Immigration

As Scotland grapples with the problems of an ageing population with a low skills set, help is on hand in the form of English economic migrants:

Television property shows used to be full of English couples moving to the Med for a better life. Now an increasing number are looking north - to Scotland.

No prescription charges, an efficient health service, good schools and no university fees are all being cited by those moving north of the border. Add to that far cheaper property prices than in the South, and the attraction becomes even more potent.

It would be interesting to know whether the views of people like Bruce Ogilvie have changed since the 1990s, are English migrants more welcome now? Personally I think Scotland now has a more mature relationship with England, the Scots are less likely to blame 'the English' for their lot, preferring instead to blame 'Westminster', 'Britain' or 'London-centric politicians'.

I just found out that Steve Uncles, part owner of the English Democrats Party, acted as the election agent for Chris Nickerson in the 2005 General Election. According to Steve he personally pounded the streets of Gravesend to get the 10 signatures required to enable Chris Nickerson to stand, and submitted to the Gravesend Council offices.

So what, you may ask.

Chris Nickerson was standing for his own English Independence Party under a manifesto commitment to repatriate immigrants:

4.3 Repatriation
The number of immigrants and people from immigrant families now living in England has become so great that the time has come to turn the inward flow into an outward flow. We will implement a 20 year programme of the repatriation of post-WW2 immigrants. This will be carried out sympathetically but with determination. It will be done by 'Constructive Repatriation' i.e. by the normal government process of passing Acts of Parliament which will make England less and less attractive for the immigrants to remain. - English Independence Party Manifesto, 2005

It seems like a strange policy for an officer of the civic nationalist English Democrat Party to support, and it looks stranger still when you read how Steve Uncles taunted the Free England Party with the label 'far-right' when Chris Nickerson became their President.

The word 'hypocrite' springs to mind.

And the word 'stupid'.

And the word 'fat'.

In the CEP's Summer "Think of England" magazine Frank Field offers up a condensed version of his Chancellor's speech to the University of Hertfordshire:

the English Question and immigration are intricately linked in two significant respects. Both issues are still no go areas for most major British politicians. Both issues feed the BNP vote.

According to Frank, not only should the democratic unfairness be addressed, but action is also required because "the English Question is being taken up seriously by the BNP". As regular readers will know I have been warning about the BNP's attempts to leap aboard the English bandwagon for a considerable time, and as my recent post on the English Democrats showed my concerns in this direction don't appear to have been shared by all. In fact the English Democrats appear to see a benefit in the far-right joining the English cause.

Over at the British Democracy Forum, English Democrat, Steve Uncles, states that "I think it's great [that] 3 Different Flavours of English Nationalists are Standing in Elections this year", whatever flavour of English Nationalism they represent. One of the flavours to which he refers is the distinctly racial England First Party, with whom Steve Uncles has met, and whose policies include:

• Repatriation of all immigrants to their lands of ancestral origin
• Capital punishment for all murderers
• Restoration of the gibbet, stocks and whipping post for serious violent offenders, paedophiles, sex pests and drug dealers.
• The abolition of the Islamic faith and demolition of all mosques

When questioned as to whether he supports the restoration of the gibbet Steve Uncles jokes, "It's a printing error, I believe they want to still be able to get their giblets so they can make Chicken Soup!".

It's not just the England First Party, Steve Uncles also invites British National Party members over to English nationalist forums for the purpose of debate. Debate about what exactly? The answer may be revealed by the breathless excitement with which another English Democrat, David Lane, announces that the BNP are discussing a name change to the English National Party (ironically a name registered to the EDP themselves):

The English effect is happening !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Both UKIP and the BNP are debating changing their names on their respective web sites.

THIS IS A QUOTE FROM A BNP FORUM

"Controversy is not the purpose of this thread.

For several reasons I think the BNP should change the Party's name to the English National Partry.

Scots, Irish and Welsh quite rightly have their own Nationalist Parties which are acceptable, even to the Establishment. But these Nationals are also British. Whenever anyone mentions British Nationalism it is as though the Black Death has returned. I have no idea why Scots, Welsh or Irish Nationalism is ok but not 'British'. For much the same reasons I think we should have an English Parliament. The 'other' Brits can sit in our Parliament but not vice versa. It would not only ruff the collars of those politiciams who hate the English, it may also be attractive to voters. Also, in an English Parliament, 'British' people would not be able to sit in it."

