That is a truly tragic story, though hopefully with an improved longterm prognosis, but is it really the taxpayer’s place to pay for his care? If we had a criminal justice system based on the restitution of injustice, rather than simply “crime management”, we could require the thugs that attempted to kill this man to pay for his care, his injury and his lack of salary while not able to work – if necessary through labour carried out while in prison.

Also, I don’t think this one case so much refutes the Daily Mail which is surprising since just about anything OUGHT to be able to refute the Daily Mail. There is nothing in this story to say that many immigrants don’t scrounge benefits (although my understanding is that in aggregate they tend to scrounge somewhat less than the native population). You are really talking past the daily mail rather than at it. Almost as if your piece represents merely the equal and opposite of the daily mail:)

“but is it really the taxpayer’s place to pay for his care?”

I think we should just have let him die.

Anything for lower taxes.

True, Planeshift, but then we would have had to pay some overpriced contracting firm to haul him off on a shovel. At least this way, we might get him back to work, peeling yr spuds.

Speaking of which… time for food

Nick – the line about the Daily Mail was supposed to be smart-arsey, rather than suggest the above article is really representative of anything.

I think your point about compensation and justice is good, although there are a lot of problems with it in reality. First – and most obviously – the criminals have to be caught. If they’re caught, it can take a long while to bring them to trial (the two people above were still waiting for their case to go to court eight or nine months after the attack), and even longer to get any form of compensation. There are all sorts of reasons for that – an overstretched justice and courts system being one of them – but the plain fact is that it doesn’t help people who have an immediate problem, like the people above.

The main reason for publishing these short articles is really to talk around the issue of benefits, and the way that people who are on benefits are described today by media and politicians looking to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

I am also a taxpayer, and work very hard at my day job. I have family to support, and it’s an expensive business. I don’t like to think that my hard-earned money is going to some sponging layabout who just can’t be bothered going to work.

At the same time, I have interviewed a lot of people who are on benefits for one reason or another over the last couple of years, and am now of the opinion that at least some of them warrant support, and help getting things back on track. Certainly, they deserve more than the blanket ‘people on benefits are all scroungers’ line that is so often bandied about by opportunistic politicians and a lazy MSM. I also believe that it makes better economic sense to try and get people back to work in a constructive way, rather than simply threaten them with cuts – especially if that threat is only made to score political points.

Anyway – I’ve got quite a few more interviews, as I say, so will put some more of them up over the next little while. Thus far, people have not been especially inclined to sympathy, which is interesting in itself. I am still not sure how the left thinks welfare should work.

Cheers, Kate

Thanks Kate, I certainly appreciate the value of these case studies you are delivering. I think there is an element of convergence of left and right towards a “smarter” benefits system that helps those in need while not disincentivising those that can work from working. At that point it will become partly a question of how much of welfare provided by society ought to be delivered by taxation and how much by other means (friendly societies, co-operatives and insurance markets).

“True, Planeshift, but then we would have had to pay some overpriced contracting firm to haul him off on a shovel.”

I dunno, I am sure some dynamic green firm could start recycling corpses into bio-fuel (but not before you have removed his organs on the basis of presumed consent:)). At least he wouldn’t have a carbon footprint any more!

“Natalie and Kelvin feel that immigrants are a problem – they say that immigrants get more than their share of help. Both Natalie and Kelvin stand up to look down Deptford High Street, to see if some of the people they consider the worst offenders are out and about. “Too many fucking foreigners in here,” Natalie says, furiously. ”

I was going to suggest the police interview Kelvin and Natalie!!
(Though from your piece you suggest the low lifes responsible for the attack – “there was one Iranian guy and one Afghan guy” – aah, multicultural heaven – may have been caught.)

I am glad that they now appear to be getting the support to which they are entitled.

I completely agree with you that most immigrants are not “scroungers”.
That doesn’t mean that immigration does not cause problems, it does.
But “scrounging” is not (in my view) one of them.

I’m a bit confused – does the victim know how attackers were Afghan and Iranian? How?

Nick – the line about the Daily Mail was supposed to be smart-arsey, rather than suggest the above article is really representative of anything.

But then, the Daily Mail is rarely representative of anything either – other than its twisted worldview.

The Daily Mail reflects – yes, and reinforces – the prejudices of its readership.

Now I’m sure it’s very comforting to feel superior to the Mail and its readers.
But the reason why the government – any government – panders to the Mail is because these people are the swing voters.

