, creativity, stunts –

Voice One: - OK boss, how’s this?

Choudary: Fire away.

Voice One:   Er…let’s see now…how about a photo of Buckingham Palace on our website with…with a giant mosque superimposed!

Choudary (wearily):   We’ve done that.

Voice Two: Me, boss!  Me, me, me!

Choudary: Go ahead.

Voice Two:  Well…how about…how about a picture of Nelson’s column with…with Nelson taken off the top…and a huge crescent put on!

By Paul Goodman MP

So we have what the lobby is bound to label “the snowstorm plot” – or something like it.  But are Hoon and Hewitt a conspiracy of two, or are they part of a wider, carefully-choreographed manoeuvre?

One suggestion at the Commons is that Hoon was promised the elusive EU Commissioner post which went not to him, nor even to Mandelson, but to Baroness Ashton.  It’s one that the Labour Whips are sure not to minimise.

Hewitt is more interesting, in her way.  Her father was Sir Lenox Hewitt, a former senior Australian civil servant and later Chairman of Quantas.  He was apparently on extremely friendly terms with the late Otto Clarke, a former Second Permanent Secretary at the Treasury and Permanent Secretary of the Minister for Aviation, and father of…Charles Clarke.  This is one of the origins of the Hewitt-Clarke connection.

Readers will need little reminding that Clarke isn’t Brown’s greatest fan.  It’s unlikely, to say the least, that Clarke and Hewitt won’t have exchanged New Year greetings.  Inevitably, a question in the corridors is whether a Minister, or more than one, or a Cabinet Minister (or more than one), will quit later today, perhaps in time for the Six O’Clock news?

Without resignations, it’s quite difficult to see the lever that would force Brown out.  Some will argue that a new Labour leader would be better for us; others the opposite.  What’s certain is that a general election now would be best for the country.  Oh, and don’t forget: the voters didn’t get the chance to validate this Prime Minister in the first place.

P.S. Hewitt’s just said on Sky that she’s prepared to call for a secret leadership ballot… but not to say how she’d vote in that ballot. Risible.

By Paul Goodman MP

For 23 Conservative MPs, David Cameron's big push begins in Harrow a day before the Commons reconvenes.

I count the following colleagues: John Randall, James Arbuthnot, Cheryl Gillan, Dominic Grieve, David Lidington. Andrew Rosindell, Shailesh Vara, Theresa Villiers, Andrew Mitchell, Eleanor Laing, Richard Spring, Alistair Burt, Crispin Blunt, David Jones, John Horam, Edward Garnier, Maria Miller, Damian Green, John Penrose, John Maples, David Gauke, Eric Pickles - suit-and-tied, and dropping in from a Luton campaign poster launch - and myself.  I apologise to anyone I've missed and for having no camera.  And in no sense am I suggesting that the 30 or so bright - and mostly young - activists also there were any less busy.

We are survey canvassing for Rachel Joyce and Bob Blackman, our candidates in Harrow West and East.  Damian, Edward and I are despatched to Roxeth, a Labour-held but marginal ward in West.

This is John Betjeman country - Metroland, as Damian reminds me, muse of "Harrow on the Hill", "The Metropolitan Railway" and a score of other poems. It is also diverse.  Within viewing distance of Rayner's Lane tube, there's a Zoroastrian Centre, Lakshmi Metals and halal meat.  In one road, English clearly isn't the first language of many we survey canvass.

Damian is gloved-up against the cold and Edward is wearing a tie - purple with white spots, for the detail-addicts.  Is the temperature really minus five?

I'm always suprised how little Christmas decoration survives New Year's Day.

We do two and a quarter hours on the doorstep, and I stop at 12.45 or thereabouts. Three observations:

1. It being morning, we find very few voters.  This doesn't matter, since Rachel's survey canvass gets out and about, and it's a good thing to get MPs working in this way.
2. Many of those who open doors pull bolts and turn locks as they do so, even mid-morning.  Some TVs are left visibly on but no-one seems to be in.  Consciousness if not fear of crime is everywhere.  A lot of respondents give nothing away when asked how they'll vote.  "Don't know.". "Thinking about it.".  "Haven't made up my mind yet.". The sense of disengagement from party politics is almost three-dimensional.  And ask yourself: if I heard a knock on my front door, would I relaxedly assume that a neighbour was calling, or go tense for a micro-moment?
3. All this raises questions about the degree to which canvassing - as opposed to e-mail, voter profiling, mosaics and all the rest of it - is now subject to the law of diminishing returns.

