THE Big British Immigration Row on Channel 5 was more like a shouting match than a studio debate.

I have a book by Peter Higginbottom called Voices From The Workhouse. There is a report from the American writer Jack London, who in 1902 went undercover into Whitechapel workhouse.

A small part of the report says “inclement weather and the harsh laws mainly responsible for the men been in, but the men themselves ascribe their homelessness to foreign immigration, especially Polish and Russian Jews, who take their jobs for less money…”

Where have I heard that before? This book gives you an insight to the lives of the working class from 1700s to the 1900s.

Maureen Robinson, Broadway, York.