Patriotism is not Far-Right Racism

by Lynda Goetz

My Only Connect colleague Michael Carberry and I have never met. I’m sure that were we to do so we would find we had lots in common (our love of France for a start), lots to discuss and lots to disagree about. I look forward to the day.  In the meantime, I’m afraid I am going to have to take issue with at least some of the arguments he puts forward in his August piece - Immigration: we need to stop the racist rhetoric. (only-connect.co.uk) - written in response to my article in July.

I do not take issue at all with his dismissal of the latest series of Tory governments as inept, ineffectual and incompetent. The election results sadly showed that a lot of voters, including many who would have described themselves as Tory voters, felt the same. Even The Daily Telegraph, (otherwise known as “The Torygraph”) displayed increasing despair at the succession of Tory governments’ inability to get to grips with the country’s problems (largely it seemed  due to being unable to agree what exactly the party stood for and unable therefore to agree amongst themselves about what should be done). However, where immigration is concerned, this is a problem which goes back further than 2010. To suggest, as Michael does, that “the surge in legal migration is a direct consequence of the policies of successive Conservative governments”, is surely a little disingenuous?

It was under Tony Blair’s government that Britain’s immigration policy moved from restrictive to “expansive“, as The Conversation described it in 2017. Apart from the relaxation of work permit criteria, the expansion of migrant worker schemes and the doubling  of international student numbers, the decision in 2004 to allow the eight new countries joining the EU the immediate right to work in this country resulted in a completely new era and the time from which we can pinpoint the changing face of Britain. Net migration between 1997 and 2010 was five times higher than under the previous administration. True, the following Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition and then Tory governments did nothing to change things and indeed, following Brexit, merely continued the claim that immigration was required to promote “growth”. As Michael rightly states, replacing EU workers with more Asian, African and Arab immigrants was not at all what those who voted to leave the EU had in mind at all.

Michael, obviously a Remainer, (possibly even a Remoaner), lays much at the door of the Brexiteers. He claims that in my article I offered no discernible policies for stopping immigration, let alone how to deal with the inevitable resulting labour- shortages in the economy, university funding crisis and maintenance of essential services and “all the other problems resulting from Brexit and the ineptitude of successive governments since 2016”. It is not always easy in a 1500-word article to include all the things one might wish to include, but to lay all these problems at the door of the Conservative governments in power since 2016 seems to me  as misguided as Michael considers some of my views.

We currently have apparently some 9.4 million under pension age who are ‘economically inactive’. Many of these are not seeking work, a large number because of health-related issues, including a large number of young people suffering mental health problems. Shouldn’t getting at least some of these people back into the labour market be one of the government’s primary objectives? Michael’s suggestions (in his paragraph 7) about “things which can and should be done”, I largely agree with. The fact remains that it has been shown that relying on legal immigration to  support our economy costs more in the long term, once all factors have been taken into account. The reason we are short of housing is not because our indigenous population is growing exponentially (indeed, it is declining), but because of the huge numbers of people we are trying to absorb. Once here these people need not only housing, but education, health care and eventually pensions. The pressures put onto our public services by the massive and rapid increase in our population are playing a part in our country’s current problems. As, of course, they are in many other countries. The issue of migration is one which almost all the liberal developed countries are having to address. However, pretending that this is not a problem, as successive Conservative governments did and which this Labour government seems intent on continuing to do, is an ostrich-like way of dealing with something which voters of all stripes are on the whole extremely unhappy with.

As I have pointed out on numerous occasions when writing about this subject, the British are almost universally tolerant and welcoming to individuals who become neighbours and fellow citizens. However, if the influx becomes too great and the speed of the inflow and change too fast, new individuals arriving are more likely to be seen as a threat, particularly in cities where the percentage of the indigenous population appears to be being swamped by foreigners (for example, in London where the percentage of white British is down to 36% according to the 2021 census; although these figures do need to be looked at very carefully: see Full Fact)) This is as much an entirely natural phenomenon as the tendency for people of the same culture to flock together anywhere in the world. Nonetheless, the way many English people behave when living abroad (however ignorant and reprehensible) is not, I feel, quite the same as the increasingly vocal demands we appear to be facing from many of the latest immigrants to the UK. Whilst many of the older Afro-Caribbeans and Muslims from various countries (with some notable exceptions such as the convicted Islamic terrorist Anjem Choudary) have, if not integrated, at least respected the country and culture where they have sought, for whatever reasons, a new life, many younger immigrants undeniably play the race card and do present a threat to ‘ordinary’ people here.