By Paul Goodman MP.

The story of Alhaji Umaru Abdulmutallab, and his wicked bomb plot, looks to be a reminder of a vital truth - namely, that Al Qaeda's operatives in the west are not Frantz Fanon's "wretched of the earth": poor Muslims born into their religion and radicalised by Afghanistan or Iraq.

Abdulmuttalab appears to be the son of a wealthy banker and former Minister.  He was certainly ensconsed in a nice-looking flat in London's west end.  The banker was so concerned about his son's activities that he reported him to the authorities.

Let's consider some other cases.

• Richard Reid, who also tried to blow up an airplane, was a convert to Islam radicalised before the Iraq war.
• Dhiren Barot, one of AQ's main operatives in Britain pre-Iraq, was also the son of a banker, and a convert from Hinduism.
• Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, believed to have murdered the American journalist Daniel Pearl, was privately educated at Forest School, Walthamstow.
• Omar Khan Sharif, one of two British instigators of the terror attack on Mike Place in Israel, studied maths at King's College, London.
• Mohammed Sidique Khan, the leader of the 7/7 atrocity gang, was a teacher radicalised (again pre-Iraq).
• Jermaine Lindsey, another member of the cell, was a convert.
• Brian Young, one of the 2005 liquid explosives airplane plotters, was a convert.
• Nicky Reilly, who tried to blow up a restaurant in Exeter, was a convert.

No single factor explains recruitment to violent extremism. Experts offer many - foreign policy or affairs; generational tensions among third or fourth generation Britons of Pakistani origin; the failures of multiculturalism.

By Paul Goodman MP.

The Government insisted at the time of the Civil Partnerships Bill that state-licensed civil partnerships, publicly entered into at a registry office or elsewhere, wouldn’t be state-licensed gay marriage (which it opposes).  Rightly or wrongly, I believed that, in effect, they would be.

For this reason, I reluctantly, and perhaps mistakenly, voted against the Bill.  I was all for equality in relation to life assurance, tax exemptions and so forth.  But I was also against the state compromising an institution which is an integral feature of our social ecology.  If this view seems eccentric, please remember that I’m far from isolated in holding it – since it is, after all, the position of the Government which (as I say) is opposed to gay marriage.

A couple called Tom Freeman and Katherine Doyle want a civil partnership.  They “feel alienated from the patriarchal traditions of marriage”.  They also “don’t want to take advantage of civil marriage when it is an option that is denied to our lesbian and gay friends”.  They’ve been refused their wish, on the ground that under law civil partnership “is a relationship between two people of the same sex”.

Backed by Peter Tatchell, they say that they’re prepared “to go to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary”.  I’m not a lawyer, but suspect that the Court, if the couple eventually reach it, may take a different view.  There’s no international legal consensus at present that a gay couple has a human right to be married, so it’s not obvious that the Court would decide that a straight couple has a human right to a civil partnership.

By Paul Goodman MP

Today was the second day's debate on the Queen's Speech. Proceedings began at about 11.30 after Business Questions and could have run until 18.00.

There were Conservative backbench speeches from Peter Bottomley, Nigel Evans, David Evenett, Graham Stuart, Robert Syms, Lee Scott and myself.

There were Labour backbench speeches from... Barry Sheerman - who as Chairman of the Education Select Committee is a special case. Otherwise there were none, other than Dennis Skinner, who got to his feet at 15.35, and hadn't been in the Chamber before at least 14.30.

The debate concluded just after 17.30 - almost half an hour early.

• Number of Labour backbenchers present after opening speeches: one (Sheerman)
• Number of Labour backbenchers present for much of the debate: nil.
• Number of Labour Cabinet members present after opening speeches: nil. (Andy Burham, who was replying to the debate, didn't get to his place until after 15.30.  His opposite number, Andrew Lansley was in place more or less throughout.)
• Number of Labour Cabinet members present for closing speeches: one (Burnham, who had to be present to reply.  Michael Gove, who opened for us, returned in time for both Burnham's and Lansley's closing speeches.  Ed Balls, who opened for the Government, returned ten minutes late.)

