THERE are few more toxic political debates than the current one about immigration. 

Hatred and fear of immigrants has fuelled much of the rise of Ukip. And too many working people, black and white, seem convinced that eastern Europeans are responsible for their failure to find a job and workplace insecurity generally. 

It is difficult to blame working people for this view because this is the propaganda pumped out day after day by the Tories, Ukip and much of the mass media. 

Even some Labour politicians seem unable to resist the temptations of the eastern European “blame game.” 

So it is very important that progressives try and ground the debate on immigration in the facts. 

While we cannot dismiss people’s fears, we need to point their anger in the right direction. And that is not eastern European workers.

Anti-immigrant feeling is not a new narrative. Feelings ran high on the issue in the Victorian era. But these immigrants were Irish. 

In 1870 Marx wrote: “Every industrial and commercial centre in England now possesses a working class divided into two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. 

“The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his wages and standard of life. 

“This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short, by all the means at the disposal of the ruling class.” 

Decades later Russian Jews, who immigrated to Britain because they faced persecution in tsarist Russia, met with bitter hostility, including from some trade unionists. 

They were accused of being willing to work for longer hours, in poorer working conditions, at a lower wage than their British co-workers, thereby underselling the indigenous workforce. 

In 1905 the Manchester Chronicle wrote: “The dirty, destitute, diseased, verminous and criminal foreigner, who dumps himself on our soil and rates simultaneously, shall be forbidden to land.” Today that sounds like Ukip election literature.

Fast forward to the 20th century and West Indian immigrants were accused of undermining British workers in exactly the same way. 

Sadly sometimes their accusers were the descendents of the Irish immigrants of an earlier age. 

The truth is that immigrants were not the cause of low wages in the Victorian era and they are not the cause today. Predatory employers, deregulated labour markets and the diminution of trade union rights and freedom are the underlying causes of low wages and labour market insecurity. 

It is particularly hypocritical for neoliberals, of whichever party, to wring their hands about the effects of eastern Europeans on wages. Because actually it is the liberalisation of labour markets and the weakening of trade unions which are the real culprits.

Far from being a drain on the economy, immigrants make a net contribution to our economy. 

A 2013 paper by the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration notes that migrants from the European Economic Area between 2001 and 2011 made a net economic contribution of around £22 billion, 34 per cent more than they took out of the system through public services and welfare. 

The narrative of the immigrant drain on the National Health Service could not be further from the truth. Without women like my mother, who immigrated to this country from Jamaica as a student nurse in the 1950s, Britain would not have an NHS. 

It is worth pointing out that immigrants use the public sector less frequently than British nationals and moreover they do not increase the cost of certain services, such as the armed forces, at all so their tax contributions are a national bonus. 

In addition, the Centre for Economics and Business Research has found that skilled foreign workers currently generate around 15 per cent of economic output in England and Wales. 

Labour market conditions have gone backward in this country, not forward, with the rise of casualised labour — sometimes prettified as “consultancy” — and far too many young people being coerced into working for free as interns and so on. 

The Tory-led coalition has empowered employers to indulge in the proliferation of zero-hours contracts and made it increasingly difficult for employees to access tribunals amid a backdrop of falling real wages. 

Workers need a strong trade union movement as never before and workers also need politicians willing to legislate for a level playing field as between employers and trade unions. 

The Labour Party needs to be working with unions to ensure justice at the workplace. In government we should legislate for a national living wage and invest in a strengthened factory inspectorate. 

Under Labour governments hardly any employers were prosecuted for not paying the minimum wage. Whether the minimum wage or a national living wage, the next Labour government needs to be active about enforcement. 

There are no votes for the Labour Party in trying to outdo Ukip on immigration. Instead all wings of the labour movement need to work together to combat the lies of the Tory Party, Ukip and the mass media about immigration. And there needs to be concerted action to remove the bias in the current legislation against trade unions. 

Strong trade unions and effective labour market regulation are the way to combat the scourge of low pay. 

Trying to make immigrants the scapegoat for ordinary people’s economic woes was wrong in the Victorian era and it is wrong today.

Diane Abbott is Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington.