(19/10/20)

In the fifth of a series of short posts on immigration, here our branch member Ian Cooper discusses the lack of consent to mass immigration. The views of the author are his and not necessarily representative of the branch.

One of the downsides of immigration, and perhaps the most serious, has been the lack of democratic consent on the issue. No party has ever had, ‘more immigration,’ in its manifesto, and there was never a referendum. At least there was one on the EU - despite the misrepresentation - because it was seen as such a major change. Immigration has of course been a far greater change but popular consent was never sought.

Immigration also happened gradually, a bit like the creeping EU power, which made it more difficult to oppose. When problems really started to emerge, in the form of the Notting Hill Riots in 1958, it was argued that the issue was too sensitive to discuss. This wasn’t helped by the one politician of real stature who acutely saw the problem, Enoch Powell. He regrettably used such inflammatory language in his 1968 ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, that any discussion was dubbed racist, though it’s worth remembering what enormous support Powell received from the working class, those most affected by immigration.

These qualifications aside, real debate and democratic consent was nonetheless suppressed by the liberal elite. Evidence for this comes in a remarkable passage in Andrew Marr’s excellent book, The History of Modern Britain (2007). In part 3 of the Pan paperback edition he wrote: ‘Immigration has changed Britain more than almost any other single social event in post - 1945 Britain… The majority of British people did not want the arrival of large numbers of blacks and Asians….At no stage was there a measured and frank assessment of the likely scale of immigration led by party leaders, voluntarily, in front of the electorate.... So this is another example of Britain’s history of rule by elite, of liberal politicians acting above their electorates.’ Now, Marr is as mainstream as it’s possible to be, but what an appalling admission.

Another commentator on the issue was the late Roger Scruton, a real conservative. In his book Where We Are, written just after the 2016 Brexit referendum, he wrote, ‘In all matters to do with migration the people have not been consulted but insulted….Decades of pusillanimity from the political establishment, and ‘virtue signalling’ from the liberal elite, have produced a situation in which whole sections of our cities seem to belong to some other country..’

He was writing largely in reference to the mass immigration engineered by New Labour, something admitted by a speech writer for Blair, Blunkett and Straw - one Andrew Neather. In an Evening Standard article in October 2009, Neather wrote that immigration ‘didn’t just happen; the deliberate policy of Ministers from late 2000 was to open up mass immigration …. to rub the Right’s nose in diversity…’

So, what we have is social engineering through immigration on a massive scale. It happens partly by default, partly deliberately but never with consultation or democratic consent. To be even indignant at this irresponsibility and duplicity of our political class is now considered by our barmy woke culture to be ‘hate filled’. But you can’t just ignore people all of the time, particularly by those most practically affected – the white working class. And it seems the Labour Party that has betrayed its own people on this issue found this out at the last election. Not that we can trust the Tories on this with their talk of global Britain.

Read Part 6 - The Future: A White Minority