Question: if only two Labour backbenchers can be bothered to turn up to defend their own Government's programme, what does that say about their faith in it - and the current state of the Commons?

And if they don't believe in it, why should anyone else?

> Jonathan Isaby noted the lack of Labour MPs present for yesterday's opening of the Queen's Speech debate.

> Michael Gove's speech this afternoon was covered in this earlier Parliament post.

By Paul Goodman MP

Last Saturday, Wycombe Conservatives selected the excellent Steve Baker as their general election candidate at a meeting attended by local Association members only.

Perhaps this moves me to explain why Conservatives should look at open caucuses, and even open primaries, with a sceptical eye.

My line of thinking is as follows:

• In the British political tradition, the Executive and Legislature overlap.  So if the Party can form a government, some Conservative candidates, after election to the Commons, become Ministers, and some don’t.  Let’s call the first group Future Ministers and the second Local Champions.
• The gifts required of Future Ministers and Local Champions diverge.  Both need energy, enthusiasm, commitment - and come in all shapes and sizes.  But effective Local Champions must have a deep affection for their constituency and be diligent and determined on behalf of their constituents: these are basic requirements.  Efficient Ministers must be able to manage and negotiate a Department, colleagues, interest groups and voters in such a way as to achieve political goals: this calls for a different set of skills.
• Many Commons Ministers are effective Local Champions.  But – crucially – a smaller proportion of Local Champions are efficient or future Ministers.  Some simply don’t have the skills and gifts required.
• I agree with those who argue that open caucuses (meetings which voters have to attend in order to participate in a candidate selection) are a poor substitute for open primaries (the selection of candidates by postal ballot).  Recent experience suggests that if non-Association members are given a say in the selection of Conservative candidates, then open primaries will obtain a higher turnout.  So let’s narrow down the method of selecting Conservative candidates to a choice: Association selection versus Open Primary selection.
• Many Associations try to select Future Ministers (who, as I say are often effective Local Champions).  Open Primaries, by their very nature, will tend to select Local Champions (of which, as I say, a smaller proportion will be efficient Ministers).
• In the long-term and perhaps the medium term, therefore, a universal system of selection by Open Primary would produce fewer efficient Ministers.

John Denham seems to have announced a major shift in Labour’s policy towards violent extremism and extremism.  It shouldn’t pass unnoticed.

I’ve just finished reading a Quilliam Foundation summary of his remarks at a Labour Conference fringe meeting titled: “How should the Left engage with British Muslims?"

According to the summary, Denham said that “we have critical-, non- and naïve-engagement.

Non-engagement means not agreeing with an organisation’s views, and therefore refusing engagement with them.  But if you don’t create space for critical engagement, you end up talking to those that you agree with.  There must be limits with those who do break the law, but otherwise we have to recognise that most situations are resolved through engagement with those with whom you don’t necessarily agree.”

I assume that “naïve engagement” is either a reporting error or a Freudian slip.  So let’s put this phrase aside, and ask what the rest of Denham’s words add up to.  It’s reasonable to read them as saying: “This Labour Government will engage with anyone who doesn’t break the law”.

If so, this is a major departure from the Government’s previous position.  As Conservative Home readers know, I wasn’t always an enthusiast for Labour’s last Communities Secretary, Hazel Blears – as previous pieces on this site demonstrate.

John Bercow’s name doesn’t usually top the Christmas card list of Conservative MPs.  At best, it’s acknowledged that his working relations with colleagues have sometimes run less than smoothly.  At worst, his popularity ratings in the tea room hover marginally lower than the Pope’s at Ibrox Park (a location he seems to have visited at least once – the Speaker, that is, not the Pope).

He’s seen to have been elected by Labour MPs.  His progress to the Chair, like his expense claims, won few plaudits.  He seems to have alienated a number of hacks, a lot of bloggers and, for whatever reason, one or two sketchwriters.  He faces a tricky election campaign in Buckingham.  Triumph at the polls may not end his troubles.  Speculation persists that a revolt from the green benches will oust him in the next Parliament (though, for what it’s worth, I think that such an event is, on the whole, unlikely.)

