Let 'Em In: The Immigration Controversy

LET 'EM IN: THE IMMIGRATION CONTROVERSY

NEW LABOUR

In the 1960s, responding to a perceived public dissatisfaction over immigration, Enoch Powell delivered his infamous 'rivers of blood' speech, and in so doing created "a bogeyman that could be used as a quick, lazy comparison to cut off" any debate over multiculturalism or immigration. In the same decade, future politicians were children growing up amidst struggles for racial equality that reached their peak during the 60s and the following decade. Growing into adulthood, many at the top of New Labour, as well as many of its activists, had a metropolitan cultural liberal outlook that considered immigration to be an inherently good thing. In the eyes of this metropolitan mindset, there was little difference between wanting tight controls over immigration, and being racist.

Indeed, some have made the case that New Labour deliberately encouraged immigration because they wanted to remake the country in their own liberal image. For example, Andrew Neather, a former adviser to Number 10 and the Home Office, reckoned "the policy was intended- even if this wasn't its main purpose- to rub the Right's nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date". Others, though, have denied such claims. One such person was Barbara Roach, who was Labour's Immigration minister from 1999 to 2001. She attributed rising immigration levels to the fact that the previous Conservative government had not only installed a failed computer system but also made cutbacks that left just 50 officials to make asylum decisions on a backlog of 50,000 cases.

It could be argued that any government at the time would have had to respond to a rapidly changing world. In the previous essay, we saw how the British Nationality Act theoretically opened the borders to 800 million people, but the expense of travel at the time imposed a practical limit on the numbers that actually did migrate. But, by the time New Labour came to power, forces of globalisation such as lower-cost air travel and mass communication, as well as numerous conflicts in Africa and the Balkans, had lead to more rapid population movements. When increasing numbers of a asylum seekers arrived from the Balkans, the pressure was on to move them away from the costs and dependency of the Asylum system and toward the work permit route, and there was also pressure from business sectors to increase work permits in response to a booming economy and low unemployment. Meanwhile, higher education was being internationalised at a rapid pace, and that meant New Labour could finance their policy of expanding university education in the UK by encouraging foreign students into the country.

From 1997 onwards the decisions taken by New Labour added up to around 500,000 people arriving in the UK each year. By 2010, the UK population was increased by 2.2 million migrants, a population size equivalent to a city twice as large as Birmingham. It was, at the time, the largest peacetime migration in the country's history.

As a result, many places in the country that had previously been untouched by immigration suddenly found themselves host to significant migrant communities, while at the same time many British communities saw their livelihoods disappearing overseas as the winds of globalist change swept over them. If those people thought that a Labour government with a 179 majority would speak up for the working classes the party traditionally represented, they were in for a rude awakening.

BLAIR'S SPEECH

In 2005, Tony Blair achieved a third electoral victory but with a massively-reduced majority. At the customary acceptance speech at the steps of 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister radiated humility and insisted he had heard the concerns of rising numbers of people concerned over immigration and the the forces of globalisation. But within five months, Blair gave a speech at his twelfth annual conference as Party Leader that dispensed with the concerned socialist act and went with full-on free market liberalism instead:

"I hear people say we have to stop and debate globalisation. You might as well debate whether autumn should follow summer … The character of this changing world is indifferent to tradition. Unforgiving of frailty. No respecter of past reputations. It has no custom and practice. It is replete with opportunities, but they only go to those swift to adapt, slow to complain, open, willing and able to change".

(Tony Blair. Image from wikimedia commons)

In other words, capitalism was sweeping across the world, bringing opportunity but also insecurity and inequality, and the only assurance the Prime Minister could give his electorate was to say nothing could be done for them and they just had to accept they were in a Darwinian market struggle for survival. Guardian Journalist John Harris, upon hearing that speech, commented, “Swift to adapt, slow to complain, open, willing and able to change.” And I wondered that if these were the qualities now demanded of millions of Britons, what would happen if they failed the test?’.

It became increasingly obvious what would happen to such people. They would be left behind, largely unrepresented by the two major political parties. Worse still, these losers in the globalist race not only found themselves ignored and unrepresented by the political elite, they found their voices were actively repressed when they tried to focus attention on the most visible manifestation of the changes globalism and the free market had wrought: Immigration.

MRS DUFFY

Of all the anecdotes that highlight the way a portion of the British electorate were treated with contempt, there is perhaps no better example than the case of Gillian Duffy. A 65 year old widow from Rochdale, she came across Prime Minister Gordon Brown who was on walkabout for the 2010 election. She wasted no time in voicing her concerns, which included the national debt, the difficulty vulnerable people were having in claiming benefits, and the costs of higher education. Oh, she also voiced concerns over immigration:

"All these Eastern Europeans what are coming in, where are they flocking from?".

Face to face with Mrs Duffy, Gordon Brown was pleasant and persuasive enough to mend the pensioners faltering support for the Labour Party. She herself later said how she had been happy with the answers he gave. But when Brown entered what he thought was the privacy of his car, a wholly different side to his character surfaced. The world became privy to this other side to Brown, because he inaverdently left his Sky News mic on, and broadcast to the world:

‘That was a disaster. Should never have put me with that woman … whose idea was that?...she’s just a sort of bigoted woman, said she used to be Labour. It’s just ridiculous.’

(Gillian Duffy and Gordon Brown. Image from the Daily Record)

This, then, was the attitude of the political elite who held the reigns of power during New Labour's time in office. The very personification of charm in public, but totally contemptuous of even the mildest concerns over immigration in private. A whole class of politicians who had grown up amidst the 60s and 70s struggles for racial equality had come to adopt such a strong metropolitan mindset that they equated controls on immigration with racism and dismissed concerns over the movement of people as the ravings of bigots.

Mrs Duffey's question was a reference to decisions made by the EU and Britain to open up the country to immigration from Eastern Europe. We'll look at that next.

REFERENCES

"How to Lose a Referendum" by Jason Farrell and Paul Goldsmith

Wikipedia