And if you want the swing voters to swing your way, insulting them is probably not the best way to start.

But that is only *if* you are interested in changing minds, rather than feeling superior!

(NB I don’t read the Mail except by chance in other people’s houses etc., though I do know two senior Mail journalists. They are human beings!!)

‘I’m a bit confused – does the victim know how attackers were Afghan and Iranian? How?’

The attackers had been identified by this point – a trial was due later last year.

It was interesting. The Hammersmith law centre lawyer I was working with on the above and other stories (this was all part of a long series of stuff I did on Hammersmith and Fulham council cuts to voluntary sector services last year – it’s over at hangbitch.com) said to me that the fact that the attackers in this case were Iranian and Afghani was ‘the worse thing that could have happened.’

I presume she meant that evidence of immigrants breaking the law in this way made the centre’s general work – which was mostly legal defence work for immigrants and asylum-seekers (this was the law centre that took, and won, the very controversial Afghan hijackers right-to-stay case) – more difficult. People are apt to think the worst of immigrants as it is, and the lawyer was probably right to imply that this sort of story didn’t help. I don’t know if Claudia had racial issues with people of Iranian and/or Aghan descent. It may be that she did. She certainly described these two men as in the quote in the story, which was why I put it in.

I must say, I do find that rather a twisted way of thinking, even for a lawyer. A man’s alimentary canal is cut open in a violent attack and the BAD part of the event is that the perpertrators were from minority groups! This is where the ideology anti-racism really does begin to converge on more straightforward racism. But thats probably a topic for another thread.

@cjcjc:

yep – exactly right about the Mail. It is kind of fun to feel superior to it, though. You can even go a bit better than that – there is a lot of satisfaction to be had just by looking at someone with their DM on the tube and thinking ‘hey. there’s a twat.’

Yr dead on about swing voters, and persuading them to other ways of thinking, though, and that’s why yrs truly likes to get out there and talk to as many people as possible, and then bring those stories, tales, etc, back here to the front, where they can be poked around a bit. Nobody I’ve written about has been perfect – far from it. We’ve had drug addicts, racists, children of the lord, politicians and god knows what else. They’ve all been kind of human, though, and that always strikes me as a good place to work from.

Another thought, though – even though elections rise and fall, as it were, on whims of that swinging group, we don’t have to accept that things are going to be that way forever. There are a whole lot of disengaged voters out there who are not swinging at all but might be inclined to re-engage if they think there’s something out there other than the usual spun crap. That’s why I like this site, man. It is – if you will – a totally fresh kind of crap. It’s written by a bunch of people who’ve done a lot of participating in the mainstream – and probably will do more if the money’s right (I certainly would) – but can’t really be doing with the mainstream, either.

Hope that helps…?

@ Nick:

Yep, it was fascinating. I took it as evidence that people today think so much in terms of how each of their moves – and everything that they’re involved in – will be perceived that concerns about those perceptions are the very first things out of their mouths.

That is, in all honesty, why I’ve personally decided to go entirely the other way – publish your full name to every dumb thing you say and/or write and the hell with it. Forget perception – they’ll get you in the end if they want, whatever you say, so you might as well have some fun saying it.

Zoe Margolis has an interesting piece on Comment is Free today, where she argues in favour of privacy on the web. She is making a particular point – ie, that this or that corporation will always be up yr butt online, trying to find out where yr going and why – but I have to disagree with her general thesis, which is that yr entitled to privacy online. Actually, yr not. Yr entitled to say what you want at the moment, as is everybody else. That’s it.

Yr right, though – this is one for another thread. I can see this one coming back to bite me on the butt already. I prefer to go down in flames on threads that are topic-specific…

… i like being on holiday. u can sit here and post all day

I saw Margolis speak at a Feminist Fightback meeting a year or so ago and was very impressed with what she had to say. It is good to see she is covering Backlash too!

But I too don’t believe people have a legally enforceable “right” to privacy, only that it is usually a very rude and nasty tactic to disclose private information about someone (as happened with Margolis) unless there is a genuine public interest story in it (uncovering hypocrisy within a political establishment for example). Protecting your privacy cannot be a “freedom”, especially if you want unrestricted freedom of speech, even if it is something that people ought morally to respect.

I must say, I do find that rather a twisted way of thinking, even for a lawyer. A man’s alimentary canal is cut open in a violent attack and the BAD part of the event is that the perpertrators were from minority groups!