===============================================
Looks like British is out and ENGLISH is in, both UKIP and BNP are now debating name changes !!!!!!!!

In case you missed it I draw your attention to:

"Also, in an English Parliament, 'British' people would not be able to sit in it."

As I have highlighted previously, it is the belief of the BNP that an English parliament should contain only the ethnic English, hence the quotes around the word British.

In an article on the English Democrats News blog Steve Uncles recognises that the BNP are adopting English nationalism for pragmatic reasons and suggests that a change of name and loyalty would be beneficial to them:

The failing BNP along with failing UKIP realise the English Nationalism is the only viable alternative political view point.

The problem these Unionist parties have is that they don't have England or English in their name - the English Democrats is the only way forward.

And it gets worse. In this email to a fellow English nationalist Steve Uncles suggests infiltrating the English Independence Party to affect a merger with the English Democrats:

What about infiltrating the English Independence Party

After all, you could claim that you have "fallen out" with the English Demcorats, as we don't have a policy of English Independence.

You may also be able to vote out/demand their silly immigration policy is scraped, as a reason for joining, and then vote to merge with the English Democrats after this is achieved.

It would then give us an angle on what is going on, with a possiblity of neutralising them.

I guess that Martin, and Alan may also be interested.
(English Democrats special forces?)

We may have our different views, but we are all trying our best for England.

What-do-ya-think ?

Steve

The silly immigration policy to which Steve refers is the encouraged repatriation of "post-WW2 non-European mass immigrants to return to their countries of origin, culture and extended families" to "restore a SINGLE, EXCLUSIVE ENGLISH CULTURE as a basis for government policy". Silly indeed, but why would he want to incorporate these people into the English Democrats Party; is support for an English parliament his only criteria?

In addition the EDP have also written to England's Parliamentary Party to suggest a merger, and they are completely obsessed with both UKIP and Veritas, with their one notable scalp being the defection of the West Dorset UKIP branch to the EDP. An obsession that led Dr Richard North to observe that:

English Democrats, by the way - superficially attractive - is, inter alia a sink hole for little Englanders. Some of the names I recognise as trouble-makers from UKIP days, people whom UKIP was fortunate to lose when they deserted to Veritas and who have since found refuge in their final bolt-hole as the Kilroy party falls apart.

The EDP will doubtless take pride in such an attack from a unionist political opponent (even if he is, like them, Eurosceptic). But what if North has a point, what if all this courting of fringe parties is populating the English Democrats with a load of undesirables, with dubious motives, from the fringes? And what if the perception that the English movement is populated with such people is preventing it from becoming a mainstream movement?

Recruitment for recruitment's sake appears to be the raison d'être. One English Democrat correspondent on Political Betting even boasts that he has "converted many BNP voters into supporters of an independent English Parliament and English Democrat voters". He then hopefully adds, "Race does not enter our politics". I'm sorry to be a party-pooper, but if you recruit from the BNP then race will enter your politics.

The England effect, if it does happen, needs to be a cross-party, mainstream and pluralist campaign for English national emancipation; it will not come about from an unholy alliance of ethnic nationalists, eurosceptics and disaffected British nationalists, and it will not benefit from people that are in it for purely pragmatic reasons.

The Campaign for an English Parliament, who will have stalls at the Conservative and Liberal Democrat conferences, tend to focus their attention on persuading the centre-ground of the benefits of a political Englishness. For me it is the CEP's policy that represents the way forward, but regrettably the actions of other English nationalist groups have held the CEP back in that respect.

Frank Field is correct, the English Question and Immigration are linked, but not only in the two ways that he describes. They are also linked in a third way because there is an overlap between civic English nationalists, campaigning for a constitutional Englishness, and ethnic English nationalists primarily concerned with what England can do for them; an overlap that is reinforced by the EDP's attempt to tap into the pool of ethnic nationalism and British nationalism to garner support for their goal of an English parliament. In doing so they make a strategic and ethical mistake.

I reiterate my previous advice to the English Democrats:

There’s a huge centre-ground of people who vote Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat, and it’s those people that the English Democrats need to attract. This won’t be achieved from a position in the gutter. The EDP have never taken my advice on anything (which is why I reluctantly write this article), and perhaps they won’t now, but for what it’s worth here’s my advice: Stop meeting with racists, instead you should fight them; differentiate yourselves from ethnic nationalists in the minds of the public, help show that English nationalism is not soft white nationalism; move yourself out from the fringes, focus on the mainstream; stop poaching from other parties, recruit from your own ranks, and; for all our sakes start preaching the progressive nationalist values that I think you believe in, make those your main focus and people will find common ground with you.

