by Michael Carberry
The article by my fellow contributor, Lynda Goetz, in last month’s Only Connect, entitled We MUST reduce immigration... and focus on integration. (only-connect.co.uk) raises an extremely important and very topical issue which merits further discussion. Lynda makes some valid points and there is much in the article with which I agree. But some of her statements need qualifying and some others I believe are quite wrong or, at best, misguided.
Lynda states quite correctly that, “Although [the previous Conservative government] focused almost exclusively on illegal immigration, legal immigration was as much of an issue and one that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak appeared not to want to deal with.” The explanation for this seeming reluctance is quite clear. By focussing on the relatively small number of illegal immigrants the government was seeking to deflect voters’ attention away from its catastrophic failure to control legal migration. It was not simply that the government did not wish to deal with it. Rather that the huge surge in legal migration was a direct consequence of the policies of successive Conservative governments. In October 2018, in one of a series of articles entitled Reflections on Brexit, (not published in OC) I wrote:
“Claims by the ‘Leave’ campaign on immigration … were equally misleading. Far from immigrants taking jobs from native Britons, the departure of many disillusioned EU citizens has left a serious labour shortage, and not just in low-skilled uncongenial jobs like vegetable picking but also in many essential and highly skilled areas such as building and construction, health care and hospitality. A leading house builder pointed out that a major constraint on building more homes is the acute shortage of skilled tradesmen as so many of the Eastern Europeans have gone home, leading to a 50% fall in house building in the London area. In response Home Secretary Sajid Javid has promised to facilitate immigration from other countries around the world i.e. more Asians, Africans and Arabs to replace the Europeans. That is hardly what the ‘leavers’ voted for”.
That policy was continued by successive Conservative Home Secretaries, fuelled by desperate staff shortages in areas like Health and Social Care because of increasingly poor pay and conditions, and cash-strapped universities being ever more dependent on increasing numbers of foreign (mostly non-European) students to make ends meet.
Moreover, an academic study in 2013 found that:
“Immigrants to the UK over the past 40 years have been consistently better educated than the British-born workforce. Despite their higher educational attainments, immigrants do not work in jobs waged commensurately to these achievements. Upon their arrival in the UK, they tend to work in occupations that are in substantially lower earnings categories than those to which they would be allocated if their education were rewarded similarly to British-born workers” (Dustman et al. 2013).
That remains true today. So, although the evidence shows that immigrants have minimal effect on the wages of UK workers, nonetheless, employers are incentivised to bring in foreign labour under the points system because they can obtain higher quality staff at a cheaper cost, something which the British Trades Union movement has repeatedly pointed out.
All these above factors have sucked in people, mostly from non-European countries, resulting in the huge surge in legal immigration about which Lynda complains so vociferously. It is ironic that it has been the Brexiteers, who campaigned on the slogan “Take Back Control,” who have totally lost control of the immigration situation. But whereas Lynda says “We must stop immigration” she offers no discernible policy for doing so, let alone dealing with the labour shortages in the economy, the maintenance of essential services, the university funding crisis and all the other problems resulting from Brexit and the ineptitude of successive governments since 2016.
However, there are things which can and should be done. Paying decent wages to Health and Social Care workers in order to recruit and retain UK staff, reforming the apprenticeship levy and wages policies to encourage employers to recruit and train up UK citizens rather than rely on immigrants, more vocational training to build up a skilled domestic workforce, working constructively with the universities to make them less dependent on overseas students will all help to reduce the need for legal immigration over time.
On the issue of illegal immigration, Lynda does herself no favours by repeating the disinformation put out by Conservative Party spin doctors and slavishly relayed by the right-wing press. The new Labour government have not “pledged to stop the boats”. Indeed, they have stated clearly that the era of government by three-word slogans and gimmicks designed to appeal to a narrow section of core supporters, - what Keir Starmer described as “politics as theatre” – is over. Nor will they grant an “amnesty” to illegal migrants. What they will do is tackle the problem of small boat crossings by going after the criminal gangs responsible, working closely with European partners and, above all, by processing the huge backlog of asylum seekers which the previous government so shamefully allowed to accumulate. Lynda says that, ”does not seem like a good start.” Why not? According to the Home Office, as of end June 2023, the cost of accommodating asylum seekers was £8.3 million per day (over £3 billion per year). It takes only a moment’s reflection to see that processing their application and sending straight back those who have no legitimate claim to be here is by far the best way to deter illegal immigration as the returns agreement with Albania has already demonstrated. If on the other hand, they have a legitimate claim to asylum, getting them out into the economy to fill the shortages in the labour force, pay for their own upkeep and contribute to exchequer revenues rather than keeping them herded together indefinitely in a permanent limbo at vast and ever-increasing public expense while simultaneously issuing yet more visas to non-European immigrants is frankly a ‘no brainer’.
