THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: As David Cameron admits that Britain is disjointed by mass immigration, Ruth Dudley Edwards examines the consequences of our lax policies.I lived for 30 years in South Ealing in West London, which originally was a model little London village. The Poles who arrived after the war were thoroughly integrated, the Hindu shopkeepers got on with everyone, including the local Muslim residents, and although there were new immigrants from perhaps 20 countries, the pace of change was slow and unthreatening. We knew that nearby Southall had long since become an ethnic ghetto, but we were sure this would not happen to us. There were, perhaps, more Indian restaurants in South Ealing than anyone could possibly require, but the only local grumbles I can recall were about some Somali refugees who had trashed their council house.
We all ticked along in our own way. I liked living in South Ealing. But things changed. What ruined our community and the personality of our neighbourhood were the young Eastern Europeans who poured in from 2004 onwards. I am not criticising the character of these young migrants. They were generally hardworking, eager and ambitious. But they arrived all at once in large numbers and, most significantly, had zero interest in integrating. They lived and socialised exclusively together, watched Polish television channels via their satellite dishes, chatted to family back home for free on Skype, set up Polish shops to sell Polish food, newspapers and books, and they learnt only as much English as they had to. Seeing shop after little shop put up the words Polski sklep marked the end of the village I knew.
This is why I applaud the Prime Minister for admitting that people are profoundly disturbed by the havoc that mass immigration has wreaked on parts of Britain. “When there have been significant numbers of new people arriving in neighbourhoods,” he said, “perhaps not able to speak the same language as those living there, on occasions not really wanting or even willing to integrate, that has created a kind of discomfort and disjointedness in some neighbourhoods.”
Many people across Britain – from big cities to smaller towns – will have nodded along to Mr Cameron’s comments. I now live in central London, which I love, but there is no pretence that it is a community: it is the most cosmopolitan city state in the world and largely reflects the upside of immigration – a dynamic employment market and a diverse cultural scene. The downside is visible a few Tube stops down the line from me in places like Tower Hamlets and New Cross where the communities are far more fractured than South Ealing. These areas also suffer from the worrying, spreading rash of Islamism. » | Ruth Dudley Edwards | Thursday, April 14, 2011
My comment:
Don't get too taken in by Cameron's sweet words. He's only playing to the gallery. He's too soft to do anything meaningful about the problem. There are ways of dealing with this problem, but the captains of industry wouldn't brook much of a curtailment in immigration because they want cheap labour.
Furthermore, he spoke of allowing tens of thousands more immigrants per year into the country, rather than hundreds of thousands. At the moment, what do we want any more immigrants for at all? Haven't we got enough immigrants here already? Haven't we got enough of a workforce in this shrinking economy? And come to think of it, what are they doing to track down the illegal immigrants?
The speech Cameron made yesterday sounded good, but in actual fact it was nothing more than hot air. Nothing much will be done about the problem. The will isn't there. They'd rather destroy Britain and all it has ever stood for.
By the way if you ever thought this country was a democracy, think again. This country is run by the ruling élite, for the ruling élite. Having cheap labour is in the ruling élite's best interests. What these immigrants do to the fabric of society is of little concern to them. They've got enough money to isolate themselves from the problems that mass immigration creates. – © Mark
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