A reporter from the hard left media website Novara visits the constituency of Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, a constituency in which 92% of the people describe themselves as ‘white British’ and 1.2% say they are Black, Black British, Black Welsh, Caribbean or African. She interviews an elderly woman who says that they biggest issue for people in Ashfield is immigration and makes a point of pointing out that Enoch Powell was right, although when pressed she is not entirely sure what he was right about. It turns out that the woman objects to black people and that they should be “sent home”, including the interviewer who is black. The interviewer then speaks to camera and says she will indeed be returning home, in her case to Hertfordshire. We all know what the woman meant.
I am not that much younger than the elderly woman, but my views on the big issues are not the same as hers. I am more concerned about a country, Britain, where everything is broken and nothing works. I am concerned about the chronic underfunding of the NHS, the proliferation in the use of food banks, crumbling public services, the cost of living crisis, crime and a whole host of other things. But, hey: that 1.2% of foreigners in Ashfield. Send them all home, even if Britain is their home.
I’d have loved to have done that interview myself. “What would you say about someone who was half Dutch, a quarter Norwegian and just a quarter English, whose DNA revealed a mere 17% of Englishness? Should they be deported, too?” Logically, the answer would have been, “Yes, of course. They wouldn’t be English, would they?” Would she then say, “Unless they were white”. That would rather be giving the game away. I’d have to go “home”, wouldn’t I? What sort of name is Johansen, anyway? It’s not proper Anglo-Saxon, is it? (It is, actually.)
For all I know, the old was actually a lovely person, a caring wife, a doting grandmother who simply froze as she spoke to camera. It can be a daunting experience being interviewed, as I know from personal experience, and there is a tendency for the brain to seize up and for gobbledegook to emerge from one’s mouth. Maybe she’s not well, depressed even, or has latched on to what she perceives as the unfairness of Johnny Foreigner coming over here, taking our jobs while simultaneously living a life of luxury on benefits and that old chestnut being put at the top of the housing ladder on account of the colour of their skin. I have more sympathy for her than you might think.
When most newspapers – and it’s only older people who buy newspapers – say as a matter of fact that immigrants are all scrounging terrorists, living the life of Riley while you struggle by on the lowest state pension in Europe, you might start to believe it. ‘They’ get everything when you get nothing, despite having worked all your life. When politicians, including prime ministers, repeat over and over again that someone is to blame for their shit lives, that someone being foreigners don’t you end up thinking that’s there’s no smoke without fire?
More than anything, I was sad when I saw the interview with the woman from Ashfield. I was sad that the woman came out with what was essentially pure racism, but sadder still that the amateur hour reporter didn’t ask her something like, “If you or someone in your family became seriously ill and the only person available to treat them was Johnny Foreigner would you accept the treatment or wait for a pure Brit to come along instead?” Can you imagine the number of DNA tests that would be required in order to establish someone’s levels of Englishness? And instead of a DNR notice, why not a ‘Pure Brit and White Only’ instruction for medical staff?
I am not going to lie to you and pretend there are no issues with immigration. And while I have no issues with a multiethnic, multicolour country I have reservations about the big wide issue of multiculturalism. In my world, there are no religious schools, no religious privileges; one law of the land. Believe in who you like, live the life you want, but in no way influence or get in the way of mine. If you don’t agree with abortion, don’t have one. If you don’t agree with gay marriage, don’t marry a gay person and if you don’t agree with assisted suicide don’t tell me that I shouldn’t either.
Are migrants good or bad? They can be both, just like so called True Brits. It’s just good or bad people, really and it would be good if, after all these years of division, we could just agree that we’re all people trying to do the best we can. Wouldn’t that be something?