Some people, people like Sir George Young for example, believe that Blair’s lasting legacy is the botched asymmetric constitution, and they’re right to highlight the constitutional vandalism that has taken place under New Labour. But the thing about political constitutions is that they are not permanent; they can be undone (even if it is highly unlikely that Scotland and Wales will ever again embrace unionism). For me the real legacy of Blair lies in the permanent altering of the physical constitution of the English people. In this month’s Prospect Magazine Robert Colls explores this:

Leicester, where I live now, is ready to become the first majority Asian city in Europe. It will not be the last. Immigration into English cities has reached record levels and continues unabated. In the last three or four years, Leicester has taken more than 10,000 Somalis, and Poles are the latest wave. For a long time, you were not supposed to notice this. Or talk about it. But now demographers refer to the "third demographic transition," where, if current trends continue, national ancestry will be "radically and permanently altered by high levels of immigration… in combination with sub-replacement fertility and accelerated levels of emigration of the domestic population"—the quote is from the Population and Development Review in September 2006. I am not a demographer, but if this is true, in the long run this is what historians will remember New Labour for. Not achievements at the treasury, nor the NHS, nor even in Northern Ireland, but presiding over a fundamental and irrevocable shift in the physical and historical constitution of the English people.

I think this is true. This is Blair's legacy, and what's worse is the fact that he hasn't equipped England to deal with the problems to come. In the ten years that he was in power the UK saw a population increase of two million people (that we know about). That may seem like a paltry number but when you consider that England is a country of massive housing shortages, congested roads, water shortages, groaning infrastructure, encroached upon greenbelt, built upon flood plains and creeping urbanisation you do begin to wonder exactly why we need more people. Of course, that figure of two million disguises the true irrevocable shift in the constitution of the English people because record numbers of Brits have been leaving the UK to live abroad, with one in ten Brits now living in a foreign country and even more desperate to leave.

The south east of England is now more densely populated than Bangladesh, a fact that should challenge David Blunkett's claim that there is ‘no upper limit’ to immigration into the UK. On its own England has the World's 24th highest population with a population density of 383 people per square kilometre compared a European average of 117.

I've often heard Labour politicians scoff at Maggie Thatcher's claim that there is no such thing as society, and well they might, but it seems to me that the degradation of society that began under Thatcher has been accelerated by the Blair years. The economic prosperity that Britain has enjoyed has ameliorated the problems but still there are signs that society is becoming polarised along religious and ethnic grounds. There's also a growing chasm between a socially immobile and educationally impoverished underclass and those of us affluent enough to enjoy sitting in complete gridlock on our way to work, the gulf between ‘rich and poor’ is now at a forty-year high and relative poverty appears to be on the increase.

The problems caused by immigration, overcrowding and competition are felt most acutely in England, and more acutely still by those living in relative poverty (whether they are black or white, or new or old-Britons). The UK as a whole has a population density of just - I say 'just' - 246 people per square kilometre but it's to England that the overwhelming majority of the new arrivals come and settle. Unfortunately, and despite a tidal wave of English self-awareness and renewed national consciousness, England lacks - and has been actively denied - the constitutional apparatus to integrate these arrivals as new Englishmen and Englishwomen. The new arrivals are informed that they are British in accordance with the doctrines of New Labour Multiculturalism, and more often than not they view the English as just another ethnic group, albeit the majority, that make up the ethnic patchwork of multicultural England.

I have little doubt that many in the Labour Party care not one jot for England, its heritage, history or culture. England is an embarrassment to them, a repository of horribly white, right-wing, Europhobic, culturally inferior, binge-drinking yobs; Englishness, insofar as it exists in any meaningful sense for them, is the most base of all European identities and cultures, characterised by xenophobia, social awkwardness and class prejudice - the very antithesis of progressiveness and newness. England is redolent of imperialism, it has an embarrassing history, it is Britain’s dirty little secret.

