Effective Border Controls Could Protect our culture:

Since Labour came into power in 1997 immigration has reached unprecedented levels, incomparable to any figure in recent centuries. The Times recently reported that Labour had deliberately told immigration officials to overlook borderline migrant cases (Minette Marrin 01/11/09). This insidious approach was also an abrogation of duty; there were several thousand unemployed in Britain that may have lost job opportunities or the resources to create businesses (such as credit). It is hardly surprising that so many of those struggling to get on the social ladder voted for the BNP in the European Elections this year.


However, Immigration Controls are not just there to prevent resources, but also to protect culture. To protect our culture rates of assimilation are relevant. The post Enlightenment rational approach to society, education and politick is not only uniquely Western, but is more uniquely British. Victorian liberal values of toleration, including not censoring speech that others might want to hear because of selfish sensitivities, took time to absorb and become main-stream social norms. The idea of free-discussion for national interest in politics that formed the key to Parliamentary democracy, was of course first developed in Britain as a result of post-reformation progress based on individual reason. British culture, which is intrinsically humanist, is not everyone’s cup of tea. It is a product of a rare formation of a myriad of factors that makes it difficult for any foreigner to digest. Few that arrive will pick up copies of Macaulay, Dryden or any abridged account of our culture. Often it is not just the comparative poor literacy amongst migrants that is the issue, but rather their cultural traditions, based often in superstition, that are incompatible with the intellectual rigor that British cultural integration requires. The indigenous common man does not have such a problem, as great British thinking is his through being filtered down socially. There is also the issue of will and motivation amongst some, though not all, newcomers. Once migrants are here, they often do not wish to jump several hundred years of history and assimilate. Thus immigration controls need to be in the hundreds, with rigorous testing designed to determine cultural assimilation, rather than the thousands or tens of thousand that politicians arbitrarily claim.

For those that are already here accepting freedom and individual responsibility in a liberal society is a tough choice, and scary. People need to come out of their foreign cultural shells and embrace British plurality. Language and lack of local knowledge are huge barriers. Assimilation can only effectively work through direct personal contact, when others have time to give to foreigners. Huge numbers of migrants will not make this possible. Huge numbers will alienate most people from indigenous folk who aware of important nuances of local history and society. Political correctness, and multi-culturalism do not help assimilation either. Developing states all aspire to market-liberalism and freedom of society, yet multi-culturalism denies all the important cultural aspects that go into allowing this, to migrants in the UK. It fetters assimilation, which has already been made so difficult by the huge swathes of foreign folk that now swamp the concrete social housing ghettoes of inner cities. Worst of all multi-culturalism was disguised as a moral approach, whereas in reality it was an abnegation of social and Governmental responsibility to assimilate migrants. When huge numbers of those with foreign culture (not race as the BNP have tried to flag the issue upon) are given votes, they can work to operate against the British cultural value of toleration. Without assimilation their primary affinity may also be with their state of provenance. This means that they may be willing to vote for measures or people who have interests other than Britain’s at heart. This may be particularly acute in the field of foreign policy as the 2005 electoral success of George Galloway showed.

Lack of willingness to compel assimilation is also a result of a maligned understanding of the global contribution of British culture. The Nehru’s and Gandhi’s of this world were created through the post-enlightenment British education method. Political activists for rights, such as Mandela, had found their values from their education in both Anglican Christianity and post-Enlightenment English Common Law. The victory over the closed autocracy of communism of the Soviets, was predominantly based on two key enlightenment philosophers: John Locke (who conceived the importance of protecting private property rights, which had a significant impact on ideologies that formed the market state) and Adam Smith (whose work placed effective resource usage into the process of Government). Many immigrants from Less Developed Countries, have little appreciation of the importance of upholding contracts and how a rule of law state operates. The difficulties of bringing the idea of individual responsibility and institutional accountability to the developing world, is something that those who work in the field of law and development are all too familiar with. All these problems are too quickly overlooked in Parliament. Time is pressing. The time is now here to put our culture back at the heart of our nation, and to ensure that immigration numbers are curbed significantly to protect it. Or else we are at risk of not losing who we are, but the essence of all we are.

APG Pandya
Copyright Birkenhead Society.