Subject: HOW MANY FOREIGNERS DO YOU LET IN?
Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2000 07:08:42 +0100


First of all - apologies for the length of this email - but I have to get
this off my chest.

For all his attempts to postulate them in terms of a genuine intellectual -
and somewhat abstract - debate I personally found Eric's recent
contributions to border on and perhaps slip over into a racist discourse on
immigration which is currently being peddled by all sections of the
political establishment in the UK at the moment.  He wrote

>One central question is: can any nation cope with large numbers of
immigrants, whatever the original cause of their coming? There seems to be a
basic unwillingness by people to discuss this crucial issue.<

I must say that I'm flabbergasted by the ignorance of this statement since
the whole debate about immigration currently is precisely about this point.
As Stuart Hall et al. ably argued, in what I had taken to be a canonical
text _Policing the Crisis_ (1978), the ability to frame the debate about
immigration solely in terms of numbers is one of the most successful
strategies of a racist establishment.  Part of this has been to consistently
exaggerate the actual numbers being talked about.  Hence the objections to
the use of language such as swamping and floods!  When figures are produced
about the amount of immigrants arriving in Britain with all the attached
alarm bells and scandalised comparisons with other EU countries it is easy
to miss the fact that the actual numbers of immigrants mentioned are both
objectively and relatively (when compared with, say, some countries in
Africa or even in Eastern and Central Europe outwith the EU) small.

To suggest, as Eric did, that Powell was simply speaking the unthinkable
truth to a deaf middle England is absolute rubbish - although it is a myth
that Powell stoked and one that has been successfully reanimated by his
acolytes including Thatcher and numerous members of more extreme racist
organisations such as the British National Party (BNP).  If the debate was
really about numbers why did Powell have to invent the example of a street
where his elderly white constituent remained the sole white inhabitant and
who was being forced out by her aggressive black neighbours?  The combined
resources of the Wolverhampton media could not identify this street and I
think we must assume, as they did, that it did not exist.  The invention of
such a fantastic place was precisely to exaggerate the actual numbers of
immigrants into the UK and to frame this as a problem which needed to be
addressed.  Ever after the argument in government has not been about the
right or wrong of immigration per se, but instead about how many is too
much.  (With the usual answer being not very many.)

Well let us ask the question.  If, say, the UK admitted 1 million people
from, say, Bangladesh next year (roughly 1/60th of the UK population) what
would be the effect.  Presumably this would present a genuine economic
problem in terms of the need to house these new citizens - the UK currently
has a problem of over-demand for housing.  However this problem of
over-demand derives solely from the fact that UK families all wish to own a
house of their own - a desire which is historically new and which is not
shared  by much of mainland Europe.  The UK does not have levels of multiple
occupancy such as is commonly found in many countries throughout the world.
My partner and I live in a house with four rooms in which only we live.  I
would be interested to know how many of the hypothetical Bengalis would be
so privileged.  There are, of course, problems created by trying to house
all new arrivals in geographically limited places and more so with high
profile attempts to house 'asylum seekers' in well publicised centres around
the country within the terms of a public debate that has virtually prejudged
their claim to be 'bogus'.

Let us assume for the sake of argument that none of these Bangladeshi new
arrivals could find work - a fact which I am supposing for rhetorical effect
and which under no theory or experience of economics is remotely likely.
This would create a new burden on existing tax payers who would have to find
money for social security payments.  However, would the attendant loss of
income
create levels of poverty such as those routinely experienced in Bangladesh?
I'll answer the question Eric - no.

Would there be a genuine problem of clash of cultures?  Well, lets really be
historical about this and try to imagine the last time the UK didn't
experience the arrival of a culturally different community ... Hold on, I'm
still thinking ...

Some one else on the list has already made the point that national
cultures - cultures in general - are not fixed.  To my mind, and however
much the majority British population may (or may not) deny it.
Sub-Continental cultures in general and Bengali culture in particular
already plays a big part in British culture.  Go to Manchester during Eid
(apologies for misspelling?) and watch young Muslims driving through Rushome
waving enormous Pakistani flags out of the car windows - then shouting to
their friends in Manchester-English.  Or go when it isn't Eid and just take
a look at Rushome which is deeply marked by its South East Asian community
in terms of its local infrastructure.  This is a scene that is repeated in
most major cities south of Newcastle.  This is a British scene and it is not
a ghetto: many white British people still live here - contrary to Powell's
apocalyptic rhetoric.  Their culture hasn't been swamped by these facts, and
indeed it has genuine incorporated them.  This is not to say that there
isn't some level of racism directed towards Britain's Asian population, and
it appears to have become worse more recently within the context of an
ongoing debate about immigration levels.  But at an important level that
racism is incidental to a genuine experience of cohabitation.  I have to
believe that if our political/media establishment stopped peddling racist
ideology that, contrary to received wisdom, there would not be a racist
backlash as Powell predicted but that our population would settle down into
a more tolerant pattern of cultural exchange.

So, finally, why pose the question in the first place?  It seems to me much
more radical to ask not how many but to ask why should there be any limits
at all?  Why do we impose any restrictions upon the movements of individuals
between nations?  Perhaps, Eric, you believe that the world's population
would all arrive unannounced at Dover - creating a global imbalance that
would send the world spinning out of orbit into disastrously uninhabitable
realms of space?  What would happen, I suspect, is that we might have to
face the more important question of why the 'developed' economies of Western
Europe and North America think it is legitimate to structure global capital
solely for their benefit?  This is certainly the question which animates my
interest in post-colonialism and it why I believe nationalism in all its
forms  (which I take to be mostly a question of occluding such a situation)
to be a brutally reactionary ideology.

P.S.. Eric, might I suggest that you take a break from the list for a while
to read more material in your library.  There appear to be some major points
of theory and history on which you are weak.


Liam Connell
3 Mordaunt Road
Inner Avenue
Southampton
SO14  6GQ

Email: liam.connell-AT-britishlibrary.net
Web: pages.britishlibrary.net/liam.connell/home.html






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