Frank Field is wrong on the BNP
Curbing immigration won't defeat the far right
By George Eaton Published 22 October 2009 19:38The argument that mainstream parties should counter the BNP by adopting a hardline position on immigration was discredited long ago. But the bizarre tag team of Nicholas Soames and Frank Field can't resist making it again in today's Telegraph.
To call for harsher curbs on migrants is to perpetuate the myth that it is immigration, rather than a failed neoliberal system, that is to blame for political and social alienation. It is to divide immigrants and natives into "winners" and "losers", rather than recognise that they are all too frequently victims of the same system.
Labour does have a case to answer on immigration. The party's Faustian pact with the City entailed the cynical use of migrant labour to undercut domestic wages. But instead of fostering further division, it should adopt a non-sectarian approach that benefits all through a higher minimum wage and more social housing.
It was not, as Field and Soames suggest, Labour's "cowardice" on immigration that opened the door for the BNP, but its acceptance of an economic system that condemned much of the working class to casual labour.
The declaration that immigration has left Britain without any sense of "cohesion and identity" is particularly egregious. It is not migrants who destroy cohesion, but demagogues like Griffin and the City plutocrats.
Field and Soames do not even pause to offer token praise for migrants' economic contribution. Yet new figures show that in 2008-2009, immigrants paid 37 per cent more in taxes than they cost in welfare payments and public services.
By painting a wholly negative picture of immigration, Field and Soames do not challenge the BNP's agenda, they pander to it.
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16 comments
We're a small tea shop in Brighton - read about our recent experience of Nick Griffin and whether we think he should be on Question Time: www.metrodeco.wordpress.com
This article displays part of the reason why the real left is so impotent against neoliberalism. Firstly, it does not recognize the nation. Nor does it recognize the value of Britain's indigenous culture. Ordinary people do not care about metaphysics, class struggle, dialectical materialism, and the various left-wing sects. Too many first principles drawn from intellectuals; no appeal to nature. We need a British Socialism, that is essentially conservative and wants to prevent life being in a state of flux; no one cares for Marx. Stop trying to promote alien rubbish and you might get somewhere.
HO!! no he's NOT!! you know....
Euan Mc Arthur- we could substitute the word "British" in your comment for the word "German" and we would get a piece of authentic Nazi propaganda.
Why don't you grow a little moustache and raise your arm slightly above your head? Why is this website full of Fascist readers??
Enoch Powell was ahead of his time.
Nick Griffin the our last hero. our only hope.
Nick made them all look like the anti-white lefty/Communists they are.
What naive crap. Poll after poll confirms people across Europe are concerned about the loss of the continents Judaeo-Christian identity and oppose mass immigration, especially mass Muslim immigration. Witness the Netherlands, tolerant to a T until the implication of 10% Muslim makeup struck home. Until mass immigration from Muslim countries is stopped and the Judaeo-Christian-Humanist values of classical Europe are upheld, parties like the BNP will continue to grow, as night follows day.
Go back to those halcyon days before Windrush.All the spuds you could eat, slums,TB,rickets, the hungry thirties. Stout English yeomen doffing their caps to the Queen Mum. Where I live mate not a black face within a radius of ten miles,poor and ill educated. You know what broke our socio economic equilibrium not Johnny Foreigner, but little England's pin up girl Mrs T.
Let's stop pretending we have a democracy the collaborationist-left flirtation with true fascism will be the death of liberal England.
Thank goodness the working class never bought into treason, treachery, and betrayal,
We love are liberal England and we will fight to preserve it because we have blood and history on or side.
As usual for the New Statesman magazine, a misguided article totally missing out the key arguments on why we urgently need to control immigration. Its nothing to do with the contribution of immigrants, nobody doubts that in most cases. The Labour Govt are incapable of honestly discussing the subject because they are from a class of politicians who associate race with immigration as one subject and are paralysed by political correctness. They are huge cowards and are prepared to sacrifice everybodies quality of life knowing and conveniently ommitted from your text that 80% of British people want immigration cut dramatically.
Key reasons for balanced migration-
1/ Overcrowded- 400 people per square km in England.