I don’t think the point here is that the worst part is they’re of immigrant backgrounds. But there is a legitimate concern that some people will be obsessed by the fact that they’re of immigrant banksgrounds and use that to bash all immigrants, incl Vanildo Fernandes and his family. Don’t get me wrong, I have no sympathy for criminals especially if they’re immigrants. But once again, its Daily Mail/The Sun syndrome – “they’re here and they’re terrorising our people and taking our women” yada yada.

PS – Hey, some of my good friends work for the Mail… and they tell me how bad it is!

“I don’t think the point here is that the worst part is they’re of immigrant backgrounds. But there is a legitimate concern that some people will be obsessed by the fact that they’re of immigrant banksgrounds and use that to bash all immigrants, incl Vanildo Fernandes and his family. Don’t get me wrong, I have no sympathy for criminals especially if they’re immigrants. But once again, its Daily Mail/The Sun syndrome – “they’re here and they’re terrorising our people and taking our women” yada yada.”

You’ve raised a v good point here – how do we report things that are difficult, and that don’t sit all that comfortably with a left agenda?

I find that a lot of the people I talk to – whether they’re on benefits, or trade union members fighting for better terms and conditions, or whatever – say things that immediately confirm the world view of the average Sun & DM reader AND probably give those politicians that wish to benefit from a neocon agenda reason to continue to try and profit.

The thing is – what do those of us who are commenting do? Do we leave out the parts that we think will compromise any picture that we’re trying to paint? I don’t want this to sound defensive/smart-alecky at all – this is something that I’m really interested in discussing.

I go out and interview people because that’s what I was taught to do at journalism school all those years ago (well, in the early 90s), and that is why I think I should always try to hear stories from the horses’ various mouths. Certainly, there is a problem in that, because the horses’ mouths are quite often full of shit. People who are victims themselves say racist, sexist and downright stupid things. They’re not always heroic, or always decent. They’re people. Heroes are flawed. It would suit me much better in these short articles to leave out the compromising bits – I’m sure I could have got much more sympathy for the heroin addicts in my previous article, for example, if I hadn’t quoted their racist and sexist discussion verbatim. On the other hand, I don’t necessarily think that journalism should paint pictures to an agenda. That’s called writing a press release. It’s called spin. Also, there wouldn’t have been a hell of a lot to publish if I’d left that stuff out.

I think you find out something useful when you talk to people, anyway. You find out that they’re people, flaws and all. True, yr average DM reader might not give a damn about that, but so what, ultimately. There’s a whole pool of people out there who don’t like the DM view of the world. They don’t much like the Guardian view of the world, either, and have kind of stopped reading the MSM and voting altogether, but maybe they’d be more interested in getting involved in political stuff where everyone lets it all hang out. Or perhaps that is just a vanity.

Anyway – be v interested in views on the point and responsibilities of journalism – big hangup of mine.

I know a guy who told me he tried to shag a DM reporter once – does that count?

Spose it depends who the shagee was…

Kate – “Thus far, people have not been especially inclined to sympathy, which is interesting in itself. I am still not sure how the left thinks welfare should work. ”

Personally I’m one of those old fashioned lefties who still believes in a cradle to the grave welfare state. I don’t think ‘welfare’ should be dependent on anything, or that people should be denied help if they don’t meet certain criteria eg full citizenship, actively job seeking etc.

I think there will always be people who don’t want to work, who don’t fit in with the whole protestant work ethic thing, but that as a society we have a responsibility to all citizens, even those who refuse to participate.

An unpopular stance these days I know, but there you have it.

And yes, I pay taxes. I’m far happier to see my taxes going to support the so-called ‘work shy’ than I am to see them spent on either bombing Iraq or on bloody Trident.

Yep, Cath, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there. I’d also rather see my taxes help those in need, rather than flattening Iraqis, or paying the Conway family’s annual party bill. People across the system take the piss out of it – it’s not just workshy benefit-collectors who help themselves…

“probably give those politicians that wish to benefit from a neocon agenda reason to continue to try and profit.”

Hold on. That is a massive conflation of values. Neocons are many things (like WRONG in most instances) but they are not racists. They might be in favour of curbs on immigration but they are, in general, globalist in outlook and in favour of free trade in goods and services which offers a tremendous boon to the developing world. Domestically, they tend to be in favour one law for all regardless of ethnic background, which could be described as “race-blind” but is certainly not racist.

