The threat to national identity
Published in: Daily Mail
So are we being 'swamped'? David Blunkett has discovered to his cost that in Britain, the cradle of free speech, no-one is even allowed to ask such a question.
The Home Secretary provoked fury when he sought to explain his proposal to educate the children of detained asylum seekers in certain specially constituted schools. He believed that in some areas, services such as schools or GPs' surgeries felt 'swamped' by dealing with so many people who could not speak English.
Uproar! His remarks were denounced as 'despicable'. He was pandering to racists, trying to out-tough the thugs of the British National Party by jumping on their own obnoxious bandwagon.
What putrid nonsense. To his great credit, Blunkett bravely resisted this onslaught and stood by his words. What on earth is going on when one can no longer use plain English to discuss an entirely legitimate matter of pressing concern?
Let me stress immediately that I passionately believe that true refugees should be given sanctuary. And there is no question that immigrants have greatly enriched the nation. But there is also no question that a balance has to be struck. Uncontrolled immigration puts strains on a country that are not in the interests of anyone. It is vital to separate out what is truly racist and objectionable from legitimate concerns.
This row over 'swamping' trivialises and obscures the profound issues at stake. The real reason Blunkett was attacked was that he had uttered an unsayable truth: that upholding a sense of national identity is normal and desirable, and it is legitimate to want to resist the pressures which would destroy it.
Blunkett's critics, however, claim that no one can feel 'swamped' by asylum-seekers since the number of migrants arriving in Britain is minute. Any attempt to stop them is therefore heartless and prejudiced.
It is true that, at present, ethnic minorities form only about eight per cent of the population. But it is also true that in pockets of the country there are high concentrations of recent illegal immigrants whose poor grasp of English and profound differences of culture pose problems that it is the height of foolishness to ignore.
Schools understandably say they simply cannot cope when large proportions of their pupils speak dozens of different languages but no English. In Blunkett's Sheffield constituency, one GP's surgery says it can't provide proper health care as one third of its patients need interpreters, causing some consultations to last an hour and a half.
This situation is unlikely to improve. Home Office figures show that the current inflow of migrants, including asylum seekers, is now very large.
Official figures collated by MigrationWatch UK, an independent monitoring body set up by a former senior Foreign Office diplomat, show that in the last five years the migration picture has been transformed. Britain is now receiving around 200,000 migrants a year from outside the EU, of whom around 100,000 are asylum seekers (of whom only 10,000 are currently removed), 60,000 are dependants of those already here and the rest (on a low estimate) are illegal immigrants.
If this trend continues, there will be at a conservative estimate an extra two million people every decade - almost another Birmingham every five years.
Such a rate of increase is unprecedented. For far from claims often made, Britain is not a nation of immigrants. Until recently, the rate of immigration remained very small ever since the Norman invasion in 1066.
It takes several generations before incoming migrants feel properly integrated into the national culture. This process is a sensitive one, and the proportions have to be manageable if both racial harmony and the country's identity are to survive.
Is it racist to say this? Absolutely not. Racism holds that other races are inferior. For all their new-found 'respectability', people like Jean-Marie Le Pen or the British National Party are real racists; they blame immigrants for all social ills, and preach hatred of people simply because of the colour of their skin or because they are Jews. I abhor them utterly, not least because I am the granddaughter and great-granddaughter of Jewish immigrants.
To damn genuine concerns over migration as racist is to trivialise true prejudice and bigotry. There are real, practical difficulties in trying to absorb such large numbers into an already overcrowded island.
It also presents a real problem about national identity. Everyone needs to know who and what they are. Everyone has the right to identify with a culture and a history. But there comes a point when, if there are too many cultures to be integrated, it becomes simply impossible to transmit a national story.
For our intelligentsia, however, the very idea of a British national identity is racist. For years, the teaching of British political history, English literature, the Christian religion and the development of western civilisation has been frowned on. Instead, our education system has been turned into an engine of multiculturalism, the doctrine that divides people and encourages tribal rivalries.
This is also, of course, a profound assault on the right of British people to have their own identity. To deny that right is deeply illiberal and oppressive. Moreover, the erosion of that identity means the loss of those very values -- tolerance, fairness, gentleness -- that have made this country attractive to migrants in the first place, and which are all deeply rooted in the culture and history of the nation.
Blunkett's asylum bill is moving in the right direction, but it still does not address the central problem. His new detention centres will only take 3000 people; at the current rate, they will be full in a fortnight. He will not solve the asylum problem until he confronts the paralysis caused by human rights law, out-dated international conventions and the running sore of the Channel Tunnel.
I emphasise that, of course, true refugees should be given sanctuary. But most asylum-seekers are not true refugees. Fewer than ten per cent are granted asylum; a further 17 per cent are given exceptional leave to remain for various administrative reasons. Of course, all applicants should be treated humanely. But the idea that people who, in the main, have no claim on this country should receive the same public services as British citizens makes a mockery of citizenship.
But then, those who shriek racism want to destroy British identity and replace it with a new kind of citizen, a year-zero citizen, with no overarching national story to bind inhabitants together. These will be citizens of the republic of meaninglessness.
Blunkett's tormentors claim the moral high ground. But it is not moral to provoke the kind of bigotry and intolerance which inevitably follow from depriving people of the sense of who they are. It is precisely this hostility to the nation state and the deliberate undermining of national integrity which are driving Europeans into the arms of Le Pen and the other neo-fascist parties.
Hitler would not have been defeated had it not been for British national spirit. The truth is that national identity is needed to fight fascism. Those who claim it is racist to try to defend the integrity of a culture have got it precisely the wrong way round.