Against this less than promising background, it’s worth studying closely his speech yesterday to the Hansard Society, of which Jonathan Isaby’s reported the main proposals.  Three points emerge.

First, almost everything suggested is worth considering.  The proposal to allow the Commons to elect its Deputy Speakers, however attractive at first glance, is an exception: the risk of Labour MPs repeating their behaviour during the Speakership election should surely have crossed the mind of the present incumbent.  But most of the rest of the speech is sensible, and focused on one aim: “We need the backbencher to move from the Parliamentary version of the stalls to the centre stage”.

By Paul Goodman MP

The Hannan America NHS rumpus (H.A.N – or, better still, D.A.N) was, in at least one sense, absurd.  As has been noted, Dan is a backbencher sitting in an Assembly abroad who has no influence on the Party’s health policy in Britain.

In another sense, however, D.A.N – a conflation of media mania, Labour malice and summer season silliness – was telling, because it raised a important question, namely: does modern politics in general, and the Party in particular, have house-room for heretics?

The challenger of orthodoxies, the man prepared to fly solo, the rebel with a cause, is indispensable to progress.  This isn’t because he’s always right (for what it’s worth, I think Dan is wrong about the NHS, for both political and policy reasons), but because he’s always necessary.

Not so long ago, it was unacceptable in polite society to claim that printing money causes inflation, or that incomes policies don’t work.  Now, these views are commonplace.  The change wouldn’t have happened if the arguments hadn’t been put by senior Conservative politicians – Keith Joseph being perhaps the best example.  As someone or other put it, heresy is the gadfly which makes the horse trot.

It’s never been easy to expound new ideas from the Shadow Cabinet (or the Cabinet itself).  Trying to do so may have cost Keith Joseph the leadership.  The media environment has got far harsher since his day – more manic, turbulent, punishing and fast-moving.  As I’ve argued before, the next election will be the YouTube election.

By Paul Goodman MP.

Everyone needs to do something that's easy to recognise but hard to describe.  Perhaps the best description is "letting off steam".  Anger and laughter are two ways of doing so, and the one is often close to the other.

Letting off steam is also linked to candour.  Perhaps the funniest line in the famous "Fallty Towers" episode "The Germans" combines anger, candour and laughter - when Basil Fawlty snaps: "Who won the bloody war, then?

My friend Alan Duncan may have been joking when he said that MPs are being treated like "****" and now live "on rations".  But he was also possibly angry and certainly candid - not to mention letting off steam.

The consensus seems to be that doing so in front of an "activist" prone to post videos on the net wasn't Alan's finest hour.  "He should have been more careful," the chorus runs.  "MPs are on duty at all times - especially senior ones. And anyway, what have they got to complain about?"

What indeed?  But regardless of whether or not MPs are treated like ****, this little incident is the wave of the future.  Be afraid, candidates: the next election will be the YouTube election - perhaps, we should say, the Big Brother election, or even the Basil Fawlty election.

The moment of exasperation, the frank admission, the confession of ignorance, the policy blunder, the joke better not made, the verbal slip misrepresented as racist insult, the tie or frock that on the whole is a mistake (especially if the one is worn with the other) the absent-minded removal of ear-wax, the blurting-out of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth - all these are set to be immortalised on film and viewed on-line, for as long as human interest lasts.

By Paul Goodman MP.

CentreRight readers may remember that I’m pursuing Hazel Blears about exactly how £12 million pounds of taxpayers’ money has been spent this year – in relation to the Preventing Violent Extremism programme.

She’s now promised to provide the information “around the end of April”.  We shall see.

In the meantime, I’ve asked the Foreign Office in a written Parliamentary question exactly where another £20 million of taxpapers’ money has gone.  This sum is apparently “tackling radicalisation and promoting understanding overseas” this year.

Bill Rammell, a Foreign Office Minister, has replied that he won’t answer the question “in order to protect the safety and security of organisations delivering sensitive projects overseas”.

I accept that such organisations could well need their security and safety protected in many circumstances.