England, as opposed to Britain, has an unfortunate history around the world and within the British Isles. Terry White, Labour Party Communications Officer

The main rationale behind the massive and unprecedented immigration into England is the economy, stupid. It’s all about economics. Immigration means cheap labour and an increase in GDP (proudly heralded as Gordon Brown's economic miracle) due to the larger workforce. Immigrants get to do the jobs that we don’t want to, and best of all they do it for cheap, and the extra competition for low skilled work drives down wages at the lower end of the scale. ‘You’ve never had it so good’ claim the Government, and to an extent they’re right, the anti-inflationary effect of immigration benefits us all by driving down the costs of service industries, agriculture and labour, not to mention the economic benefits of employing highly-skilled third-world doctors and nurses so that we don’t have to go to the expense of training, or employing, our own (which is just as well since they are all going to live in Australia).

But there’s another positive spin off from all this immigration: cultural enrichment. England was always a mongrel nation, ethnically, but despite that, because she had successfully integrated small waves of immigrants throughout the centuries, England was a monocultural wasteland, a homogeneous sterile culture; it just didn’t really feel like the new country we all apparently wanted; and quite out of keeping with ‘New Britain’, which was essentially a big version of London: multicultural, progressive, diverse, dynamic, exciting, and international. Essex man, Worcester woman, white van man, Middle England in general, needed diversity to free them from themselves, to rid themselves of their own embarrassing Englishness, to help purge themselves of their xenophobia, to open up their eyes to the wonderful world that existed outside of their own boring cultural norms, or those that they experienced on the Costa Brava.

To an extent this has worked, England today is a country more comfortable with alternative identities and ethnicities; we are a more plural and racially tolerant country. But only to an extent. Whilst the overwhelming majority of us were, and still are, prepared to accept and welcome newcomers, the sheer scale of the influx now resembles an invasion. There are now very real concerns over the loyalties of the new immigrants, and about their effect on the social cohesion of our communities. The English are looking at their ghettoised cities and saying ‘no more’. There’s a growing realisation too that England is a nation and culture unique unto itself, and no less worthy of nurture and protection than any other indigenous culture anywhere else in the world. Whilst the Britishness of Gordon Brown capitulates to alien interests that undermine our common culture, the bedrock of Britishness – Englishness – provides a port in the storm for all those that are tired of New Britain and the politically correct illiberal social engineering that embodies it; Englishness is not so much a retreat as a safety net – a warm blanket- to catch us, as everything that once rendered Britain meaningful and worthwhile is stripped away.

There is evidence that the more diverse an area is in racial terms, the less likely its residents are to feel that they trust each other. This is an important argument and it is important that we examine it. - David Blunkett MP, Home Secretary, to the Institute of Public Policy Research, 7th July 2004

In the early years of New Labour anyone that raised these concerns was immediately denounced as a racist, but not anymore. The social awkwardness that the English previously displayed when talking about race, identity and nationalism has disappeared. Today it’s the people that don’t talk about these issues, or who try and prevent others from doing so, that are denounced, and rightly so. The integration of immigrant communities (the multiculturalists revealingly still talk of communities rather than individuals) is high on the Establishment’s ‘to do’ list, but given the continuing influx it’s difficult to see what practical measures they can take, other than to impose illiberal, authoritarian and un-English policies to coerce the immigrants into ‘Britishness’ at a time when the native populations are ‘retreating’ into Englishness, Welshness and Scottishness. Devolution to Scotland and Wales has created a confident political sense-of-self to match the cultural assertiveness of those nations. In England, with the destabilising effects of devolution, Britishness has become nebulous, amorphous, ill-defined, the subject of many a prescient obituary. English is the new British. And as the English dessert Britishness in favour of an older, more stable, established English narrative to describe ourselves, we retreat into more exclusive, more ethnic identity, leaving Britishness to the new-Britons. Because 'Englishness' is a cultural historic ethnicity, because Englishness has no constitutional form or political expression, we new-improved English are politically disenfranchised as a nation, and the new-Britons that we leave rattling around in Britishness are culturally and emotionally disenfranchised by their isolation.

In the domain of culture and values, a socially cohesive society is one in which the members share common values which enable them to identify and support common aims and objectives, and share a common set of moral principles and codes of behaviour through which to conduct their relationships with one another. (Kearns and Forrest, 2000)

It’s too early to say what the result of this divergence (diversity) of identity will be on England. Are people in diverse societies more anti-social, are we becoming less trusting and more fearful of our neighbours? Possibly. Are we in danger of becoming ‘too diverse’ and undermining our common culture, and with it the social contract that underpins our welfare state and the altruistic nature of our society? Most definitely yes we are.

