,How strange that a speech made forty years ago by a pointy headed intellectual of thE rabid right tendency should still arouse more passion than the systematic breakup of the welfare system, the privatisation of the health service and the reduction of the police to a revenue collecting bureaucracy, or Blair’s illegally leading us into an illegal war without consulting Parliament, but when an obscure Conservative of the sweaty – toothed tendency mentioned Enoch
Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech last week we saw the political establishment become more animated that they have for years.
So why do our usually colourless and ball-less politicians become excited by a non issue?
Well, anything to do with immigration is a key issue among the 50,000 people whose votes actually matter in General Elections.
In a small, overpopulated island like Britain large scale immigration must be a serious concern that deserves to be debated openly and honestly. Unfortunately due to the dark forces of Political Correctness, no debate that might result in criticism of certain factions of immigrant community will ever be tolerated. The dark forces of Political Correctness always shout so loudly for democratic debate that they completely drown out any opinions that differ from theirs. And more often than not, when somebody does try to question the Politically Correct line on immigration, old pointy – head Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech is brought up. So when one of my local councillors recently asked how a town the size of Accrington is supposed to cope with the sudden arrival of a few thousand Poles and groups from various other nations newly enrolled in the EU, nobody could say, “You have a point, we need support from central government,” because all the PC brigade were jumping up and down yelling "Enoch Powell, Rivers of Blood".
In consequence of this silencing of debate we have over the last few years acquired lots of little local immigrant problems. Schools cannot cope with large numbers of pupils who cannot speak English, social housing agencies cannot cope with increased demand for low - cost, family – sized accommodation, welfare agencies and health services cannot cope with new arrivals needing high levels of support and so on. All the little problems only need one trigger to convert them into a big, national problem. This has happened in Italy in the past few days; the murder of an Italian woman by a Romanian gypsy whose record of violent crime would have prevented him obtaining a visa before Romania joined the EU and its people were able to travel to and settle anywhere in Europe.

The little local problems we have are a direct result of the most unfortunate coincidence in modern British politics. At the same time as the “Jolly Good Chaps” Conservatism of McMillan’s era gave way to the swivel eyed, bonkers-in-the-head politics of the Thatcher era, Old Labour imploded. This opened the way for two decades of bonkers-in-the-head government. Margaret Thatcher’s answer to every domestic problem was “shaft the poor, give the rich ( wealth - creators ) a tax cut.”
“There are no principles, only expedients,” declared the Iron Lady in justification of her knee jerk approach to policy making, thus eternally making fools of those who still admire her for sticking to her principles. Tragically, her grasp of expediency was as shaky as her sanity. Thatcher’s expedients (shaft the poor some more, give the rich another tax cut) were the equivalent of sticking a band aid on a gushing artery. Problems were never dealt with but simply swept under the carpet as her neo-cons pressed on with their war on the working class.
(NOTE for people who still think Thatcher was good; if your livelihood depends on a milk – cow, you don’t beat it to death for not giving enough milk. The working class are the milk cow of any industrial nation. Its not rocket science, not even for the swivel eyed tendency.)
Collective bargaining through unions was undermined, the expensive and totally unfair burden of training their workforce was lifted from those poor, hard done by employers, apprenticeships coupled to further education through day release was virtually abolished. Despite all the hypocritical speeches extolling family values, tax breaks designed to make it possible for a single income family on an average wage to have a decent lifestyle were abolished to fund tax cuts for the rich. After all, the basic principle of swivel eyed economics is that the best way to make everybody better off is to take money from the poor and give it to the rich.

Even after Thatcher was deposed by her own despairing party, the swivel eyed tendency held on to power through John Major's Conservative rump (oops, pardon!) and then Thatcher clone Tony Blair. As a result, Thatcher’s flagship policies, all made up on the spur of the moment when a difficult question needed to be fended off, continued for another ten years to exacerbate the problems, thus creating the current skill shortage, debt crisis and chaos in the housing market, not to mention the immigration problem and the shortage of plumbers, brickies, electricians, mechanics, machine operators, nurses etc. etc.

Had Madame Swivel Eyes not so thoroughly antagonised our European partners we might have been able to command enough support to block the onward march of Federalism. Thus we may have been able to restrict immigration to people who have something to offer. Had she not so thoroughly destroyed the social and economic infrastructure that held the nation together we might have been better equipped to deal with the challenges of post – industrialism.

Now we have huge social problems queuing up and an unholy alliance of the self interested super rich and the Political Correctness police doing all they can to prevent these problems being dealt with in any sensible way. So with the increasing unrest will Enoch Powells Rivers of Blood turn into Rivers of Beetroot Soup? Will it be the hoards from Eastern Europe rather than the poor corners of a crumbling Empire that swamp our nation and hijack our cultural and social institutions? It is unlikely.

Perversely, most of the voices raised against immigration now belong to the people who wholeheartedly support "free enterprise" and "maket forces" and thing Margaret Thatcher "did a lot of good for this country." If any of them would like to tell us how it makes sense to deskill the workforce, destroy our industrial base and force our workers to compete for jobs with workers in the low labour cost economies of South East Asia while we have to import trained plumbers, electricians, brickies and plasterers from the old Soviet Bloc nations is "doing a lot of good" we will be eternaslly grateful. If you cannot, however, shut the fuck up and learn to love beetroot soup.

The bulk of recent immigrants are from Poland and the Baltic states and given half a chance will assimilate quickly. All it needs is for national and local government to recognise that some communities, where the migrants are focused, will need special support and extras investment (OOPS, BLASPHEMY!).

Whether that can happen while the two main political parties are in thrall to those 50,000 voters in the marginal constituencies where NIMBYISM rules and the immigrants are concentrated in traditional “safe seats” where the thinking voters vote means nothing remains to be seen.