Straightforward racist ideology spreads across left and right (arguably meeting with the BNP) and that is why you will find trade union views that sounds Daily Mail-esque. It does not help that it is low-skilled British workers who tend to be disadvantaged by the way immigration is structured at the moment, while middle class Brits tend to benefit.

***

“I think there will always be people who don’t want to work, who don’t fit in with the whole protestant work ethic thing, but that as a society we have a responsibility to all citizens, even those who refuse to participate.

An unpopular stance these days I know, but there you have it.”

The problem with that stance is that it contains the seeds of its own destruction.

By rewarding people for doing nothing, which is what a comprehensive welfare system (that ignores ability to contribute) does, you change the underlying economic and social structure that allowed things like the Protestant work ethic to develop in the first place. A few generations later, you start to gain a lot more people who don’t feel any sense of solidarity with the rest of society and don’t feel any obligation to contribute to general welfare. They are not bad people, they have just adapted their behaviour and beliefs to circumstances where they are not expected or required to work. As this sector in society grows larger, more stress is put on the whole system, making “welfare reform” inevitable which is why there is no major party that still subscribes to such an ideal. It isn’t for lack of desire that people have to abandon that particular “liberal” dream of comprehensive egalitarian welfare: http://www.city-journal.org/html/11_4_urbanities-dangerous.html

Hi again Nick,

Don’t know that I’d entirely agree with your rather romantic assessment of neoconservatism…? – one certainly might describe its disciples as having a global outlook, but only insofar as that outlook allows them to spread the American way of life and ‘democracy’ across the aforementioned globe, keeping America at the top of the pile and the rest of us in order.

I’d also argue that there’s a political tendency to cherrypick the most useful aspects of globalisation/neoconservatism to suit the local political agenda. You will know that our very own Tony Blair repeatedly conflated globalisation and the coming of competitive global markets with his programme for a casualised workforce and all the misery that entailed, etc…. and while simultaneously allowing the likes of Blunkett to stir up middle England’s distrust of immigrants for political gain. The neocons you refer to strike me as rather pure – great guys and ambassadors for capitalism, to be sure, but rather pure – perhaps even impossibly so? Do they actually exist in politics in such a formation?

Conflation of values is a good point – as above, I’d say that neoconservatism HAS conflated with less pleasant aspects of various domestic agendas – politicking on the back of immigration fears being among them. I’d also argue (doing a lot of arguing here) that racism and immigration have conflated utterly. You don’t hear too many people complaining that there are too many Aussies here, for instance. I’m guessing that’s because most of the Australians here are white. Eastern Europeans are white, I suppose, but only just. You can still pick them out in a crowd.

Um – what else…?

‘By rewarding people for doing nothing, which is what a comprehensive welfare system (that ignores ability to contribute) does, you change the underlying economic and social structure that allowed things like the Protestant work ethic to develop in the first place. A few generations later, you start to gain a lot more people who don’t feel any sense of solidarity with the rest of society and don’t feel any obligation to contribute to general welfare.’

Are you referring to the Conways or Windsors here…?

Nick – “A few generations later, you start to gain a lot more people who don’t feel any sense of solidarity with the rest of society and don’t feel any obligation to contribute to general welfare.”

Any evidence for this?

“A few generations later, you start to gain a lot more people who don’t feel any sense of solidarity with the rest of society and don’t feel any obligation to contribute to general welfare”

There is an aspect missing to this story – that is the desturction of manufacturing industry and the associated social institutions (trade unions, working mens clubs etc) that went with it. In the areas of the country worst hit the choice for the low skilled is essentially now benefits or shelf stacking. Frankly I’d probably choose drug addiction/alcoholism or petty crime than low paid work in the circumstances.The welfare state is essentially the same whether you live in London or Merthyr, but there are large regional differences in uptake that can only really be explained by the decline of manufacturing and the failure of successive governments to replace it. Slashing benefit levels or penalising those who claim will not change this.

I really don’t think that Merthyr has a higher rate of benefit uptake than say the south of england simply because the locals are supposedly more anti-social and lazy.

“Any evidence for this?”

Yep! : https://liberalconspiracy.org/2008/03/18/the-benefit-of-benefits/

But more seriously, I believe it is the NEETs; the young people who are not taking up jobs that this recent unprecedented surge in immigration has shown are, in fact, available. You know, the lot that Frank Field is always talking about in the same breath as Welfare and education reform: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/education/article2846867.ece

“Are you referring to the Conways or Windsors here…?”