For a long time we’ve been informed that the English are a xenophobic bunch; that under the tolerant liberal surface lurks a simmering cauldron of racist beliefs and attitudes. Well, perhaps, but recent history has shown the English to be remarkably tolerant bunch when measured against other nations. What is being called for now is reciprocation of that tolerance, in equal measure, from the people that come and live here. It is noteworthy that the backlash against immigration in England is coming not from the men in bomber jackets claiming Aryan superiority and demanding the repatriation of aliens. Instead it comes from normal people concerned that immigration is damaging the integrity of the country, many of them are Labour voters or first and second generation immigrants themselves.

In England, in particular, opinion is mobilising against the UK Government’s immigration policy. The message is this: We don’t want more people, we already have too many. Under Blair England’s population surpassed 50 million, in the next 25 years that total is predicted to rise by 6 million – the equivalent of the combined populations of Scotland, Luxembourg and Malta upping sticks and setting up home in England’s formerly green and pleasant land.

Even now, even with ‘just’ 50M people in England, Scotsman Gordon Brown is facing stiff opposition to his plans to concrete over England with 3 million new homes (and that’s just to tackle the housing shortage that we have already!)

It may be, for example, that immigration helps nations keep their bills down. But the interesting thing is that connections between immigration and social dislocation have been made, and not just by men in jackboots. For the sake of Britain, is it time to raise the drawbridge? The Economist, The kindness of strangers? Feb 26th 2004

I personally wouldn’t take such a harsh line. Immigration is vital for the health of the economy, and for the cultural well being of the country. We need a points system that gives preferential treatment to people investing wealth in our country, or those that are highly-skilled and highly marketable. Let’s take down the drawbridge and install a revolving door: one out one in. Or even better: two out one in.

The Government’s favourite buzzword is ‘sustainability’, but the sort of immigration that has occurred over the past ten years is anything but sustainable. It is irresponsible and unsustainable - economically, environmentally and socially.

It’s not immigration itself that is the problem, it’s nett immigration. The ridiculous level of immigration into England, and the resulting increases in population, is threatening the beauty our country and endangering our quality of life. England needs to be given time to assimilate the new-Britons into English society, to make Englishmen and Englishwomen out of them and their children. We must pause to release the pressure valve on the crisis affecting our housing, infrastucture and public services, and our national sense of self.

Just like tolerance, identity is a two way street. In order to belong you must identify with a group, and that group must recognise you as one of their own. The immigrant populations and the indigenous population need time to acheive this.

Building more and more new houses and ramming them full of new people, then building new roads, hospitals and schools to service them, is not the answer. It never was. Blair's legacy must lie in the fact that he appeared to think it was. Anyone that voted for Blair more than once, and who now complains about traffic congestion and house prices, deserves only slightly less of a kicking than the man himself.

Over the past few years it has become fashionable to describe England as a 'mongrel nation'. I don't know when, or by whom, the phrase was coined but it seems to have been popularised by Eddie Izzard. There are many English people that find the word 'Mongrel' objectionable and offensive when used to describe England. Certainly it is something that tends to stir strong emotions and opinions, which is why I will be interested to hear your comments on this article sent to me by an anonymous author.

The definition of mongrel in my dictionary goes thus –

Mongrel – n. animal (esp. dog) of mixed breed. Adj. Of mixed origin or character

To me this definition implies an admixture where no particular trait or feature prevails, and a multiplicity of elements and forces, many of them unknown, has been at work. It’s opposite is often held to be ‘pure’. This article is emphatically not to be read as a claim that the English are a ‘pure race’. All I intend to do is ask (and, I hope, answer) two questions – “Just how ‘mongrel’ are the English?” and “Why is the term applied so frequently to the English?”

