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Norman Tebbit

Lord Tebbit of Chingford is one of Britain's most outspoken conservative commentators and politicians. He was a senior cabinet minister in Margaret Thatcher's government and is a former Chairman of the Conservative Party. He has also worked in journalism, publishing, advertising and was a pilot in the RAF and British Overseas Airways.

It's time to close the door. 

Britain must move towards a policy of 

zero net immigration

 

By Norman Tebbit Politics Last updated: February 7th, 2010

291 Comments Comment on this article

I promised that I would return to the subject of immigation, but first I should pick up a couple of points raised by readers.

Immigration must be tightened (Photo: PA)

As so often, to mention the Falklands is to enter a strange world in which the Guardinistas would prefer British subjects to be left under the rule of foreign fascists than for Margaret Thatcher to be given any credit for having taken firm clear action to liberate them. Then from out of the woodwork come those who were happy to have Stalin as a wartime ally (as I was) but could not stomach Pinochet as a supporter. As for the Belgrano, it was an enemy warship capable of causing heavy British casualties. Had it stayed in port it would not have been sunk. After it was sunk, no Argentinian warship (and that included their powerful aircraft carrier)  ventured into water deep enough for a submarine attack.

There can be nothing but sadness at the needless loss of life. That has to be laid at the door of the Argentinian Generals, not those of us who determined to liberate the Falklands. As to the effect of the withdrawal of an all-but-unarmed arctic survey ship, well, I do not think she would have troubled the Belgrano for very long, but no doubt when the papers are published under the 30-year rule there will be more said about that.

So to immigration. Let me be open about where I stand. These islands are our islands. They do not belong to the political classes, the European Commission, the United Nations, nor the government of the day. We live here and it is we, the people, who have the absolute right to decide who may, and who may not, come here and upon what conditions they come.

That is probably enough to have me held under suspicion of racism and worse. But there is more to come.

Immigration can, and in the past often has, brought benefits to the host population and to the immigrants. I am not thinking just of the Huguenots, nor the Jewish refugees fleeing from Hitler’s national socialist persecution, nor the Poles, Czechs and Slovaks who played a critical if not decisive role in the Battle of Britain. More recently I have concluded that, although I was of the view that the Ugandan Asian refugees should have gone to India rather than come here, it is clear that they have been major contributors to the economy and society more generally.

Again, I have no problem with the recent wave of central European migrants. Overwhelmingly, they have come here to work. They mostly pay their taxes. Many will return home; those who stay will integrate into our society. I know few more British men than some of my old aircrew friends,  Jasinski, Kryzanowski, Schermak, Gelbaur, Grzybowski, and more whose grandchildren are utterly British but bear their names with pride. Oh, and I had bettter declare an interest. I have employed quite a few central Europeans to care for my wife.

The characterisic that such immigrants have in common is at least an acceptance of our ways, and more often a sharing of the inheritance that has shaped our habits and culture here in this European offshore island.

Not all immigation has been quite like that. It has at times been conducted in a way that has contributed to a specific purpose. No, please do not lump me in with the wilder conspiracy theorrists. Many social and political phenomena are not the result of conspiracies. There is no need of a conspiracy for the hungry to follow the smell of food. Nor does it need a conspiracy for rats to assemble in a sewer. Nor for that matter for those who favour rule by an “enlightened” elite to support any measures or changes that will break down the natural organic bonds of societry.

Nor does it always have to go that far. The weak-kneed, new, modern Conservative Party of Macmillan lacked the will to sort out the trade unions, which were a major factor in our economic decline. They understood the problem but thought the solution might be unpopular with potential swing voters. Instead they set out to undermine the labour market by the importation of cheap labour from the Caribbean.

I think that the massive, deliberate, uncontrolled, uncounted and often denied programme of mass immigration has more complex origins. There is within NuLab a detestation of much that is British quite unknown in the Labour Party of Attlee or Callaghan. It is often a form of self-hatred and guilt. Guilt about being born comfortably middle class, having been to a decent school and a private hospital. Guilt even about being born into a prosperous country with a glorious and proud history. Like Caliban, these people rage against their own image. Some of them are so sick that they see a paedophile behind every tree, global warming in every sunny day, a potential rapist in every man – and find good livings in the fear and panic businesses. Nor should we forget the NuLab strategists who saw a huge immigrant population dependent on benefits as a sure source of votes. All of these impulses are exploited by the Eurofanatics who see this country and this nation as an impediment to the establishment of the Euro Republic, not to mention the world government freaks and those who are as fanatical against any concept of ethnic differences as the National Socialists were in their belief in the supremacy of those sharing their particular genes. Oh, and there are the religous fanatics determined to spread their zealotry across the world in the great caliphate.

Last of all, of course, are the poor bloody infantry of the invasion: hundreds of thousands simply seeking a better life than they had in their countries and finding it by settling in ours.

The numbers are no longer in serious dispute. You can find it all set out at www.migrationwatchuk.org. Time and time again, Ministers have had to concede that the figures produced there by the former diplomat Sir Andrew Green are right. He estimates (using the Government’s own statistics) that three million immigrants have been brought to Britain by NuLab since 1997. The projections from that inflow confirm that our population will rise by 10 million within 25 years, nearly 70 per cent by new immigration unless something is done. That is the population of another London, or seven Birminghams. At present the population of the UK is set to rise to 70 million.

This would be bad enough if we could be confident that the newcomers and those born of earlier immigrants were all determined to integrate into our society. At present, despite the integration and assimilation of very many immigrants and their descendents, there is no evidence that the pace of integration is fast enough to avoid a state of voluntary apartheid. We are, as Trevor Phillips has said, “sleepwalking into segregation” and the consequences of that can be seen in other parts of the world.     .

So what is to be done? We could pretend that it is not happening – but it will. We could call for an “Alfred the Great” policy of the kind which asserted this to be an Anglo-Saxon Christian nation, not a pagan one. I think that is a bit unlikely these days.

It seems to me that we must assert that we need to aim for a zero net immigration policy. We cannot achieve that while our frontiers are open to EU citizens, and although that is not too threatening at present, some of the prospective new member states would act like wide open doors to Third World migration. We need a decent policy of giving sanctuary to true refugees (not, I might say, to anyone claiming to be a homosexual and coming from a country which discriminates against homosexuals), but we must close the door to others and start serious work on deporting those here illegally, as well as reinstating proper border controls. It would also require changing our law to prevent judges and others simply claiming that foreign law overrides the laws of this country.

It could be done. But that would not solve all our problems: at best it would give us breathing space to begin to integrate and assimilate the separate communities living within our frontiers. That will not be easy, as it would involve creating a society into which we could reasonably expect decent people to integrate. If you were a young Muslim looking over the ghetto wall at the Friday or Saturday night street scene in some of our town centres, would you see it as an attractive society?

There is much to be done – but the political class will do almost anything to avoid talking about it at the forthcoming election.

Tags: Belgrano, european union, Falklands War, immigration, Margaret Thatcher, New Labour, Norman Tebbit