Well who is to say that lack of solidarity is limited to one particular social class I am not about to contend that an Eton education fosters social solidarity.

“I really don’t think that Merthyr has a higher rate of benefit uptake than say the south of england simply because the locals are supposedly more anti-social and lazy.”

Well different regions have been hit much harder in the past by the need to make the British economy productive. I mean, I believe we now have higher manufacturing output than before Thatcher (just with less labour), certainly in some key industries like car manufacturing. If the unions had not forced governments to entrench useless work practices in their industries for so long after they become obsolete, the sudden shift towards services would not have represented quite such a crisis that was brought about.

The problem now is that jobs (that pay more in real terms and represent better conditions than those offered previously in manufacturing) exist but people are not taking them up. And welfare dependency and the culture that goes along with it plays a major role in that.

“In the areas of the country worst hit the choice for the low skilled is essentially now benefits or shelf stacking. Frankly I’d probably choose drug addiction/alcoholism or petty crime than low paid work in the circumstances”

I don’t think shelf-stacking is as bad as coal mining (it certainly isn’t as dangerous or unhealthy). But perhaps the question is more basic than that. Would you rather have a welfare system that encouraged people to stack shelves or to take up drug addiction and petty theft? Do you think people really enjoy a better quality of life once drug addicted and with a criminal conviction? Is it really in their interests for the system to incentivise that self-destructive behaviour?

Your only other option is to invent work that isn’t required. But we are already pretty stretched on paying for generous civil service jobs as it is!

Kate – no absolutely, I don’t want you to leave out the racism, misogyny or whatever fro the comments that people make. I think that would be wrong.

But there’s a difference between editorials, and between policy. I can take racism, I just don’t want to see that institutionalised into policy or law etc.

Nick:
They might be in favour of curbs on immigration but they are, in general, globalist in outlook and in favour of free trade in goods and services which offers a tremendous boon to the developing world

Yeah, I’ll believe that when Bush actually cuts subsidies to American farmers. Even on free trade, the neo-cons are all talk and no action. Bush’s money in Africa mostly went to anti-abstinence stuff. The neo-cons were always more about foreign policy than fiscal conservatism, otherwise we wouldn’t see the massive, massive deficits that we see now.

Domestically, they tend to be in favour one law for all regardless of ethnic background

We’re all in favour of equality. But how do you reform a system which keeps discriminating informally?

Do you think people really enjoy a better quality of life once drug addicted and with a criminal conviction?

Do you think they enjoy life on state benefits?

“I think there will always be people who don’t want to work, who don’t fit in with the whole protestant work ethic thing, but that as a society we have a responsibility to all citizens, even those who refuse to participate.”

No – we have a responsibility to those who cannot participate.
Not to those who refuse.

“And yes, I pay taxes. I’m far happier to see my taxes going to support the so-called ‘work shy’ than I am to see them spent on either bombing Iraq or on bloody Trident.”

“So-called”? By you; just above!!

“I’d also rather see my taxes help those in need, rather than flattening Iraqis, or paying the Conway family’s annual party bill.”

Those genuinely in need, yes.

“Do you think they enjoy life on state benefits?”

Probably not.

But if the state has let them down though poor education it should not let them down again by incentivising them to stay on benefits.

“We’re all in favour of equality. But how do you reform a system which keeps discriminating informally?”

Reduce the size and scope of “the system” and replace it with individual liberty. As individuals, we can judge people as individuals. As a polity, we are more likely to discriminate according to group identity.

“Do you think people really enjoy a better quality of life once drug addicted and with a criminal conviction?

Do you think they enjoy life on state benefits?”

Exactly my point. Welfare reform is in the interest of the welfare dependent more than anyone else.

Perhaps a cradle-to-the-grave welfare state could give people more of an incentive to work, rather than less?

The current system incentivizes all sorts of groups to stay on benefits or get on benefits rather than working, because the difference for them between benefits and work is small or even negative.

A citizen’s basic income scheme (or sizeable negative income tax) would work strongly to counter that by making the difference between subsisting on CI and working very large.

‘…Reduce the size and scope of “the system” and replace it with individual liberty. As individuals, we can judge people as individuals. As a polity, we are more likely to discriminate according to group identity…’

Geez, Nick – I’m all for individual liberty and indeed am someone who profits from that thesis – but how exactly do you imagine the cult of the individual improving life for people on benefits…? I rather thought that we were living the individual liberty dream already – individual employment contracts, the right to decide whether or not to join a trade union, no end of ‘choice’ for the individual in education and health..