Of course I include immigrants too in using the term  ‘ordinary’ people and have to agree that in my July article, the way I used this word was not a cleverly chosen turn of phrase. What I should perhaps have said was ‘existing taxpayers and voters’. Many people are getting extremely concerned by the apparently different way in which some ‘communities’ are treated. The idea that the police tread more carefully when dealing with black or Arab communities for fear of being pulled up for being racist is more than just a perception. Watching, for example the way in which a rather desultory crowd of Londoners (most of whom were neither young nor aggressive) were ‘kettled’ and treated by hundreds  of threatening-looking police in helmets and visors when they went to present a petition to Downing Street on 31 July following the Southport stabbings and comparing it with the way other events, such as the regular pro-Palestinian marches or the policing of the riots in Harehills are dealt with is illustrative. For the 76th anniversary of the Nakba (mass displacement of people after the creation of Israel in 1948) on 18th May the Metropolitan Police said it had held "regular discussions" with organisers, the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (PSC), to minimise disruption. Why should some groups or communities have prior access to the police to agree how their protests should be policed?

I consider it completely irrelevant in this particular discussion to point out what we have historically “inflicted on other countries”. History however is relevant, as Michael states, if not only in the way in which he sees it. His main point apparently was that “inflammatory rhetoric to target vulnerable minorities”, was always a “favourite tactic of right-wing autocrats and fascists”. He then quotes a number of sentences from my article which he considers to be inflammatory, before adding patronisingly that “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”. 

Not to credit one’s opponent in a debate with the ability to think for themselves is extremely damning and incredibly arrogant. One does not have to be parroting anyone else to reach certain conclusions. The fact that not everyone agrees with those conclusions is fine, part of free speech and hardly unexpected. Michael himself appears to be parroting Keir Starmer and his Cabinet when he refers to the “sickening attempt by far-right extremists to exploit the system for their own agenda”. Attempting to lay all the blame on ‘far-right extremists’ is to completely ignore the legitimate concerns of many, many people who are not on the far-right at all. Perhaps though Michael Carberry and Sir Keir and his ministers really do know something the rest of us don’t know about the politics of all these people.

As far as the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is concerned, as has been pointed out by many, including me on other occasions, this was set up after World War II, historically a very different time with very different problems. As Michael Carberry himself states in his article, it extended “these essentially British values” (human rights, democracy and the rule of law) “across the whole European continent”.  Britain and its former Prime Minister, Winston Churchill were instrumental in setting up both the ECHR and the Council of Europe. If ‘British values’ were as a result extended across Europe, we should hardly need to worry about removing “basic human rights from the entire  British population” in the event of our leaving – unless we have lost all the founding values in the interim. Given the way freedom of speech is going, this could well be the case, but I’m not sure that will be restored by the ECHR.

Clearly I have absolutely no wish to “whip up anti-immigration sentiment”, nor do I consider that the readers of ‘Only Connect’ would be likely candidates for responding to such exhortations. I also find it condescending in the extreme to suggest that I have not the “least idea” how to achieve bringing to a close a period of officially-endorsed liberal access to this country and a time when thousands of mainly young males have been able to gain illegal access. What I was suggesting was that politicians need to take seriously the concerns of many of their countrymen and voters who are unhappy with the way the indigenous population is fast being swamped by the vast numbers of both legal and illegal immigrants, many of whom are not being integrated into our society and culture.  On the basis of this the focus of our politicians and leaders should be to find ways not only of reducing the flow of both legal and illegal immigrants, but also of ensuring that those who do settle here permanently both understand our culture and are prepared to a far greater degree to respect and value that culture – not to demand that we adapt to and show a respect for their culture, which is not reciprocated. It feels that this is the way we have been heading over the last few decades and which our new government is even doubling down on. There seems to be a great concern for indigenous populations anywhere but here in our own country. To point this out is not to be a far-right extremist or a racist.