Laud The Problem With Immigrants

1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-84954-877-9
Verlag: Biteback Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 336 Seiten

In modern Britain, barely a day goes by without a politician, pundit, paper or pub-goer launching into a tirade about 'the problem with immigrants' and what should be done to tackle it. High unemployment, overcrowded schools, benefit scrounging, housing shortages, stretched healthcare services ... pretty much every issue facing the country today seems to be pinned on immigration - but is it really a problem at all? In this fascinating book, Derek Laud sets out to challenge the widespread misconceptions and prejudices surrounding those who have relocated to the UK. He examines the social, economic and cultural impact of immigration across the centuries, and addresses the question of why some ethnic communities struggle here while others thrive. An insightful, thought-provoking and timely examination of one of the most significant issues of our time, this is an indispensable and refreshingly nuanced contribution to the immigration debate.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Laud, Derek

Leseproben

Preface: Enoch Powell

HIS VERY NAME HAS SOMETHING of a menacing ring about it. Enoch Powell – or, to be more precise, John Enoch Powell – was a menace. He spent thirty-seven years as a Member of Parliament and three years as Minister of Health – and he was a menace to many of his colleagues. This classical scholar, author, poet, politician and, in his time, the youngest brigadier in the British Army died in 1998. It is doubtful that he will be remembered for any of those exceptional things … bar one, perhaps. It was as a politician – a Tory politician – that he made his indelible mark. Speaking in 1990 in Cambridge, he said: ‘I was born a Tory, I am a Tory … it is part of me, it’s something I cannot change’ – but he died without a Tory membership card in his wallet. Oddly enough, though, it was not the issue of race and immigration – for which he became best known – that caused the parting of the waves.

When I first heard the word ‘racist’, it was in connection with Enoch Powell. I was about eight years old at the time and, long before I knew much about anything else, I knew about Enoch Powell. I remember seeing a photograph of him. He looked intense. There was no smile. I was curious.

Politics was everything to Powell. Many think that, had it not been for the 1968 ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, he would have been Prime Minister. I do not subscribe to that view myself. Powell was not temperamentally suited to office: he was a loner and could not live side by side with collective responsibility. He always needed to be right. He was also in a party, as Lord Hailsham once put it, ‘that thinks it is wicked to have brains’. For that reason too, he was always going to be the odd man out.

This isn’t a book about Powell, and I cannot give any authoritative judgement of him (I did not know him well enough). My contribution is as a bystander – who witnessed, for over a decade, many of his orations from the gallery of the House of Commons – and as an earnest young researcher – who pored over many of his past speeches and articles. There was no doubting that the man was a Tory to his fingertips.

However, the very thing Powell said – he was born a Tory – was in fact something he spent most of his lifetime opposing. He started early, resigning from Macmillan’s government over public expenditure in 1958. Then, and most infamously, came his views on immigration and ‘Rivers of Blood’. And subsequently, almost as if he were working to a deliberate ten-year cycle, the Common Market reared its head and he voted Labour in the 1974 general election as a result. He was always drifting against the prevailing tide, and there were other policy differences too.

Many thought of Powell as a dangerous figure. To them, he had too many principles (the Conservatives had always been largely pragmatic until Mrs Thatcher came along) and he seemed hell-bent on destroying his party if he could not make it in his own image. When he famously urged the voter to turn on the Tory Party and vote Labour in 1974, he created a rift he could not have known would be permanent. Powell had in fact previously voted Labour in the 1945 general election, because he had wanted to punish the Conservative Party for the Munich Agreement.

Indeed, in my view, he was not – by any means – always wrong in his endeavours to reprimand his party. I personally hate the chant ‘my party, right or wrong, my party’.