Lynda writes “The fact that many immigrants are not integrating into our society, but existing in their own communities within it, is causing divisions. It is testing the tolerance of ordinary people….” Apart from the rather extraordinary suggestion that immigrants are not “ordinary people”, such behaviour is only human and, if it is a fault then we Brits are among the worst offenders. Here in France where I live, having originally come as an economic migrant, there are whole communities of British expatriates who, despite having lived in the country for decades, have made no real effort to learn French or to integrate into the local community. They live in an entirely anglophone bubble. Worse still, many act as though French law does not apply to them, failing to register for tax purposes, or respect the vehicle licensing or building regulations.* In many non-European countries Brits and other Europeans often live an almost apartheid-like existence with little or no contact with the local population except as employees or service providers. People in a foreign environment gravitate naturally to their own communities. We can hardly expect immigrants to the UK to behave in ways which UK citizens do not elsewhere.
Nevertheless, the problems caused by the failure of communities to integrate are very real although they are hardly new. In Northern Ireland during the “plantations of Ulster” in the 17th century (1609-1690) - a misguided attempt to settle the problem of the recalcitrant Irish - the government in London evicted many of the largely Catholic Irish-speaking natives and settled their lands with huge numbers of Scots Presbyterians. For over 300 years the failure of the two communities to integrate has caused problems which are still with us today. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, British colonial governments around the world completely transformed the ethnic religious and cultural makeup of many countries including Trinidad, Fiji, Malaysia, Uganda, South Africa, by actively encouraging or at least permitting large scale immigration of foreign labour to work on plantations or in mines or to run public services. In almost every case these immigration policies led to increasing social and political problems and communal violence, nowhere more tragically so than in Palestine.
So, the issue Lynda highlights is very real. But we must recognise that the problems confronting the UK pale almost into insignificance compared to those which we British, as a nation, have inflicted on other countries or those faced by our European neighbours who are in the front line of the global migration crisis. As an island country in the north of Europe the UK is largely protected from the migratory pressures being experienced by Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey or other Mediterranean countries or those in the immediate vicinity of war zones. Many British people fail to appreciate that the migrants trying to cross the Channel in small boats are only a fraction of those flooding into France, many of whom come from francophone North or West Africa or other parts of the former French empire. They wish to stay in France because they know the language and culture and believe they can get work – exactly the same reasons why others try to cross the Channel to an English-speaking country.
The new Labour government understand full well that they need to get a grip on the immigration chaos and have allocated some very heavyweight ministerial talent to do so. The new Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, has made it clear that there is no short-term fix. Boat crossings and large numbers of legal immigrants will continue to arrive for the immediate future. But sensible policies actively pursued will steadily bear down on the numbers of both legal and illegal immigrants in the months and years to come. Above all, the heat will be taken out of the issue and, although Nigel Farage with his four Reform Party colleagues and their fellow travellers on the far right of the rump Conservative Party will no doubt try to exploit the issue, we will not hear the sort of inflammatory rhetoric from government ministers to which we have become accustomed in recent years.
Which brings me to my main point. The use of inflammatory rhetoric to target vulnerable minorities, whether to win popularity or find scapegoats for their own failings, has always been a favourite tactic of right-wing autocrats and fascists. For Adolf Hitler it was the Jews; for Idi Amin, the Ugandan Asians; for Robert Mugabe, the white farmers in Zimbabwe; for the Myanmar military, the Rohingya Muslims. In many countries, including Britain, immigrants have always been in the front line for such attacks. I am old enough to remember the 1964 Smethwick by-election where the Conservative candidate, Peter Griffiths, won against the trend on an unashamedly anti-immigrant platform with his supporters chanting “If you want a nigger neighbour – vote Labour”; and Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech four years later.** The Reform Party is merely the latest iteration of an anti-immigrant tendency on the far right of British politics going back to Oswald Mosely’s British Union of Fascists in the 1930s and including the National Front, The British National Party, the English Defence League and the overtly fascist Patriotic Alternative. If anyone thinks Nigel Farage is different, they have only to listen to the virulently anti-immigrant hate speech being spewed out by his “good friend” Donald Trump, or the comments of many of Reform’s parliamentary candidates and supporters during the last general election.
So, when Lynda writes, “Islam as a religion is not tolerant. It seeks to convert, and if not to convert, to destroy”. or
“…the elements of radical Islam building within those immigrants already established here and their increasingly vociferous demands are also incompatible with our society.” or
the increase in violence all over Europe laid at the door of the migrants is not a figment of imagination. It is fact and one which should not be ignored.” … alarm bells start ringing.
And when Lynda says, “…this is not the time for accepting huge numbers of outsiders. At this point we need to regroup and assimilate those we have already taken in. If this means leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) then so be it." (my underlining) we should all be worried.
