Comment: Immigration is the issue that just won’t go away
It continues to haunt British politics, but the politicians won’t address immigration. They’re just too moderate to reflect the views of Britain’s bigots.
It’s a harsh word, isn’t it? So harsh it cost Gordon Brown the general election. When he used it, referring to Gillian Duffy’s perfectly reasonable concerns about the impact immigration is having on local services, he was roundly condemned. It probably cost him the general election.
Which is why, as I wandered out of a pub in the Oldham East and Saddleworth constituency earlier this week, I found myself thinking twice. Should I use it to describe the group of men I had just been talking to? In the end I did, as you can read here.
I had tottered in seeking a toilet, if I’m honest, but the sudden silence which greeted me made me stop in my track. It was broken only by a growling northern voice observing that “he’s wearing a suit”. I quickly ordered a pint. Half an hour later, as I tweeted, I was “feeling pretty hollow inside”.
I had raised the Oldham race riots, which occurred ten years ago this year, as a conversation starter. It’s got much worse since then, they explained. Those “smelly” Muslims had been taking people’s jobs, sponging off the benefits system and clustering together, squeezing white people out of communities. It was appalling stuff. Had I stumbled into a BNP meeting?
Disgraced Labour MP Phil Woolas lost his court case, and paid the price with his career, after he attempted to “make the white folk angry”. He needn’t have bothered with this bunch. They were already fuming.
So was I when one of them suggested that the only real “solution” to the “problem” was to “kill all Muslims”. I’m not sure anything has ever shocked me more. But then something did: all those present were nodding their heads, muttering in agreement, forthright and confident they had come up with the answer. They were advocating genocide. I left shortly afterwards.
Immigration wasn’t really a big issue in the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election. People were worried about jobs, and the VAT rise, and fears of falling police numbers. But the politicians didn’t worry much about community relations in Oldham, which contains some of the most deprived areas in the country. It was the same during last year’s general election – until Brown’s ‘bigotgate’ gaffe highlighted the biggest single concern on the doorsteps. The politicians don’t want to talk about it.
I don’t blame them for it. All mainstream parties have reasonably similar views on immigration, believe it or not. They believe the system needs to be managed carefully. But they also acknowledge that immigration brings great value to the British economy and realise they couldn’t possibly get by without it. Yes, the Conservative approach panders more to the widespread concerns of many. But they’re not advocating that we should “kill all Muslims”, are they?
No, the politicians hope to keep the headache under wraps as much as they possibly can. It doesn’t always work. Every so often an issue comes along which makes sparks fly.
It happened last weekend when former home secretary Jack Straw raised concerns that the Pakistani community wasn’t doing enough to stop its young men “preying” on white girls. This is a problem, according to Straw’s judgement, which is so big it simply has to be brought out into the open. He may as well not have bothered, if the reactions of the Muslim community in Oldham were anything to go by.
At a hustings event in the constituency ahead of this week’s by-election, hastily organised by the Muslim community, the view was a simple refusal to recognise the problem. “When a Muslim does something it automatically becomes a reflection on the community,” one person said. “As a member of the Pakistani community, I’m certainly not responsible.”
The automatic reflex of the Muslim community, then, is a reflex towards victimisation. They’re being singled out, they feel, and can’t see the link between an individual’s actions and the pressures brought to bear on them by a community. Yet according to voters in the more liberal, affluent Saddleworth part of the constituency, the problem has been around for years – even decades. Straw, a politician who’s been around the block a few times, has been backed up. The problem is simple: the Asian community feels too stigmatised to respond.
When MPs can get away with it they are happy to ignore those whose opinions are, to a professional politician or indeed anyone who supports a mainstream party, simply unacceptable. Yet sometimes, as Straw has demonstrated, issues closely touching these popular concerns become unavoidable. The results never seem to be especially productive. And so the great unsolved problem of modern Britain continues to drag inexorably on.
This is the space in which far-right parties flourish. There’s a mismatch here, isn’t there: between the depressingly popular views like those I encountered in that Oldham pub and the polished, politically correct soundbites of the MPs who are voted to represent them. None of the main parties should represent bigoted views; but that doesn’t change the fact that they exist and are not reflected in mainstream political debate. The BNP lost its deposit in Oldham East and Saddleworth, but the threat remains.
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