But I ask a question.  Is is more likely...

By Paul Goodman MP.

I asked in the Commons last Wednesday where this year’s tranche of  Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) money has gone.  Hazel Blears is spending some £70 million on preventing violent extremism over three years.  She’s been stonewalling my question about the 2008-9 slice of PVE money since January.  She also stonewalled the previous year, 2007-8 – but was eventually forced to send me details, with an apology.

Alan Duncan, the Shadow Leader of the Commons, raised the matter during Business Questions the following last Thursday, and I pitched in again.  Conservative Home kindly published the exchanges.

Blears has now backed down.  She wrote to the Speaker yesterday to confirm that the information will be published before the end of the financial year.

But that’s not quite the end of the matter.

She writes that the DCLG “is working closely…to collate information setting out progress on the development of local partnerships and action plans.  This includes information on engagement, including details about which community groups are funded for leading local projects”.

What this gobbledegook means, in plain English, is that the DCLG doesn’t hold up to date information about where the money’s gone – hence the delay in publication.

By Paul Goodman MP, a Shadow Communities and Local Government Minister.

Ministers claimed yesterday that they’ve toughened the Government’s position on which community groups they’ll talk to - excluding those, according to one report, “whose views and practices sit outside the ‘core values’ of mainstream Britain”.

This report specifically cited as an example the DCLG’s relationship with the Muslim Council of Britain.  It said:

“In 2006, Ms Blears' predecessor as Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly scaled back official contacts with the Muslim Council of Britain over its boycott - since dropped - of Holocaust Memorial Day.”

But claims of a new, tough policy are simply Labour spin – and I’ve a letter on my desk from a Minister to prove it.  The letter also raises the question of whether the Minister concerned misled the Commons – “inadvertedly”, as MPs put it.

By Paul Goodman MP, a Shadow Communities and Local Government Minister.

The Times reports today that three youths tried to set fire to a synagogue last Saturday – the Jewish Sabbath.  The Community Security Trust, a Jewish charity, describes an increase in anti-semitic incidents.  I don’t know the religious background of the assailants, but this rise clearly coincides with the tragedy currently taking place in Gaza.

Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, has called upon all “believers in the Islamic world” to “defend in any way they can the defenceless women, children and people of Gaza”.  Some have interpreted this call, rightly or wrongly, as a signal for attacks on Jews worldwide.  Whatever the truth, there’s no doubt about the position of Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas leader in Gaza.  He’s called for the murder of Jews everywhere: “They have legitimised the murder of their own children by killing the people of Palestine…They have legitimised the killing of their people all over the world by killing our people.” (My italics.)

Needless to say, synagogues and Jews aren’t the only target of religious-based aggression in Britain.  Some mosques and many Muslims, for example, have experienced hostility and violence since 9/11.  But there’s a moral in these recent deeds and words that reaches beyond any one religious community in Britain, and which should concern us all.

What happens abroad has an impact at home.  Tensions between India and Pakistan are followed closely by Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs.  Christians lobby MPs about the treatment of their co-religionists in both countries, and elsewhere.  And then, of course, there’s Israel/ Palestine, a conflict on which the media focus more intensely than any other.  In short, deaths in a communal riot halfway around the world can have more impact in parts of our cities than a hospital closure in a neighbouring suburb – in this world of mass travel, internet access, and foreign-language satellite TV.

By Paul Goodman MP.

On October 14, I asked Sadiq Khan, a DCLG Minister, about state-licensed sharia courts in the UK.  A Sunday paper reported a month previously that the Government has “quietly sanctioned” the operation of five such courts – which Ministers call the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal.

The Government wants to encourage disputes to be resolved without recourse to the civil courts.  This is reasonable, and we’ve nothing against bodies which operate under the terms of the Arbitration Act.

Obviously, such bodies aren’t part of the court system, and their decisions aren’t enforceable if they’re illegal, or contrary to public policy.  We’ve therefore no objection in principle to MAT.

However, we do have serious concerns.  Ministers have a special responsibility to ensure that women who come before a MAT do so freely.  More widely, it must operate strictly within the limits of the Arbitration Act – there must be no sharia jurisdiction in criminal or family law.  Men who beat their wives, or are violent at home, must be prosecuted.  Above all, British law must remain supreme.

