It’s not racist to discuss immigration

Ignoring the debate about who comes into this country plays into the hands of the far right, says Stephen McCabe

by Tribune Web Editor
Sunday, November 29th, 2009

Ignoring the debate about who comes into this country plays into the hands of the far right, says Stephen McCabe

Recent press comment, British National Party activity and a speech from the Prime Minister have again turned the spotlight on immigration.

I’ve just completed a postal survey of about 25,000 voters – about 10 per cent of whom identify themselves as being of Asian, black or Chinese origin – with a 15 per cent response rate. There were no obvious differences in replies from white or ethnic minority voters. The findings show that people are concerned about the effects of immigration on housing, schools and jobs. Ninety-one per cent think migrants should be able to speak English, 87 per cent want a points system to govern future immigration and 92 per cent support the concept of “earned citizenship”. Voters seem very keen to engage on the subject, but I’ve been surprised at the hostile reaction of some Labour Party members.

Of course, this a is sensitive issue and some immigrant families fear that discussion might encourage racists. But the racists are already dominating the debate. Could this development in some major towns and cities be an unintended consequence of the left’s silence on immigration? Has this silence been perversely translated as: “Stay hidden in your own communities and we’ll keep quiet?”

While this might work in times of prosperity, it stores up future problems. The clues were there in the mini riots of the early 1980s.

My survey shows overwhelming support for involvement rather than separatism. Aren’t participation and contribution old-fashioned Labour values? It’s hard for the hidden and excluded to participate and that’s why language is so important.

There’s also a new dynamic in the immigration debate. Increasingly, I meet angry constituents who say that they or their forefathers came to this country legally and established themselves by their hard work, but are now being victimised because of the behaviour of others. One constituent of Pakistani origin berated me for letting in illegal immigrants while making it hard for his uncle to get a visa to visit his father, an elderly man in poor health.

At a recent Remembrance Day service, I noticed just how many members of the Sikh community wanted to take part as a statement of their Britishness.

I’m not convinced that attitudes to immigration are any longer the preserve of white liberals and the working class. I’ve tried to explain this to Labour members who are alarmed about debate, but they seem preoccupied with a much earlier model of race relations.

I understand their concerns. We should remember that: “If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour” was a slogan used by Tories  in the 1960s. But the issues confronting all communities are different today.

Discussing immigration doesn’t make you a racist, while using your fears to silence others won’t help anyone. We’ve got to go beyond the analysis of armchair liberals and listen to what ordinary people actually have to say. A lot of it is uncomfortable but that’s no excuse for refusing to engage with them.

Yes, some members of the white working class have racist views. There is also overt racism between different ethnic groups. But it’s a mistake to make an automatic association between crudeness of language or belligerence with deliberate racism. Some of the worst racists I have ever met spoke with impeccable English and held down very important jobs.

Why is it wrong for people to express their worries about changes to their once-familiar environment? Helping people talk about and come to terms with such fears is sensible. The Department for Communities and Local Government seems to agree, which is why it as set up the Connecting Communities Fund.

Shouldn’t we try to understand people who are upset to discover the school place they had expected for their child isn’t there because the school is full or that the housing waiting list is growing because others appear to have leapfrogged over their family? Local councils should address such anxieties. Where myths and falsehoods are being peddled, they have a responsibility to set the record straight. Genuine discussion will make it harder for the BNP and closet racists to operate.

We should talk openly about immigration and citizenship. We should discuss what a rigid cap or total ban would mean and examine people’s thoughts on identity cards for foreigners, as well as the positive contribution they make to this country, and the costs of policing and deporting illegal entrants.

The public should be encouraged to understand all this. People should be consulted on the migration assessment figures and allowed to comment on impact on local services. In times of high unemployment, it can’t be wrong to say that our priority should be jobs for those already entitled to be in this country.

It is not immigration that is a gift for the far right. Rather, it is the arrogance and dismissive behaviour of those who think avoidance is an answer and mistake genuine enquiry for actual racism.

Stephen McCabe is Labour MP for Birmingham Hall Green and a Government whip

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  • terence patrick hewett

    It would be instructive to compare what has been done in this country to working class communities in the last 50 years, with what was done in South Africa under the Group Areas Act; and to compare the sense of loss and grief displayed by the victims at the trashing of their communities. Great outrage was displayed in the 1960′s, at the District Six removals in Capetown, South Africa.

    On 11 February 1966, the South African Government declared District Six a whites-only area under the Group Areas Act, with removals starting in 1968. By 1982, more than 60,000 people had been relocated to the bleak Cape Flats Township some 25 kilometres away. Everything in District Six was bulldozed except a couple of churches. The people that were removed suffered incredible cultural and identity loss and were subject to the appalling violence of the Cape Flats criminal gangs.

    The working classes in this country after 1950 saw their families dispersed, their towns and close knit communities destroyed and turned into murderous, vice ridden slums infinitely worse than anything they replaced, a thing that even Hitler did not achieve. Their family oriented culture came under constant and consistent attack. The abolition of capital and corporal punishment was something they never wanted because they knew what it would mean for them. They could not control their children; the usual robust methods being made illegal. The legalisation of abortion destroyed traditional morality and family structure, a eugenic attempt to kill off the next generation; the butcher’s bill stands at one half of a million and counting. The schools which offered a way out of poverty were debauched and an anti-learning culture fostered from within them. They were called “chavs” and made to feel that their culture and love of country was inferior and even the traditional recreations of pub drinking and smoking outlawed.

