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CLOSED DOOR: No welcome by British public for migrants

Immigration has returned to the heart of British politics with a bang! With an election due next year, the results may well turn on how the indigenous population votes on this issue.

It is a well know fact that those of us who have travelled here from faraway places worked long hours and were paid less than any other section of the society.

We have built communities over time which continue to support and facilitate an easy integration of newcomers. It was not always thus.

Brixton, Tottenham Southall in London Handsworth in Birmingham and others throughout this land are proof positive that this crucial process is in motion.

It is clear to me that at this point in time the path out of recession can only powered by new and huge injection of immigrant labour.

Daily, hourly large number of youths from India, Pakistan the Caribbean and elsewhere enter this country to pursue further education courses.

They pay exorbitant fees to institutions of learning and the present government allows them to work 20 hours a week. And they have done so in large numbers. Their presence here costs the state very little because our communities offer them a cushion – houses in which to live, a base from which to launch them into this society at little cost to the state.

Asylum seekers, illegal immigrants those who slip past Border Guards add to these numbers and awaiting them are employers who have leased a licence to employ cheap labour in the service industry. This process moves relentlessly on.

There is always a downside to any such activity and on this new economic movement the issue of race has returned.

The rise and rise of the BNP is one such consequence as illustrated by the violent presence that Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time caused.

The increasing presence of the police in our communities is another. Relentless application of stop and search reminds me so much of times past, the early days so to speak.

A cab driver, a friend from West London, tells me that in the last 25 years at his job as a minicab driver he was never stopped by the police. But in the last six months he was stopped five times. Racial attacks have returned with a vengeance. Scores of white men mobilised themselves to attach a mosque in Harrow in London.

A horrific racial attack in Glasgow took a life of a young Asian, a trainee who was on his way to join the Royal Navy.

These are new and hard times. A sweep on the Asian population in the north of England yielded students who were labelled terrorists. Their crime? Regular visits to the mosque and internet shops.

The privatisation of the Royal Mail will require a new labour force. And guess who that will be? Firstly, young Asians and West Indian students highly educated and trained at no cost to the British state. Slowly but surely a displacement of expensive indigenous labour is on the agenda.

We will be witnessing the rise and rise of immigrant women walking the dog, cleaning every nook and cranny of the expanding white middle class as more and more women are drawn into the world of work.

I am sure that the white working classes will not return to work for the wages and the conditions which the new caste of immigrants accepts.

And it is clear to me with the lack of a clean and clear political leadership, they are turning savagely on dark skinned immigrants opening a new era of a racist attacks.

There are those who preach and babble about a post racial nirvana in order to justify their personal search for a comfortable middle class life.

The rest of us will and must concentrate on self defence. We are returning to the slogan: SELF DEFENCE IS NO OFFENCE.

Published: 16 November 2009
Issue: 1398

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