At any rate, I asked Khan “to write to me listing exactly when these tribunals were approved, who approved them, who was consulted, who the judges are, what cases have been heard, and exactly what measures are in place to protect women”.

Paul Goodman MP blogs from Delhi

I wrote yesterday that parts of the Indian media are claiming that responsibility for the Mumbai atrocity lies with the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba.  This is now the consensus view here - and also in Britain, as far as I can see.    

It may be wrong, or at least not the full story. There's more than one suspect for an operation planned and executed in such terrifying detail.  Lashkar has links to Al Qaeda, which has a track record of carrying out carefully choreographed terror assaults.

A key difference for Britain is that Lashkar's focus in Pakistan is on Kashmir, in the east, while Al Qaeda's is in the west and in Afghanistan.  This has significant domestic implications.

Paul Goodman MP reports from Delhi.

In London, counter-terror police are dealing with a Conservative MP.  In India, their equivalents are dealing with the Mumbai horror.

I'm here with Dominic Grieve, Pauline Neville-Jones and that old friend of India, Peter Luff, to discuss bilateral relations, trade, community cohesion (over a million people of Indian origin live in Britain) and - sour irony - security.  We were due to stay in the Trident Oberoi.

Dominic's flying back to help pursue the absurd but sinister arrest of Damian Green - a close call, but the right one.

It's too early to make a full assessment of the Mumbai atrocity.  But I'll risk one observation.  Parts of the Indian media are claiming that responsibility lies with Lashkar-e-Taiba - whose focus, unlike Al Qaeda's, is on Kashmir.  If true, this has considerable implications for UK security and cohesion policy, to which I may return.

What will follow over the next few days isn't a diary, but a series of snapshots - one man's view, and no doubt contestable.  I'll open with three quick points:

(1) The Mumbai outrage is being described as "India's 9/11".  Yes and no.  Yes: there are mass casualties, and the attack was aimed at a financial centre.  No: 9/11 was the first modern mass casualty assault on the U.S mainland, but India's used to big terror attacks.  Over 80 people were killed in Jaipur last May; over 40 in Hyderabad the previous August.  Terrorists assailed India's Parliament in 2001.  It was claimed to us today that more lives were lost to terror in India during the last three years than in any other country save Iraq.

(2) The terror threat in the UK has a narrow focus.  Dissident republicans and neo-nazis aside, the menace comes from those who claim violence in the name of Islam.  In India, the focus is wider.  There's separatist violence in the north-east, Maoist Naxalite violence in the east and south, caste and religious violence - the recent killings of Christians in Orissa involved both factors - and other communal violence, such as the Hindu-Muslim murder cycle in Gujarat.  And that's before we even get on to terror groups claiming violence in the name of Islam, or the tragedy of Kashmir.

(3) This wider focus - based on differences of region, living standards and caste - helps to explain why India is reluctant to concentrate its anti-terror response on any single challenge.  Will this change after Mumbai?  And are India's challenges easing or worsening?  More later.

Posted for Paul Goodman MP who is the newest member of CentreRight but whose account hasn't yet been activated.

Trevor Phillips, the Chairman of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, seems to have said today that the forthcoming Equalities Bill should be used to help disadvantaged white working-class people.  I write "seems" because I can't find a direct quote from him that says this.  What's certain is that he said that "positive action" should be taken "to help some white groups".

Phillips, like Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, seems increasingly to delight in tweaking the tails of the politically correct establishment while making a serious point at the same time.  He said that "immigration has fuelled resentments that are real and should not be dismissed – resentments felt by white, black and Asian", and highlighted the alienation and disadvantage of parts of the white working-class.

According to the DCSF's own figures, white British boys entitled to free school meals performed worse at GCSE level than any other ethnic group last year.  A recent report published by the DIUS revealed that only six per cent of white boys eligible for free school meals went on to higher education compared to 24 per cent of young men from ethnic minorities.

There'll be more to statistics like these than meets the eye.  (The 24 per cent figure, for example, lumps all ethnic minority members together.)  But there's no doubt that sections of the white working class are seriously disadvantaged.