The UK is hungry for change…

Legal Eagle  

Image© Derek Harper

You will eat by and by, in the glorious land in the sky, way up high, work and pray and live on hay, you`ll get pie in the sky when you die…

This year marks the 50^th anniversary of the publication of EP Thompson`s The Making of The English Working Class, which Phillip Dodd recently described as a formidable account of class development. This is rather ironic, given that in 2013 we are witnessing the pauperisation of this very same, once proud class. Last Saturday, the Guardian ran an excellent piece on `The human cost of recession` by Chris Menon and Sophie Robinson-Tillett. The article dealt with the seemingly paradoxical situation of comparatively low UK unemployment levels coinciding with a drastic drop in the standard of living for many in work. People it seems are in employment, though frequently engaged on temporary contracts, usually part-time with sporadic adjustments in hours. Workers are increasingly denied a contract of employment. If an individual is paid an income which barely meets their needs, what are they expected to do if they are denied further support?

Happy St Patricks Day and may the road rise with you…

Nora Connolly 

© Image Oxyman

They died in their hundreds with no sign to mark where save the brass in the pocket of the entrepreneur…

It`s that time of year again, when the Irish Diaspora, is expected to celebrate the land that made us refugees. St Patrick`s day has always conjured up ambivalent feelings for me, long before it was cynically appropriated by a multinational drinks company. The traditional parading in green, the masquerading in shamrocks and Irish harps unsettles me. Nationalism, regardless of its provenance, always makes me uncomfortable. But, despite the bogus nationalist artefacts and sentiment, it`s an important opportunity to pay due deference to the Irish in Britain, for their distinctive contribution to the economic and cultural life of the nation. It`s also a chance to recognise, as Paul Michael Garret does, that a homogenous view of British society founded on a notion of assimilation by virtue of `whiteness’ `helps to mask the internal ethnic, regional and national differences which characterise the UK. ` The Irish as Garret points out didn’t simply assimilate into British life as `the myth of homogeneity requires the denial of differences`. This is important because when we deny differences, there is a danger of misjudging later migration by people `who possesed a different skin colour`and whose entry to the UK is viewed as problematic, while earlier `white` immigration considered smooth and problem free.