From: hjkhjkhd@hhhh.com   
      
   Highly reminiscent of our wars here...   
      
   The Sunday Times   
      
   November 05, 2006   
      
      
      
   Immigration is fine for the rich   
   George Walden   
      
      
      
   We hadn't got far in a Today programme discussion of my new book Time to   
   Emigrate? on Friday before the anathema fell. It came from my opponent, the   
   modishly left-wing historian Tristram Hunt.   
   Slurs about racism I expected. Instead I was accused of favouring eugenics,   
   a more original interpretation of my thesis, for which there is no evidence   
   in the book. You do not expect much from a telly don whose written work has   
   drawn strong criticism for its callowness, but hinting that you are a   
   neo-Nazi for raising the issue of excessive immigration is pushing it.   
      
      
   The previous day the Office for National Statistics (ONS) had announced some   
   startling new figures: Britain was taking in 1,500 immigrants a day, while   
   1,000 Brits left. Which rather confirmed the central premise of my book:   
   that more people were moving out as well as in, and that a growing number of   
   emigrants - by no means necessarily racists - were quitting because of the   
   numbers coming in.   
   Earlier in the week Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, had   
   complained to a committee of MPs that it was hard to manage the economy when   
   nobody knew how many people were in the country.   
   Unmoved by any of this, Hunt denied there was a problem, real or potential.   
   In one sense he was right: for the well-born, expensively educated liberal   
   elite he represents, there isn't. I doubt that the Hunt dynasty (he is the   
   son of Lord Hunt of Chesterton) will be inconvenienced too much by   
   immigration and its social, economic and educational consequences. Less   
   privileged folk of his generation, for whose fears about the future he   
   clearly has a patrician contempt, will pay a heavy price if our   
   unprecedented experiment of mass immigration goes wrong.   
   Immigration alone, of course, is not the only source of their problems, and   
   there is a danger of immigrants becoming the whipping boys for every   
   grievance. The trouble is that random population growth impacts directly on   
   everything feeding rumbling middle-class discontent: rising taxes, rising   
   mortgages, failing schools, the overstretched National Health Service, crime   
   and insecurity of every kind. I do not anticipate riots or demonstrations,   
   but a mood of semi-suppressed nastiness could gradually develop.   
   Think of it: 7m more people in 25 years, according to the ONS. This is the   
   equivalent of seven more Birminghams - not a pretty thought - or another   
   London if you prefer. All this in the most crowded country in Europe.   
   My book takes the form of a letter to a (fictional) 34-year-old son and his   
   wife on average wages who, stressed out by mortgage, school and security   
   problems, are contemplating emigration. It is for their generation, not   
   mine, that the prospects are shaky.   
   In retrospect it is extraordinary how easy we had it. In 1970 we bought a   
   Victorian house in west London of some 3,500 sq ft for £16,000, with a   
   mortgage based on 2 times our (smallish) income. Last week a building   
   society began offering loans of five times income. Meanwhile, as space per   
   person shrivels, parents helping out with the deposit stare in disbelief at   
   the few square feet that their thousands of pounds will stretch to. For   
   those without big daddies with big money the big squeeze has begun.   
   Parents can be equally appalled by some of the urban neighbourhoods that   
   their home-seeking offspring move to in order to raise their own families.   
   The percentage of the children of minorities in primary schools has risen   
   from 11% 10 years ago to more than 20% today (more in parts of London). This   
   is natural and inevitable, but those who tell us that it is something to   
   celebrate usually educate their children elsewhere: in London the number of   
   those opting for private education is 13%, twice the national average.   
   I am not saying such schools are doomed, but many have been given an awesome   
   task. The speed of change in such communities means that parents and   
   teachers no longer know where they stand from one year to the next. Again,   
   the contrast with my generation is stark. My earliest school days were spent   
   on an orderly East End working-class estate, with a good school, no ethnic   
   tensions and no British National party.   
   At that point the Hunts of the 1950s and 1960s were coming under challenge   
   from the grammar school brigade: 40 years ago only a third of Oxbridge   
   students had been privately educated. Now the figure is 50%; and, if you   
   count the 160 remaining grammars alongside the independents, only some 25%   
   of the Oxbridge intake comes from comprehensives - which comprise 90% of the   
   state education system.   
   If this is where we start from, how likely is mass immigration, with the   
   overcrowding and linguistic and security problems that it is bringing, to   
   improve the educational chances of the offspring of middle-income natives?   
   They could easily be held back at poorly performing state schools - only to   
   be faced with increased competition from the clever children of ambitious,   
   new-rich immigrants at university entrance level. And how can the newcomers   
   be blamed?   
   Hunt's response to problems of social promotion is to wave them aside. Lack   
   of mobility? Such rot. Tell that to the lower and middling classes, or to   
   the authors of a report from the London School of Economics showing that   
   mobility has declined in recent decades, mainly through lack of access to   
   high quality education.   
   Obviously there must be some immigration and of course it can benefit   
   Britain - especially at higher income levels. But those who claim that it   
   benefits everyone will have to explain how - unlike the governor of the Bank   
   of England - they can do a profit and loss account, extra GNP against extra   
   social costs, if nobody knows who's here.   
   More thoughtful members of the liberal intelligentsia have begun adjusting   
   their tune to the figures. Trevor Phillips, of the Commission for Racial   
   Equality, insisted in this newspaper last month that "unless we have an   
   honest debate about the difficulties of immigration and the real anxieties   
   out there, tensions will increase".   
   It would be fun to hear Hunt and Phillips head-to-head. Since Phillips and I   
   are often saying similar things, to be ethnically even-handed Hunt would   
   have to call our race relations watchdog a covert eugenicist, too.   
   Time to Emigrate? is published by Gibson Square Books at £8.99 George Walden   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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