    The responses to both of these events were very different. The one elicited outrage; but protests against the other were regarded with incomprehension and contempt. It was as if society regarded the working classes in Britain to be of a lower order of humanity that was unable to experience emotion and loss; a brute order of humanity with a debased culture of no value. The enormity of what the liberal elites have done to British society in the name of social engineering is now beginning to sink in. We get calls to fix our broken society by the very people who broke it in the first place. Like post Apartheid South Africa, one longs for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where the enforcers are encouraged to admit that everything they have implemented in the name of social engineering in the last fifty years has been a giant, tragic, cruel, wicked and traumatic social experiment inspired by some very base motives. Those who do not come from these communities do not even begin to understand the depth of the contempt and anger. People justly feel betrayed and marginalised by the very organizations that should have protected them. .

    I was born in the East End of London and I saw it happen. I was also in Capetown when the removals from District Six took place; some of those people are my friends. So I retain the right to make these comments no matter how unwelcome they may be. There is a world of difference between being there and experiencing it, and just reading about it in books.

    The society that was displaced was not perfect by any means, but in comparison to the violent and dysfunctional chaos that has been brought about by the activities of the liberal elites and their enforcers, it was a heaven of tolerance. That society was no accident; it was brought about after a 100 years of social reform by the Victorians and Edwardians. And our murderous and vice ridden society is no accident either; it was brought about in 50 short years by agents of a force bent on our destruction. They have managed to achieve the almost impossible; they have dragged us back into the horrors of the 18th century. Our unwritten constitution worked very well until recently, but it afforded us no protection from an internal enemy, not based on Plato’s Will to Good, but based on Nietzsche’s Will to Power. And God help us, we let it happen. What has been done is wrong in Christian terms, in philosophical terms, in human terms and in terms of self interest. Normal human relations are rooted in mutual respect not in the hatreds of domination by intolerance.

  • terence patrick hewett

    It would be instructive to compare what has been done in this country to working class communities in the last 50 years, with what was done in South Africa under the Group Areas Act; and to compare the sense of loss and grief displayed by the victims at the trashing of their communities. Great outrage was displayed in the 1960′s, at the District Six removals in Capetown, South Africa.

    On 11 February 1966, the South African Government declared District Six a whites-only area under the Group Areas Act, with removals starting in 1968. By 1982, more than 60,000 people had been relocated to the bleak Cape Flats Township some 25 kilometres away. Everything in District Six was bulldozed except a couple of churches. The people that were removed suffered incredible cultural and identity loss and were subject to the appalling violence of the Cape Flats criminal gangs.

    The working classes in this country after 1950 saw their families dispersed, their towns and close knit communities destroyed and turned into murderous, vice ridden slums infinitely worse than anything they replaced, a thing that even Hitler did not achieve. Their family oriented culture came under constant and consistent attack. The abolition of capital and corporal punishment was something they never wanted because they knew what it would mean for them. They could not control their children; the usual robust methods being made illegal. The legalisation of abortion destroyed traditional morality and family structure, a eugenic attempt to kill off the next generation; the butcher’s bill stands at one half of a million and counting. The schools which offered a way out of poverty were debauched and an anti-learning culture fostered from within them. They were called “chavs” and made to feel that their culture and love of country was inferior and even the traditional recreations of pub drinking and smoking outlawed.

    The responses to both of these events were very different. The one elicited outrage; but protests against the other were regarded with incomprehension and contempt. It was as if society regarded the working classes in Britain to be of a lower order of humanity that was unable to experience emotion and loss; a brute order of humanity with a debased culture of no value. The enormity of what the liberal elites have done to British society in the name of social engineering is now beginning to sink in. We get calls to fix our broken society by the very people who broke it in the first place. Like post Apartheid South Africa, one longs for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where the enforcers are encouraged to admit that everything they have implemented in the name of social engineering in the last fifty years has been a giant, tragic, cruel, wicked and traumatic social experiment inspired by some very base motives. Those who do not come from these communities do not even begin to understand the depth of the contempt and anger. People justly feel betrayed and marginalised by the very organizations that should have protected them. .

    I was born in the East End of London and I saw it happen. I was also in Capetown when the removals from District Six took place; some of those people are my friends. So I retain the right to make these comments no matter how unwelcome they may be. There is a world of difference between being there and experiencing it, and just reading about it in books.

    The society that was displaced was not perfect by any means, but in comparison to the violent and dysfunctional chaos that has been brought about by the activities of the liberal elites and their enforcers, it was a heaven of tolerance. That society was no accident; it was brought about after a 100 years of social reform by the Victorians and Edwardians. And our murderous and vice ridden society is no accident either; it was brought about in 50 short years by agents of a force bent on our destruction. They have managed to achieve the almost impossible; they have dragged us back into the horrors of the 18th century. Our unwritten constitution worked very well until recently, but it afforded us no protection from an internal enemy, not based on Plato’s Will to Good, but based on Nietzsche’s Will to Power. And God help us, we let it happen. What has been done is wrong in Christian terms, in philosophical terms, in human terms and in terms of self interest. Normal human relations are rooted in mutual respect not in the hatreds of domination by intolerance.

  • Robert

    well written comment sadly it is true, and Labours spin is always the lsoer these days

  • Robert

    well written comment sadly it is true, and Labours spin is always the lsoer these days

  • terence patrick hewett

    Correction to initial comment:
    The figure for abortions carried out since the implementation of the 1967 Abortion Act is 6.7 million and not 0.5 million as stated above. The overwhelming majority of these operations where carried out by the NHS. The moral implications, the human cost, the societal impact and the effect upon government policy that this figure represents, are truly shocking.

  • terence patrick hewett

    Correction to initial comment:
    The figure for abortions carried out since the implementation of the 1967 Abortion Act is 6.7 million and not 0.5 million as stated above. The overwhelming majority of these operations where carried out by the NHS. The moral implications, the human cost, the societal impact and the effect upon government policy that this figure represents, are truly shocking.

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