Robert Henderson
The think tank Policy Exchange has published a report on racial and ethnic minorities entitled A portrait of modern Britain. The headline grabbing statistic in the report is the claim that” the five largest distinct Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) communities could potentially double from 8 million people or 14% of the population [now] to between 20-30% by the middle of the century. Over the past decade, the UK’s White population has remained roughly the same while the minority population has almost doubled. Black Africans and Bangladeshis are the fastest growing minority communities with ethnic minorities representing 25% of people aged under the age of five.”
On 6 May BBC R5 decided to devote their morning Breakfast Programme phone-in hosted by Nick Campbell to the report. Did the programme address the question of what the native British population thought of such a radical change in the demographic composition of their country? Don’t be silly this is the BBC. Instead the programme was devoted to asking how welcoming Britain is to immigrants. Campbell set the tone by asking questions such as “Do you think this is one of the most welcoming countries across the world for immigrants” and making comments such as “The vast majority of people who come here, I’m sure, respect what are the cultural aspects of this country”. He also activated the pc device of making discussion about immigration permissible by claiming that ethnic minorities and immigrants generally were often worried by ongoing immigration.
But even with those brakes on any honest discussion of mass immigration and its effects on Britain, the BBC were nervous. Some frightful non-pc people might get on and horror of horrors say that mass immigration was not the best thing to happen to Britain since sliced bread. So to make sure that such a ghastly thing would not happen, the BBC unashamedly packed the programme with those who were either immigrants themselves or the descendants of immigrants.
The studio guests were Rishi Sunak (Head of the Black & Minority Ethnic Research Unit at Policy Exchange), Don Flynn from the Migrants Rights Network and Gurinder Josan of the Sikh Council of the UK.
There were ten callers put on air. Of these eight were black or Asian, viz:
Mal –An Asian of sub-continental origin who was sent to Britain at a young age.
Carl – He described himself as an Australian of mixed heritage. He is probably Asian from certain hints he gave.
Alex – He described himself as black. His voice suggested that he was raised in Britain.
Anoop – A Kenyan Asian immigrant.
Ken – A old white workingclass man from Luton.
Ravi – A Sikh.
Abdul – He described himself as Glaswegian with Pakistani and Irish ancestry.
Sabeena – Asian immigrant long resident in Britain..
Liz – A white lower-middle class English woman. Lived in Leicester for forty years before moving to Devon.
Bernie – A black man born and raised in Britain.
The general thrust of the comments by everyone except for Ken and Liz was that we all lived in a wonderful multicultural world, although there was a bit of victimhood whining by Alex and Bernie brought in the subject of slavery. Abdul complained about recent immigrants getting council houses. It is probable that he was deliberately put in to validate Campbell’s claim that many immigrants were against further immigration.
Ken was the perfect pc selected spokesman for the non-pc side, old, white working-class, inarticulate and palpably hamstrung by fear of saying something which could get him labelled a racist. He emphasised the mixed nature of Luton and claimed that, in his own experience, abuse of blacks and Asians was unknown and said he could not understand why black and Asian complaints were forever being heard in the mainstream media. This could have caused Campbell a problem because his complaint was about the practice of victimhood amongst ethnic minorities. Sadly, Ken then inadvertently blotted his pc copybook by suddenly and irrelevantly recounting how he had asked his neighbour whether they wanted to be called coloured or black. This produced a snort of derision from Alex to whom Campbell eagerly went back to ask what he thought of Ken’s ideas and the question of victimhood and the media’s promotion of it went undiscussed. .
The nearest anyone came to expressing outright dissent from the politically correct rubric was Liz. Her general point was that integration was a “two way street” and she was dubious about whether it was a “two way street” because immigrants were not always making an effort to abide by the British way of life. She made dangerously non-pc statements such as mosques in Leicester being unwanted by the white population when they were first built and that immigrants to this country “should respect our religion”, but her complaints was surrounded by mantras such as “diversity is good” to ward off the pc Inquisition. Campbell of course jumped in to correct matters, for example, by saying “What do you mean by our religion?” But Liz kept veering off dangerously off pc message and her contribution ended with this exchange with Campbell:
Liz:…if we both respect each other. If I went to another country I would respect their beliefs and wishes and I would….” Campbell interrupts.
Campbell: ““And the vast majority of people who come here, I’m sure, respect what are the cultural aspects of this country”.
Liz : “Well if they do there will be no problem at all. Why is there a problem? Why is there a problem in all these different cities? “
Campbell: “Is there a problem? Well, we have had person after person saying it’s all going terribly well.”
Liz: “Well, I’m sure it is…” At this point Campbell cut her off.
That short exchange encapsulates the problem so many white Britons have when speaking in public about immigration and its consequences. Clearly Liz wanted to express her fears about the effects of mass immigration, but she was so handicapped by fear of being thought a racist that she was l willing to agree with Campbell’s assertion there is no problem at the end because of her fear of being dubbed a racist.
I rang the phone-in after it had been going for about twenty minutes. Eventually the producer phoned me back and said he would put me on. I waited on the phone for over twenty minutes but never got on. There was the strongest of reasons for putting me on: the programme was utterly unbalanced there being not a single person who argued the case against mass immigration.
Had I got on I would have made these points:
- That no society anywhere welcomes mass immigration because mass immigration is invasion of territory, a surreptitious form of conquest.
2. That the permitting of mass immigration is the most fundamental form of treason those with power can commit.
3. All elites understand that mass immigration is never wanted by any population and this leads them to suppress dissent, as happens in this country now with people such as Emma West being charged with criminal offences simply because she spoke against immigration in a public place.
4. That mass immigration has already created the basis for considerable racial strife, something which will increase as the minority populations grow.
5. That mass immigration has already resulted in many disastrous effects on British society such as minority ghettoes, a catastrophic housing shortage and a low wage economy.
I had made it clear that these were the issues I wished to raise when I spoke to the producer. I suspect that the final decision is about who goes on is made by the programme presenter . If so, Campbell must have seen my position on the question and deliberately excluded me.
My complaint is not that I did not get on the programme. Rather it is that no one expressing my views or anything like them did so.
