The immigration lie

For twelve years New Labour has been telling us that it's been doing everything it can to get immigration under control but that, what with one thing and another, it's just been so gosh darn difficult. The laws are too tricky to write, almost impossible to enforce, the tide of incoming people is too large, and the EU just wedges the gates open. "Golly," they kept saying, "We'll solve it somehow, but until then everyone is just going to have to grin and bear it. Stiffer upper lip and all that."

Then a gentleman named Andrew Neather, a Labour adviser, publishes an article in the Evening Standard entitled "Don't Listen to the Whingers–London Needs Immigrants" in which he reveals that far from trying and failing to control mass immigration, New Labour was not only encouraging it, they were counting on it. In fact, Mr Neather isn't even reporting this as the revelation of a monumental scandal blackening the heart of government, but because he wants to brag about it.

According to Mr Neather, Labour's immigration policy was that mass immigration was

(T)he way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural... the policy was intended–even if this wasn't its main purpose–to rub the Right's nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date.

And by multicultural, Labour meant

(I)mmigration busted wide open the stale 1990s clichés about multiculturalism: it's a question of genuine diversity now, not just tacking a few Afro-Caribbean and Bengali events on to a white British mainstream. It's one of the reasons Paris now tends to look parochial to us

Hard cheese, Paris. However, Labour realised that this might not go down well outside of London:

(W)hile ministers might have been passionately in favour of a more diverse society, it wasn't necessarily a debate they wanted to have in working men's clubs in Sheffield or Sunderland.

Not that that matters to Mr Neather or the rest of New Labour. After all,

The results in London, and especially for middle-class Londoners, have been highly positive. It's not simply a question of foreign nannies, cleaners and gardeners - although frankly it's hard to see how the capital could function without them.Their place certainly wouldn't be taken by unemployed BNP voters from Barking or Burnley - fascist au pair, anyone?

It seems that the party of the working man was awfully keen on importing a new servant class.

Immigration has long been one of the hot-button issues in Britain. Mostly because the larger waves of immigrants in the past tended to be fit young men between 18 and 30 carrying spears. It also didn't help that the first wave of postwar immigration was so amazingly botched by both Labour and Conservative governments. In an attempt to bolster a dying textile industry, Whitehall decided to import immigrants from the West Indies. These immigrants, while thoroughly decent people, were seen by working class Britons as unwelcome intruders who were being foisted on them against their will by a government who didn't give a damn what they thought. In the end, the textile industry died, the immigrants remained. As new waves of immigrants came for reasons of Commonwealth relations, asylum for refugees, or the trading block of the EEC becoming the empire of the EU, succeeding governments adopted a new policy of sticking their fingers in their ears and humming loudly. Small wonder that insane fringe groups like the BNP could gain so much traction.

Now we find out not only why New Labour couldn't control immigration, but why they are so terrified of the BNP. It isn't because the BNP's policies are any sort of threat. It's always been a joke party; more Roderick Spode than Sir Oswald Mosely. Rather it's because the only way to truly spike the BNP's racialist guns would be to have an honest discussion about immigration and that would reveal the dirty little secret that Mr Neather crows about: New Labour conspired against the British people as part of a deliberate plan to make freeborn Britons into lab animals for New Labour's social experiment intended to remove Britain's shared past, customs, mores, religion, and cultural identity. I have more truck with American businessmen and farmers who abet illegal immigration for purely economic reasons. At least they're honestly corrupt. This is borderline treason. It comes very close to making war upon one's own people by aiding and abetting a foreign invasion.

What all this boils down to is the most gobsmacking con game to have been perpetrated in Britain since the Vikings shouted "Oo! Look over there!" What I want to know is what the hell was going through Tony Blair's ivory knob when all this was planned? Making Britain "truly multicultural"? Even on its own terms this is a fatheaded goal. Did they truly think that their Third World army would quietly march to New Labour's orders? That the result would be nothing more than lots of good fusion restaurants, someone to mow the lawn cheap, a barista surplus, and newsreaders with unpronounceable names all making London more vibrant and interesting? Was it worth chucking eight thousand years of history into the dustbin so Mr Neather could have the excitement of having his drains cleared by a man who only speaks Polish? Didn't Mr Blair ever consider that such a large wave of immigrants might not include people who have priorities of their own? Priorities more in line with the Caliphate than the Huguenots? Or that for working class people immigration doesn't mean having a chat in Islington with that nice Mr Singh down the winebar, but having to cope with vicious Asian gangs laying claim to a neighbourhood changed out of all recognition? That they might have legitimate social and economic concerns other than indulging in some racist streak? And when was this wave of secretly orchestrated mass immigration supposed to end? When the Immigrant Problem became the Native Problem?

Immigration is a good thing. In the right numbers and with assimilation as the goal, it can revitalize and enrich a nation like a shot of cultural wasabi. Whole nations have been built on immigration and has resulted in one case in the greatest superpower the world has ever seen. But New Labour has put paid to that as far as Britain is concerned thanks to making people fleeing tyranny or just seeking a better life into their unknowing shock troops in Tony Blair et al's Kulturkampf. Beyond that, it has now become quite impossible to trust New Labour on anything ever again. ID cards? Devolution? DNA databases? Constitutional reform? The Lisbon Treaty? A new menu at the Little Chef? Before I sign on to any of this, no matter how innocuous it sounds, I'm going to be asking myself, "What are they really after? What are they really trying to do to us?"

Whatever it is, I'd rather not take the chance.