Make of this what you will:

A month or so ago, I spent some time with a family in Middleton Park in Leeds. I went around to their home after a local meeting about government attacks on social housing tenants. The family was Irene and Desmond Lovatt, both retired and in their 70s, and their daughter Michele, who was 38. The three lived together in a council house that the elderly couple had first moved into more than 40 years ago.

The family was open, friendly, talkative and very welcoming. We chatted for a long time. The three spoke in detail about the difficulties they’d dealt with over the years. There was no doubt that things had been a real struggle. Michele said that insecure employment and local companies failing had long been a problem: “I got a job in administration, but after 11 months, they had to let me go, because they relied on jobs coming through the fax machine [and no orders were coming through]. It was a storage company. Even manager was playing solitaire at the computer, because [there was no work coming through].”

Signing on for JSA brought a raft of problems. Michele said that at one point, jobsearch requirements at her local jobcentre were so strict that she’d had to attend the local library to use computers for jobsearch activities almost every day. Being ignored by potential employers was also infuriating. “When I’ve been to interviews,” Michele said, “I’ve gone to an interview and then at the end they say – “sorry, we’ll let you know. We’ve got other people to see.” They don’t say you haven’t got it. Then you get a letter saying you’re unsuccessful. Big firms doing that want to be fined, because if you’re good enough for damn interview, you’re good enough for friggin’ job.” Michele now worked as full-time carer for her mother Irene, who’d had a stroke in 2014. Michele received Income Support and Carers’ Allowance for this and was obviously pleased at this formal recognition of caring as a job. “I wash up. I wash the floor, bathroom. I go shopping. Like my mum comes with me, but I take the bigger shopper and she takes the small shopper. She gets the lighter stuff. I do the heavy, like milk, cat meat and tins, stuff like that… I also attend when she has to go to doctors’ appointments. I’m seeing to her tablets.”

All three were pro-Brexit. I asked people how they planned to vote in the then-upcoming EU referendum. OUT! everybody said with enthusiasm. Everyone was animated about it. We talked about the reasons why the family wanted a Brexit. Sovereignty came up as a topic. Desmond felt that an Out vote would make Britain stronger again as a manufacturing base: “We’re not building. That’s what making it bad.” Desmond also mentioned “bloody foreigners.” He was particularly exercised by foreign ownership of power companies. “Why should we be dictated by foreigners when it’s our country?”

“That’s how I look at it as well,” Irene said. Getting Britain Back from foreigners was a theme. It wasn’t the only theme by any stretch, but the topic was certainly raised.

Anyway, as the evening went on, I told people that I was an immigrant myself. I have dual Irish and New Zealand citizenship and live here as an Irish citizen. The point I want to make is that this revelation was met with no hostility at all. It rarely has been for me. I have a strong accent, but am never mocked or pulled up on it. That may change, of course, but at the time of this meeting, things were fine, on the ground at least. In fact, since the referendum, I’ve spoken to a couple of Leave voters who were at pains to point out that they weren’t referring to people *like me* when they talked about wanting to stop migrants. Meanwhile, people around the country who presumably are being referred to when this subject comes up are suffering horrendous racist abuse. I can only conclude that people are talking as much about race and difference and Other as they are about numbers when they talk about immigration. As I say – take from this what you will. That night in Middleton Park, the old lady even took my hand as we talked about antipodean migrants. She beamed at me and said something along the lines of: “Oh, Australia! But you’re the kind of immigrant that we want!”