Do you honestly think that individuals would choose to support people in need if they weren’t compelled to by legislation? I always interpreted ‘individual liberty’ as ‘the right to feather yr own nest…’

“Exactly my point. Welfare reform is in the interest of the welfare dependent more than anyone else”

I agree. But whenever that comes down to an actual proposal from the political establishment ‘reform’ always ends up translated as “cut the benefits, penalise those who claim and do nothing else” accompanied by a large dose of demonisation of existing claiments.

“Do you honestly think that individuals would choose to support people in need if they weren’t compelled to by legislation? I always interpreted ‘individual liberty’ as ‘the right to feather yr own nest…’”

Well, I don’t interpret individual liberty that way but I acknowledge that is from my own experience of the people around me, who I find generally to be responsible and have a social conscience. I acknowledge fully that the flip-side of individual liberty has to be a sense of social responsibility but I also contend that coercive methods of redistribution deplete both liberty and social responsibility.

If I remember my reading of “The Welfare State We’re in” correctly, during the Victorian era, charitable donations were the second biggest expenditure by middle class homes (the biggest being food) and that was at a time when the economy was much much smaller and less developed than it is now. It is hard to imagine the level of welfare that would offer today if that charitable ethos had been maintained but I believe it would be significant, perhaps superior to the level of welfare provided by coercive taxation in its present form.

I am not about to claim that people would suddenly return to giving large amounts of their disposable income to charity if taxes were lowered. Unfortunately, we are too far gone for such a simple solution. Nevertheless, it is that sort of social solidarity we should by trying to foster as a culture so that we eventually don’t have to rely so much on coercion to run our society. Tackling welfare dependency is one element of that, cleaning out people like the conways from parliament is certainly another:)

Believing in individual liberty when it comes to politics (legitimate coercion) is very different from subscribing the cult of the individual as a choice/lifestyle (which I don’t endorse at all).

Nick – “If I remember my reading of “The Welfare State We’re in” correctly, during the Victorian era, charitable donations were the second biggest expenditure by middle class homes (the biggest being food) and that was at a time when the economy was much much smaller and less developed than it is now”

The Victorians also had workhouses and rickets, and destitute unmarried mothers were forced to wear distinctive yellow clothes….

Seriously, if you’re going to talk about welfare reform and ‘social solidarity’ then citing the Victorian era as an example really isn’t going to help your argument.

Reduce the size and scope of “the system” and replace it with individual liberty.

Well, your biggest proponents to this are Americans, who are absolutely obsessed with reducing the size of the state. And yet, the southeners were brilliant at institutionalising segregation and ‘individual liberty’ that translated into further segregation (on school lines, on housing etc), and then the poor (meaning black) areas getting no investment. I’m afraid I’m not convinced. You rather sound like a hardcore anarchist – who think everything will be solved by material equality. Except you think everything will be solved through more individual liberty and less state influence.

On a related matter – Asylum seekers in the UK face an even rougher time from the system. They’re not allowed to work while they’re fighting deportation. The whole family is penalised. I know an asylum seeker whose daughter won a place at University but wasn’t allowed to take it up due to being an asylum seeker. Most asylum seekers have been through hell and face the worry of being deported and facing persecution when they arrive “back home”. It’s a disgrace that they are denied basic rights such as the right to work and the right to education.

“Most asylum seekers have been through hell”

And often through a number of other EU countries.

But I agree that it is disgraceful that they are denied those basic rights once they have got here and while their application being considered.

“The Victorians also had workhouses and rickets, and destitute unmarried mothers were forced to wear distinctive yellow clothes….”

Please try not to entirely ignore the points I make in my post. If you read it you will see that I am not advocating a return to Victorian values (or their size of economy either), merely the charitable ethos present in middle class families then.

Sunny – you keep using “individual liberty” to mean the funniest, as if just because I want coercive force to be the very last resort, I must be willing to turn a blind eye to segregation. Blacks in the south had their civil rights violently denied, making it a candidate for state intervention and, failing that, justified rebellion.

But note that many of the mechanisms by which blacks were discriminated against were INSTITUTIONAL (i.e. state schools and biased investment) suggesting that state institutions can be used to augment the prejudices of the local majority and perhaps entrench it, as I believe still takes place in the US.