To be fair to Lynda, she is only repeating what she has heard from several leading Conservatives, including former Cabinet Ministers who really should know better. One of the more grotesque lies promulgated by the late, unlamented Conservative government was that the ECHR was a “foreign court.” The ECHR is not a foreign court but rather an international body of which we are full members (as with NATO, the WTO or UEFA). But it is much more.
As a young man I did not consider myself especially patriotic. It was only when I started to travel, and live and work abroad, that I began to realize that basic human rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom from arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, the right to demonstrate about things that matter to us, the rule of law and an impartial judicial system could not be taken for granted. I became immensely proud of my home country. In particular I was proud of the role Britain and the former British Conservative Prime Minister Winston Churchill, had played in establishing The Council of Europe (CoE). The Council was founded in 1949 in the wake of World War II to uphold human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Europe in order to prevent a resurgence of Fascism, ultimately extending these essentially Brutish values across the whole European continent. It does that through the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights, set up to enforce the provisions of the Convention to which all member states automatically belong. It now has 46 member states, covering a population of approximately 700 million. So those politicians who say “If it does not work for the British people, we should leave it” wish to remove protection of basic human rights not just from a few migrants but from the entire British population!
International law is the bedrock of an international rules-based system. It is that which enables us to call out autocrats like Vladimir Putin who believe that might is right and abuse the human rights of even their own citizens. It is significant that, apart from Russia, the only European country which is not a CoE member is Belarus. Shame on any British politician who suggests we join that particular club. To their credit, most mainstream ‘one Nation’ Conservatives reject the idea of leaving the ECHR out of hand. The list includes former prime ministers Theresa May and David Cameron as well as distinguished former Conservative parliamentarians Kenneth Clark, Dominic Grieve, Nicholas Soames and Rory Stewart, all expelled from the Parliamentary Party by Boris Johnson. It is indicative of just how far the Conservative Party, since its capture by Boris Johnson and the European Research Group (ERG)***, has moved away from its own core, Churchillian values and, judging by the results of the recent election, those of most “ordinary” British people.
While writing this article nearly all of us were shocked to hear on 29 July of the horrific murder in Southport, England, of three little girls and severe injuries to five other children and two adults. But the tragedy has been compounded by the sickening attempt by far-right extremists to exploit the incident for their own agenda, whipping up anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim feeling although the assumed murderer is neither an immigrant nor a Muslim (but is Axel Muganwa Rudakubana, the 17-year old son of Rwandan immigrants). From barracking the Prime Minister when he came to pay his respects the “protesters” moved on to assaulting the Police, burning cars, looting shops and launching a violent attack on a neighbourhood mosque. As we now know, the rioting was fuelled by disinformation and hate speech on social media, targeting Muslims and asylum seekers. According to BBC Newsnight, more than half the social media posts concerned originated in the United States! Lynda rightly condemns “the bullying tactics and intimidation of any group” (although her examples are highly selective) but fails to acknowledge the role of toxic rhetoric in encouraging such behaviour. What was striking in Southport was the response of the local community who not only came together en masse to support the grieving families and victims but also rallied round to clear up the mess left by the rioters and help their Muslim neighbours to rebuild and repair the damage to the mosque. Most “ordinary people” of Southport are angry, not with immigrants or Muslims but with those who tried to sow hatred and division within their community.
The rioting spread to other towns and cities across England and to Belfast in Northern Ireland and lasted for six days.
In these days of global communications and cheap international transport the prevalence of economic failure, political turmoil and war in many developing countries means that mass migration is here to stay. And the growing climate emergency may well increase those pressures in the future. While recognising that fact, we need to be conscious of the potential dangers to the social and political fabric of the UK and other western democracies and to manage the problems posed by mass immigration in a sensible and humane way. What is abundantly clear is that demonising immigrants or Muslims as Lynda repeatedly does in her article serves no useful purpose except to whip up the kind of fear and distrust that she herself complains about. Yes, we need sensible control of immigration and yes, we need to encourage integration. But merely shouting “we must stop immigration” without the least idea about how to achieve that while simultaneously whipping up anti-immigrant sentiment is manifestly not going to help.
* Many of the worst offenders received their comeuppance when they were unceremoniously booted out post Brexit. Having failed to register for French taxes, they did not exist for the French administration and were not entitled to residence permits under the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement.
** A deliberately inflammatory speech by Conservative MP and Shadow Cabinet Minister Enoch Powell on 20 April 1968, to a meeting of the Conservative Political Centre in Birmingham. His speech expressed strong criticism of Commonwealth immigration and quoted a constituent as having said: “In this country in 15- or 20-years’ time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man." The then Conservative Party Leader, Edward Heath, immediately sacked Powell and never spoke to him again. Nigel Farage has described Powell as his “political hero” and his “rivers of blood” speech as “right in principle.”
*** A group of right-wing, anti-European Union Conservative MPs who campaigned for the UK to leave the EU and were generally hostile to the ECHR.
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