The Labour Party, in a totally shameless display of electoral expediency have discovered that there is too much immigration in the UK. (Having spent most of recent history saying that anyone who questions high levels of immigration was a racist bigot). As we discussed in our last post, political elites, who are no more than the servants of high finance and corporate boardrooms, have, for some time, organised mass immigration for one simple reason; it expands the pool of available labour, keeps wages down, improves productivity and boosts profits, (much of which goes out of the country). The Labour Party followed this aim while exploiting and repurposing, (completely valid in itself), language of racial integration and harmony, to shut down anyone who criticised the policy. Now, under electoral threat from the “Reform” party they are “tightening up” the immigration system. The trick they are trying to pull off is to maintain the key principle of allowing large-scale immigration because it benefits business, while appearing to “be in control” of it, and, to some extent, reducing the overall numbers.
In this context Starmer recently gave a speech in which he talked of the danger of Britain becoming “an island of strangers”. This has caught some headlines because, it is, reminiscent of very “right-wing” language. It does seem like he is trying to appeal directly to Reform’s “right-wing” voters, many of whom probably are quite bigoted. I was struck, though, by this little example of the liberal push-back – from someone called Andrew Sparrow, on the Guardian:
A pedant might point out that, even though Enoch Powell and Keir Starmer were making a rhetorical point when they talked about “strangers”, technically we are an island of strangers anyway. There are almost 70 million of us here, and most of us only personally know hundreds, or at best a few thousands, of our fellow citizens. [1]
This is typical of a certain style, or technique, of liberal argumentation. It (deliberately, I would assume), misses the whole point of the comment. Of course; the people you see on the bus every day to work are “strangers” in the sense that, (unless you travel with friends), you don’t know them. But that isn’t what is meant by the idea of “a nation of strangers”. The idea here is of cultural unfamiliarity. This, the argument against immigration on grounds of cultural dissonance, is a difficult argument to make because it can, easily, stray into sounding racist – but I understand it and can relate to it. For example; is someone who complains that at his daughter’s school the predominant language in the playground is not English, being racist – or is he making a point that he wants his daughter to grow up in her own culture with certain values, knowing a certain set of stories and history?
I understand the point from a specific experience. Last year I was working in the UK, in Gloucester. I took the bus to work every day. It was an early bus and the other passengers seemed, as far as I could tell, to be mostly care workers or people working in a factory. Many were recent immigrants. They, very clearly, were not people who had been settled in the country long enough to pick up ‘British’ habits and mannerisms and typical forms of social behaviour. For example; when the lady next to me wanted to get off the bus, she just stood up and sort of pushed past me. The contrast with an obviously British native the next day was rather striking; he asked, politely; “I am getting off at the next stop. Can I squeeze past you?”. If we removed the minority of obviously long-standing British natives or residents I could easily have thought I had woken up in a bus taking workers from a major city in a West African country to some factories on the outskirts. It is hard to put into words; but I very much realised that most of the people around me lived in a very different cultural and social world to me. It was disconcerting. I think this is the kind of thing that people mean when they talk about cultural familiarity and I think this is what Starmer is trying to tap into with his “nation of strangers” remark. Of course; I don’t for one moment think that Starmer means what he says any more now when he is against mass immigration than he meant it when he, or his party, was for it and thought that anyone against it was a racist. .
My readers will, I hope, note that, in the above, I am careful to avoid contrasting ‘White’ and ‘Black’ people. That is not what is at issue. There are millions of non-ethnic white people in the UK who have made the country their home and who are, as British as this (white) author is. This cultural mix arose out of the UK’s history and in particular immigration from the Commonwealth after WWII. What has happened is that a new wave of immigration has been sanctioned which is not based on shared cultural roots – but is driven, purely, by economics and the desire for profit, (as outlined above). It is therefore, no surprise, that some of the people on the bus I am talking about ‘gave off a vibe’ of being from a very different cultural world. They may be here, on Health and Social Care Visas, or Work Visas * or Seasonal Visas, and are here to make some money (not much and probably less than they hoped I would imagine in many cases); it is a temporary thing and in due course they will go back to their own countries. Why should they try to adapt and adopt British social habits? Especially; when there is an official dialogue which tells them they don’t need to.
The author of the Guardian comment is being (I can’t believe otherwise) deliberately disingenuous in his very literal false ‘misunderstanding’ with his idea that “we are all strangers anyway”, by which method he (deliberately? ) advertises that he is so liberal his mind can’t even process the idea of cultural dissonance. We need to remember that this ideal of cultural homogeneity is not a real “cultural mixing pot” but is the ideal expressed by a soulless corporate logo, such as Microsoft’s; totally free of any specific cultural references and therefore not going to “exclude” anyone. This is the ideal of cultural and racial integration of the mass immigration movement. When these people use the language of very legitimate and worthwhile anti-racism campaigns from the 1980s, they are being disingenuous. Those campaigns were defending a real, “lived”, experience and possibility of community integration. Modern mass immigration is about profits not community.
As I say; I do not believe for one moment that Starmer has any principles on this matter at all. He is changing with the wind. But; I wanted to take the risk of expressing that I understand the idea he is trying to appeal to; that people feel more comfortable, when the people around them, are ‘like’ them, (even if still strangers). And, I emphasised that ‘like them’ does not imply the same colour.
* I didn’t quite understand this. I thought that there was a minimum salary level of GBP 38,000.00 for a Work Visa – but a quick Internet search finds plenty of evidence of factory jobs offered in the UK with Visa sponsorship. For example, on the .gov.uk website: “Immediate Start with a weekly pay of over £450.00 Within this role you would be expected to sort through recycling materials on a conveyor …” And, indeed, there is a very long list of exceptions: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/skilled-worker-visa-immigration-salary-list/skilled-worker-visa-immigration-salary-list The GBP 38,000.00 figure was designed for headlines. The new exception rate goes down to £30,960 and the lowest rate for those who got their first Visa before April 2024 is £25,500. People can get 6 month seasonal worker Visas to work in chicken factories. (Imported labour mass producing cheap chicken meat in factory conditions for the population who want cheap chicken meat but can’t face working in a chicken factory does not, for this author, paint a picture of very happy society).
Notes