Gerald Warner: Brown fiddles immigration figures and turns deaf ear

Published on Saturday 3 April 2010 19:50

SUDDENLY, it is all right to talk about immigration: the Great Leader says so – look, he is even doing it himself.

He is, of course, telling porkies on a scale that obliges Sir Michael Scholar, chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, to slap him down in a stiff letter, in order to "protect the integrity of official statistics".

Gordon Brown's spurious figures, designed to show a "decrease" in net immigration over the period 2007-09, used statistics to mid-June 2009 drawn from a different database to the previous two years' figures, having massaged the 2007 statistic upwards from 233,000 to 237,000 for additional effect. In the broad context of Labour/Tory deception on this issue, that was a relatively venial sin. Nobody in Britain has expected a mainstream politician to tell the truth about immigration for the past 40 years.

What excited commentators was Gordon's audacious use of the 'I-word': most observers half expected to see him get his collar felt for raising a taboo subject. The Tories were appalled. I mean, there are some things one simply doesn't talk about; next thing we know, some loudmouth will be going on about a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Is nobody aware that Mrs Cameron is having a baby and that is what this election is about?

When future historians study the massive demographic engineering exercise that was carried out in Britain over half a century, the question that will most challenge them is: how could such a seismic change be imposed on a developed democracy without constant and informed public debate? The answer, they will find, is: by creating a cross-party consensus to overrule the public will, by generating a synthetic hysteria about "race" and by enacting intimidatory laws to prevent free speech on this issue.

Now the dam of public concern has burst and politicians are being swept along by the flood. Belatedly, it is permissible to discuss the problem provoked by loss of control of our borders. What are the facts? According to Home Office figures, between 1955 and 1962 Commonwealth immigration amounted to 472,000. Thereafter, a further 2.5 million arrived, bringing the official total to around three million. A prolific birth rate has brought the legally settled Commonwealth population up to four million, or 7 per cent of the population of England and Wales. So much for legal immigrants. Last year, a study by the London School of Economics estimated there were 725,000 illegal residents in Britain.

The much-canvassed migration from the EU is minor and often transitory. Its real significance is that it freed up debate because, when a black-skinned immigrant with several decades' British residence behind him expressed concern about an influx of white-skinned Eastern Europeans, it was difficult for even the most demented PC enforcer to shriek "Racist!" As for our obligation to accept EU migrants, the very fact of Brussels dismantling our borders is sufficient reason for us to leave the Euro-cartel.

The canard about Scotland's plummeting population requiring increased immigration is nonsense, as demographers have proved. As for a separate Scottish immigration policy, there is no conceivable means of preventing migrants into Scotland using it as a staging post to higher wages and a preferable climate south of the Border. Acting as a permanently open back door to England would not be an acceptable role within the United Kingdom.

Proverbs about stable doors and horses hardly suffice to describe this belated addressing of a problem that was swept under the carpet from 1968 onward, after Enoch Powell raised the issue. That was when a genuine democracy would have reacted by holding a national debate; instead, our masters resorted to coercion. The lies that were routinely told were embarrassing in their transparency. "We are a nation of immigrants." Wrong: even in England there was no significant immigration from outwith the British Isles from 1066 to 1950, apart from 50,000 Huguenots in the 17th century.

Immigration orthodoxies changed faster than women's hem-lines. Multiculturalism bred Islamist extremism. Then there was the "skills" argument. Apart from extremely esoteric expertise in particle physics and a few analogous situations, any Western society that needs to import basic skills is a Third World country.

Today, an immigrant arrives in Britain every minute. Gordon Brown insists a "pre-determined quota" would be "arbitrary and unworkable"; David Cameron wants a cap on immigration but refuses to say what it would be, except that he would "reduce" immigration to "tens of thousands a year". Yes, they are certainly talking about it; but that is all they are doing. That is probably just as well: who would believe any promises they might make anyway?