All political parties need fearless figures like Powell. I was so admiring of him – and Tony Benn – for that same reason: the political stage is dull without them, and there are no comparable figures today. All good revolutions are intellectual and Powell provided his fair share of revolutions. We all remember Winston Churchill for his leadership during the Second World War, but, like Powell, he was independent-minded and he even changed party too. In fact, in a quote never published before – but kindly made available to me by the Trustees of the Gilmour family – Churchill had similar concerns about immigration. This is taken from Lord Gilmour’s unpublished diaries:

The next week we had a rather different social occasion, this time, no doubt, at the instance of Caroline’s mother. She and we were invited to lunch at 10 Downing Street with only the Prime Minister, his wife Lady Churchill, his daughter Mary Soames, and his private secretary Jock Colville. Although very deaf to begin with, Sir Winston became much less so after he had summoned his hearing aid, and he was as far from being gaga as anybody else present. He was given frequent messages as to how questions were proceeding in the Commons. In those days, Prime Minister’s questions did not begin at a set time, but only if, and when, ordinary questions reached no. 45. On our day, they didn’t. After a while Churchill raised the question of ’s attitude to the arrival of immigrants from the West Indies. I explained our fears that if immigration continued at its current rate there would be an explosion in Brixton or elsewhere; we therefore favoured measures to restrict it. After expressing some measure of approval, the Prime Minister said: ‘I think it is the most important subject facing this country, but I cannot get any of my ministers to take any notice.’

It was a spring day on 20 April 1968 when Enoch Powell rose to his feet to deliver what might very well be the most famous and controversial speech ever made on race relations and immigration in Britain. Ever since that time, Powell’s name has been synonymous with immigration and, in particular, with racism. It is not hard to see how this impression came about. To re-read his speech is a chilling experience. To watch the video footage is distressing. The language, the intonations and the intensity are nothing short of deliberate histrionics. His small frame, pearl-like blue eyes and nasal tones make this man intriguing from the off.

An examination of the original typed text of his speech – with additions and corrections in his own hand (complete with underlining of points to emphasise) – implies, as one would expect from him, preparedness for the storm he was about to create. He must have known that he was gambling his entire career and reputation on this one speech. Powell knew what he was about – I can’t imagine he ever had much self-doubt – and he intended his contribution to be disruptive and offensive. But to whom? Was he really targeting the Afro-Caribbean community (as Churchill clearly was), or the leader of his own party (whom he desperately wanted to destabilise, if not replace)? Could Heath really have been the intended victim? I have no doubt that, among many things, Powell knew how to be Machiavellian.

Churchill died three years before Powell’s speech, but they would have sat in the Commons together. Powell would seemingly have enjoyed support from Churchill for his concern about immigration, but I doubt for his use of emotive and vulgar language. The ghost of Enoch Powell looms large whenever I think of immigration, and surely it is the same for others of my generation? The unsettled question (for me, certainly) wasn’t whether Powell was wrong or right – broadly speaking, he was wrong (of that, I am sure) – but rather whether his motives were racialist or not. On that, I just cannot be forthcoming. There are others who are more certain: I argued with the late James Baldwin about it into the early hours while staying with him in France. If he could not persuade me, then I doubt anyone else can.

Powell’s influence rapidly waned after 1968 and it was in 1974 that he made his next major move: he resigned from the Tory Party and stood for the Ulster Unionists in an election in the Northern Ireland seat of South Down.

The menace in Powell surfaced on the political landscape in a major way – across the board and always unpredictably. We shared John Biffen in common as friends. I adored John and miss him very much – this urbane, intellectual and witty man had a considerable influence on my outlook. He once described Enoch as being ‘a fully paid-up member of the awkward squad’. I think he was being characteristically kind to his friend.

Jim Prior amusingly dubbed Powell the ‘Wolverhampton Wanderer’. Prior didn’t trust Powell and hostilities intensified during the former’s period as Northern Ireland Secretary. To be frank, Powell was downright stubborn. He was egotistical and, yes, fearless to the point of wilful destruction. He was also clearly riddled with integrity and was a passionate parliamentarian. Britain is a much safer place when our elected politicians have a disposition towards a parliamentary conscious, and Powell did – I will always salute that.

Powell raises more questions to which I provide answers. I was once, like Powell, a man for whom politics was everything. I admired him from afar. I have always been economically Powellite, but departed from the manner in which he expressed his views: I don’t believe in using fear as a justification for policy-making, which is what he was doing in his 1968 speech. That is also what our current second-tier politicians do while snatching our liberties from under our noses as if it were a plaything. The dangerously ambitious and suspect Home Secretary Theresa May is one to be watched.

What would Powell make of today’s London, a financial capital of the world economically fuelled by a significantly foreign workforce? The company where I am a partner employs people from at least twelve different nationalities; between us, we speak eighteen different languages. Our capital city is diverse and we are benefitting...