Luke Harding

There are no traces of the wall that once fenced off Josef Lacko’s flat from those of his neighbours. Five years ago locals in the Czech industrial town of Usti nad Labem built the wall to separate their homes from the Roma (Gypsy) housing estate across the street. The wall got knocked down.

But antipathy towards the town’s 5,000-strong Roma community has proved harder to demolish. With less than three months to go until the Czech Republic joins the European Union, the jobless Mr Lacko seems exactly the kind of migrant worker who might end up in Britain and who, it has been claimed, could soon be sponging off Britain’s benefits system.

Except that Mr Lacko doesn’t want to go to Britain. “I have my roots here,” he said, sitting in the kitchen of his council flat, a few yards away from the demolished wall, and overlooking a grassy yard where his sons were kicking a football.

Despite the problems Roma face in finding jobs, Mr Lacko said most of them wanted to stay in Usti, a depressed but picturesque town on the banks of the Elbe, with a ruined medieval castle, three communist-era factories, and a baroque church.

“I’ve got to go to France for five days with a Roma folk group,” Mr Lacko said. “I don’t even feel like going there.”

After initially agreeing that Britain would open up its labour markets to workers from all of the 10 new countries that join the EU on May 1, Tony Blair has had second thoughts following a campaign by the tabloid press. The London-based Daily Express has warned of a wave of “benefit tourists” flooding in from eastern Europe and today the home secretary, David Blunkett, will announce how the government intends to regulate the potential increase in migration.

In the Czech Republic the tabloid campaign has been met with rising political irritation. Earlier this month its social democrat prime minister, Vladimir Spidla, said that the British government’s concern over an influx of Roma was provoked by “silly media”. His deputy, Petr Mares, complained of “hysteria”.

Not surprisingly, in the snow-covered villages around Usti, where Vietnamese traders invited in during the communist years sell garden gnomes from roadside stalls, the locals are only interested in working in Germany. The border is less than half an hour away by train; German tourists driving BMWs come here in search of cheap skiing and goulash - and, it would appear, bearded garden ornaments.

“I definitely wouldn’t go to Britain,” Petr Kopecky, a bricklayer from the village of Petrovice, said. “I don’t want to be away from my family. But of course if there was a chance in Germany I would take it.”

Mr Kopecky spent five years during the 1990s working on housing sites in Germany until his work permits were no lon-ger renewed. Unlike Britain, Germany has refused to allow migrant workers from the new EU states in after May 1.

Over at the nearby ski lift Jan Maska, who worked as a roofer in Germany during the post-unification boom, said he was baffled by the idea of moving to Britain. “It is too far away.” Business at the lift was poor, but he didn’t intend to leave his job selling tickets: “Moving abroad is for young people.”

It is, nevertheless, hardly surprising that some of the Czech Republic’s 150,000 Roma should fantasise about a better life elsewhere. Outright racism is rarer these days, but a hidden intolerance persists.

Mr Lacko’s brother-in-law Josef Kulena recently got out of prison. He said he had stolen “things” from pubs because he did not have any money. Like many Roma Mr Kulena lost his Czech citizenship after the collapse of communism. — The Guardian