Where do we put another 10 million people forcasted in the next 25 years?The govt is already 2 million houses short for the people we have. Do we build on green belt, farmland or national parks? Either way we a going to dramatically reduce quality of life and radically increase congestion. If we have to build 10 cities the size of Birmingham, that would be CRIMINALLY NEGLIGENT. No govt has the right to take that decision without serious debate.
2/ Carbon emmissions- We need new power stations for our existing population. Another 10 million would be unsustainable.
3/ Water shortage- Although a wet climate we cannot store enough water for parts of the country already.How do we provide for another 10 million.
4/ National Identity and culture - I know the left and liberals hate British culture and heritage and long to air brush it from these islands but not everbody feels that way. The spectre of a northern Ireland problem in every British county could materialise as White British feel alienated and undervalued as mass immigration continues to surplant them and their culture.
5/ Down ward pressure on wages. Intellectual leftists may not be aware but average pay rates for working men in building , plumbing etc have plummeted. More labour supply makes businesses richer and workers poorer.
6/ Sustainable food security- Another 10 million people in the next 25 years would be totally reliant on food imports as we build on farmland to provide housing and infastructure. Is it right to do that when we are trying to reduce carbon emmissions? What if countries stop exporting to us?
Daniele - I do not support Fascism, authoritarianism, Nazism or national socialism, or racism. I could abide by corporatism (i.e. Italian Fascist theory which has actually been applied in Germany, Sweden etc.) but not coporatocracy (which is the actual application of both Fascism and neoliberalism). I am opposed to the imperialism of the EU and the US; do not revile Britain's culture and history like most socialists; and recognize the problems of immigration which are outlined above.
The immigration debate should be about numbers not race. GB is a a small island and can not cope with an influx of a further 10 million in 20 years. Hospitals, housing, schools and roads that are struggling now will be crippled. This lefty fluffiness on the issue is missing the point.
No2pc
Dead right. Another ten million people. to provide their primary energy needs will require 8 1200mW nuclear stations (we only have one at present), or over 16,000 - 2mW windturbines. To cater for their unreliability the windturbines would require conventional backup generation of a similar size.
I am glad that Alan 'Postman Pat' Johnson sleeps well at night. At least in somnolence he is relatively safe.
Come down from your ideological Ivory Towers!
The Liberal Left Bleeding Heart Do-Gooders have now had many years of playing with Britain's once stable socio-economic dynamics: wooly Liberal thinking has ruined education: the "Justice" system: and much else.
Of course mass unfettered and as we now know, cynically engineered migration has ruined Britain: at no time until now that it is far too late, have any series of checks and balances on education, apposite skills and employability been instituted.
Whole areas have been transformed into sorts of Ghettoised cultural transplants of the migrant's home states. Leeds and Bradford are amongst far too many examples.
Trotting out the old tired statistics on illusory tax benefits fails to conceal the whole story: first, if migrants stay, then they add a further drain on health and retirement resources: without having had sufficient timespan to have adequately contributed.
There aren't anough homes: there weren't even before immigration started way back in the early 1950s.
Schools have suffered: multitudinous languages are a barrier to educational success and have unfairly discriminated against those children whose natural language was English. They have been held back.
As integration - the dream of Ivory Tower dwellers such as Hattersley - failed to happen, then the inane Left Wing Liberals dreamt up a new word for their failure: Multiculturalism.
Whilst then passing statutes to favour incomers and punish extant members of this society who dared to protest about the destruction of their culture and social fabric!
Of course BNP's new success is driven by immigration and multiculturalism!
Simply examine the geographical areas in which they are enjoying success!
Field and Soames at least have their eyes on the ball.
You don't.
"The party's Faustian pact with the City entailed the cynical use of migrant labour to undercut domestic wages" ????? What, so there was some secret agreement between ZaNuLabour and the City to the effect that "if you the City support us, Labour, we'll help you by letting in hoards of immigrants"? Total clap-trap.
"Field and Soames do not even pause to offer token praise for migrants' economic contribution" Possibly that is because according to the House of Lords enquiry into immigraton, UK citizens derive next to no economic benefit from immigrants.