Few people in the modern world would ever make a claim that their nation is somehow racially ‘pure’. And yet by the same token few would be willing to dispense with their historical identity. The use of the word mongrel in relation to an entire nation of people implies that their characteristics are not only not fixed, but are easily mutable, and have been frequently changed over time. In recent years the word has often applied to the English by commentators and not a few English people themsleves in a way which would have been uncommon just a few decades ago. The implication is that the English are not an ‘historical’ people, and do not have characteristics of their own but have an identity that is simply an amalgam of elements taken from the identities of other people. In the context of the doctrine of multiculturalism, these elements are provided by the supposed ‘waves’ of immigration to which England has been subject throughout her history. The English themselves certainly began as migrants, originally moving to late Roman Britain in dribs and drabs to be employed in the defence of this far-flung outpost of the empire, but as that empire collapsed and as its inheritors became increasingly fractious the peoples of Southern Denmark, Northern Germany and the Frisian Islands began to move in increasing numbers across the North Sea, drawn by employment as mercenaries and the hope of acquiring land. These peoples, though known as Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians were essentially the same – Germanic people who shared the same language, customs and religion. Tribal identities were not strong amongst the early English and by the time of the Venerable Bede (b. 672 or 3, died 735) the idea of an English people was well established, and strengthened over the ensuing centuries. This identity was firmly in the mind of King Alfred when he signed a treaty of peace with the leader of the Danish invaders Guthrum –

“This is the peace that King Alfred and King Guthrum, and the witan of all the English nation, and all the people that are in East Anglia, have all ordained and with oaths confirmed...”

The Danes originated from the same areas of North-West Europe as the Angles, Saxons and Jutes (both the lands of the Angles and the Jutes are wholly or in part contiguous with the territory of Denmark), and began to settle in England in the 870s. Their similarity to the English was such that in the BBC documentary programme Blood of the Vikings it was so difficult for researchers to distinguish the genetic characteristics of Anglo-Saxons from Danes that it was decided to treat them as being the same. Perhaps more importantly, however, is the cultural similarity between these near cousins; they spoke a language so similar that an Englishman and a Dane could probably conduct business without the aid of an interpreter, and the area settled by the Danes seems to be free of those marks of inter-ethnic conflict we nowadays associate with ‘ethnic cleansing’. Modern place-names in the area of the Danelaw are often an amalgam of English and Danish elements, suggesting that the boundaries between the two peoples were so flimsy that they quickly lost their meaning. Certainly they lost their meaning politically when in 937 King Aethelstan defeated a coalition of anti-English forces (including some Danes from within England) at Brunanburgh and united the various English states into the single nation-state of England.

By 1066 the Normans could see few distinctions amongst the English as they cast a covetous gaze over an England politically unified and culturally homogenous, and prepared for what would later be billed as the first great ‘wave’ of immigration in English history. But in the Normans we again are not really dealing with a distinctive group of people, at least not in racial terms. Many Saxons were settled in what would become Normandy in the later stages of the Roman Empire for the very same reason that they were settled in Britain – as hired mercenaries to protect the coast from raiders. These people, amongst others, were still in Normandy when the ‘Northmen’ settled the area and gave it its name. The Normans were themselves Danes, and although they took on the language and many of the customs and social traits of their French neighbours, they also retained many of the traits of their ancestors.

When William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy, landed in Kent he brought with him at the most 8,400 men, 3,900 of who were Bretons and Flemish. The Bretons and the Flemish would likely have returned home after the successful conquest of England, as indeed would many of the Normans themselves who had families, land and employment in Normandy and beyond. Other Normans would certainly have come over to England in the wake of the Conqueror, but altogether the Normans were unlikely to have formed a large group within England, which at the time of the invasion had a population estimated at 1.1 million. However, the Normans were to have an effect on the political and social structure disproportionate to their numbers for the simple reason that they held all the reins of power. They formed a new elite, choosing to remove the native English aristocracy, but penetrated little into the great mass of Anglo-Saxons who surrounded them. In time they came to adopt the tongue of those they ruled, as well as their system of legal customs (which became known as the common law) and the system of administrative boundaries, renaming them counties instead of shires.

1066 and its aftermath saw the last significant immigration into England until the mass immigration of the 1950s onwards. It is significant largely because of its political and social impact rather than because of any great change in the composition or culture of the English. In the 17th Century a small number of Huguenots (possibly 50,000) entered England, which then had a population of about 4 million. Many Huguenots did not stay in England but moved on to her North American colonies, a pattern of movement that would be repeated later in England’s history. Flemish weavers and Dutch millers migrated to England in small numbers, but quickly disappeared into the enveloping English milieu that surrounded them, the only evidence that they were ever really here is the result only of careful research by local historians.

In the 19th century the largest migrations into England since the Danelaw took place. This was the movement of Irish to escape the potato famine and look for work in England’s burgeoning industries. It is thought that upwards of 750,000 Irish came to England, whose population at that time numbered about 30 million. A smaller number of east European Jews (about 120,000) also came to England at around the same time.

