News today that one in four children born in Britain has a foreign parent is clearest possible evidence of the effect of mass immigration on our society. Many people simply don’t understand how this could have happened without anyone being consulted and they are deeply concerned about the future.
Is it a cock up or a conspiracy? Actually, both. Labour abolished the last of our checks on individuals as they crossed our borders and they were desperately slow in tackling the asylum crisis. But the real reason is deliberate, if largely camouflaged, government policy.
Labour’s 1997 manifesto said only that "Every country must have firm control over immigration and Britain is no exception". The first hint, no more, came in the 2001 manifesto which said that "As our economy changes and expands, so our rules on immigration need to reflect the need to meet skills shortages".
This turned out to be the trigger for a massive increase in work permits which have trebled under this government – a policy supported by the extreme left for ideological reasons, by trades unions for politically correct reasons, and by employers for reasons of self interest.
In 2004, the same forces argued for opening our borders to the East Europeans with results that were at least ten times larger than the government had foreseen.
This mass immigration is dividing England into two zones. In the countryside life continues much as usual. In the cities, multiculturalism is rapidly taking over. In London, one third of the population are immigrants and half of all children are born to foreign mothers. In many city schools immigrant children can find little British culture to adhere to, even if they wished to do so. Trevor Philips was right to suggest that we are “sleepwalking towards segregation. Second generation Muslims have not only failed to integrate – a small dangerous minority are so filled with hatred for our country that they turn into suicide bombers.
The situation is now very serious but not hopeless. The first requirement is to get the numbers under control. The government reel off a list of measures, many of them admirable in themselves, but they still refuse put any overall limit on immigration despite the fact 75% of the public wish to see one.
They are living dangerously. There is a growing groundswell of anger to which they would be wise to respond.