Ed Miliband's philistinism
by Max Wind-Cowie
I don’t know if Ed Miliband really believes that the uncontrolled EU immigration that his Government allowed was wrong. I suppose we must take him at his word. It was, however, disingenuous for him to claim that the sheer scale of inward migration from accession countries was ‘unexpected’ – only willful blindness to the advice of their own civil servants and the fears of other politicians and policy experts could seriously have led Labour to be ‘surprised’ by the numbers. But that is in the past.
Much of Miliband's speech, it must be said, is deserving of praise from those of us unashamedly concerned about immigration. Miliband is right that the flood of cheap, skilled and hardworking labour has compounded the desperation of Britain’s working class. He is right that the disastrous elevation of ‘need’ as our sole measure of entitlement – to resources from social housing to welfare – has punished our own and disproportionately catered to the newly arrived and the un-established. And he is right that to dismiss those who raise these questions as ‘bigots’ is to add literal insult to real injury.
But there was something missing from Miliband’s mea culpa. Apart from one brief, sweeping and undetailed paragraph about the ‘pace of change’, nowhere to be found was an acknowledgement of those immigration problems that are not resource based. There was no mention of the rise in segregating and alienating customs such as the wearing of the Burqa. No mention of forced marriages, open homophobia or inter-community racism. Not a word about the sometimes terrifying failure of integration that has come to define Britain’s relationship with immigration.
Of course money matters. And being unable to find a job, seeing migrants skip the housing queue and immediately claim benefits are all sources of soreness for British people. But culture matters too, it matters more to a great many people. And until Ed Miliband and his party begin to describe and understand the way in which custom, manners, practice and values impact upon people’s lives as fiercely as does economic change, they will not be able to sufficiently answer those voters still stung by their betrayal at the hands of Labour.
DE
I am a proud British Jew and unashamed of either of those things. In fact Jews are often held up by the right as the ideal minority. But we have our own schools, welfare infrastructure, sports clubs and golf courses. In parts of the community semi-arranged marriages are common and Yiddish is still the lingua franca. That is before we get to the still very strong taboo in most of the community about "marrying out", and the elective, non-medical surgery that we perform upon eight-day-old boys without their consent.
Now, on balance, I do think that our community has the right to act in the above manner. However, there is certainly homophobia sanctioned from the pulpit. So all in all, you have plenty of ' segregating and alienating customs' going on.
There is plenty of anti-Jewish rhetoric, but it doesn't tend to come from the anti-multicultural right. So why doesn't the Jewish community get charged with the same crimes as other minorities who practice ' segregating and alienating customs' It saddens me to say it, but I think its because (erroneously) the anti-multicultural right think of us as wholly white. I'm sorry, but I can't think of another reason.
David Vinter
Let Milliband , and many other politicians should get realistic, it cannot be sense [never mind the morals] to encourage immigration into a country that can only feed just over half of its present [and growing] population. It must mean the UK having to buy evermore food on the world market, leaving less for the really desparate!
Malcolm Rasala
We should tread this anti-immigration path with the most extreme caution. Firstly, it does not really make economic sense. Last week we sold three more of our major British companies to foreign interests: Boots to American Walgreens, Clinton Cards to American Cards and Hartleys jam to another foreign management. Are we going to deny these owners and management to live here if they decide to? Our car industry is owned by foreign companies from Land Rover and Jaguar (Tata of India), Toyota, Nissan, Mini, Ford. Are we going to say no totheir managementliving here and enjoying our NHS etc? But much much more importantly is the danger we could possibly be creating. What is to say we will not create our own fruitcake Anders Behring Brevik who as we all know murdered 69 young people and 8 others in the name of anti-immigration. Sometimes in life things just need to be left unsaid. This is one. There is no problem about immigration. It is just a phobia fevered up by racists and our racist redtops. 45 million died in the last war fighting
facist nationalism. Did they die in vain?
Max Wind-Cowie
Hello folks,
Many thanks for the comments.
Richard, the truth is that I believe these issues to be intrinsically emotional as well as evidence-based - trying to exclude arguments and concerns founded in sentiment from political debate is an ugly and alienating way forward. As to whether segregation is simply a 'product' of the 70's - many would argue that wave after wave of new arrivals from both inside and outside the EU have made it harder to integrate and adjust to migration and have added to segregation and inter-community mistrust.
DE, I would agree that there are examples of self-segregating behaviour in lots of migrant communities. Some of these are more worrying than others. The key is that we have a political atmosphere in which folk feel free and able to raise those cultural and religious practices that alarm them without the silencing fear of being accused of harbouring racism.
David, I am not a Malthusian and I don't regard food production as being the primary problem re. immigration. As I say in the post, I think an obsessive focus on 'resource' is both a symptom and a cause of our political class' inability (or unwillingness) to engage with the primary issue - which is one of culture.
And Malcolm - good to hear from you, as ever. Evidently we disagree about whether there is a real problem here. That's fine. But you are very wrong, and misguided, to assume that there are only two possible positions... yours ('there is no problem about immigration') and Breivik's. There are a thousand nuanced positions in between. Mine, I believe, is one of them.
Malcolm Rasala
I agree Max, There are indeed a thousand nuanced possibilities. But at base the arguments against immigration are racist. You only have to go on ConservativeHome a relatively mainstream conservative blog to read the racism inherent in the arguments put forward. They had a recent debate about Enoch Powell. The arguments posited by what appeared to be mainstream conservatives bordered on BNP /EDF language. Shocking. And in your heart of heart you know there is a stream of racism running through certain political sectors of our society. What intelligent sensible human beings have to do is find a way to debate the subject with the full depth of evidence. For example three quarters of a million Brits emigrate to Spain, France, Italy and Germany. This simple fact amply announced lessens
the sense that is only we who are 'suffering' immigration. Immigration is not a suffering. It is the right and inevitable action
of free human beings gaining knowledge and understanding and income. Who in their right mind would want to stop young Britons going to study, work, experience America, or South America, or Chinaor any European nation. Likewise them coming here. It enriches us all.
Richard Jones
I guess it depends on whether you want to have politics guided by facts or by emotional instincts. The facts are that most immigration is either unavoidable under EU law, or serving Britain's very last world class export industry (i.e. foreign university students, paying far more than domestic ones), or related to human rights issues that even communitarians should find some sympathy with.
The ethnic, religious and cultural issues you describe are a legacy of the 1970s and '80s, along with a policy (which perhaps you oppose, like other supposed conservatives) of allowing families to be united. They have very little to do with New Labour's policies. Your use of the metaphor "flood" probably reveals enough about your emotional instincts on this issue.