Danes, Normans, Huguenots, Irish and Jews all emerged from Europe, bringing with them values, and even customs, they shared with the native English. They found a strong, vibrant English culture which, in the space of only two or three generations, consumed them with hardly a nod at their existance. The historical ‘waves’ of immigration, then, were spread over a period of 800 years, and taking the best estimates of total numbers of immigrants, it is unlikely that the annual immigration into England throughout that period amounted to more than a fraction of a percent of the total population. Is it any surprise then that the immigrants rapidly vanished, through anglicisation and marriage, and that there is little that is tangible left beyond a few material monuments, such as Huguenot churches in London to mark their passage into Englishness? Ultimately the course of the English nation was hardly deflected by their presence.

Modern research, including DNA testing shows that the population of England is not that different from what it was in 1066. It is still clearly English – largely genetically, and almost completely culturally. So why, for the English, the sobriquet ‘mongrel’?

The answer is simply the unprecendented immigration into England that has occurred since the Second World War - truly a ‘wave’. Such high levels of migration into a country inevitably leads the native peoples to question whether or not they can continue to have a discrete existence as an homogenous people tied to a homeland. The English are now presented with a situation that is not in their national collective experience – a large, indigestible mass of people from very different cultures living amongst them. The English might respond to this by insisting that they are an ancient people, tied by ancient bonds not only to each other but to the land in which they live. Such a response would immediately place the future of mass immigration, and the doctrine of multiculturalism it has created, in jeopardy. In order to defuse any assertion that an ancient culture and national identity is being undermined it is important to show that that identity doesn’t really exist, or at least that it is easily shaped from the borrowings and leavings of other peoples’ cultures. If everything is in flux, is nothing but mix-‘n’-match, then what does it matter if the current manifestation of a common identity is abandoned for something new? In order to justify waves of immigration today it must be shown that there always have been ‘waves’ of immigration in the past, and that these have only been beneficial, because are we not a proud and accomplished people today?

But what if the ‘waves’ of immigration never happened? What if England’s achievements came about, not because of diversity, but because of her cultural homogeneity…?

Up to 570,000 illegal immigrants are living in the UK, according to a new Government estimate published today. (this figure does not include the 716,000 to 772,000 asylum seekers whose applications are already being processed)

That's 1% of the UK population. And the Government wonders why far-right parties are making gains!

England is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. It has nearly twice the population density of Germany, 4 times that of France and 12 times that of the USA. 59,000 new homes will be required in England each year for the next 17 years for immigrants, and that's in a country that has a chronic housing shortage - according to the UK Government the South East of England alone (already the most densely populated region in Europe) requires 640,000 new houses over the next 20 years, with 200,000 of them to be built on the greenbelt.

Commenting on the new illegal immigrant statistics Immigration Minister Tony McNulty said:

It is interesting that the Government releases these statistics, which only a a few months ago it said were impossible to generate, when it is loosing the ID Card debate. And it is quite typical of the UK Government to be two-faced enough to use this piece of news - another that demonstrates their incompetence - to sell to us a piece of legislation that will undermine our civil liberties. In essence what they are saying is, "we fucked up, now you pay the price."

David Davis, the Conservative Party leader in waiting, said this of ID cards:

And as the Guardian points out David Davis has also argued that any ID card system had to be measured against four criteria:

As yet the Government has failed to convince the public on any of those four criteria. And the cost of this new ID Card state? £18 billion ($40 billion Canadian), a tenth of what the UK Government presently spends on the Immigration and Nationality Department of the Home Office, whose job is immigration control, citizenship and asylum. Here's an idea, why not spend the money earmarked for ID cards on processing illegal immigrants and preventing terrorists coming into Britain?

The UK Government is using terrorism and illegal-immigration to scare-monger the British into giving up their hard-won freedoms. Home Secretary Charles Clarke has even accused those who oppose ID Cards of "liberal woolly thinking" and spreading false fears but was rebuked by the civil rights group Liberty who stated:

Absolutely, for once Dubbya is spot on because people will still enter Britain using foreign documents - genuine or forged - and ID cards offer no more deterrent to people smugglers than passports and visas.

I am an Englishman, and I am free to walk around England without having to present papers to an agent of the state. It is up to the agent of the state to prove to me that they are who they say they are, and if the state cannot control our borders to keep out people that have no right to be in England, and who threaten the safety of me and my family, then the Government should resign immediately.

No2ID joins my blogroll.