The title of David Goodhart’s new book gives the game away. Here, immigrants are not people; immigration is a thing.
Goodhart takes care to defend a multicultural society, yet his narrative is often a painful wail of anxiety at the presence of ‘the other’ in the ‘green and pleasant’ land. Danny Boyle’s totemic Olympics opening ceremony gets a nod, but actually represents much of what this book rails against.
The British Dream frequently portrays the immigrant as the taker. But there is strong evidence that migrants are net contributors to our country. On a number of occasions the facts disturb the stereotypes presented. Goodhart is forced to observe that many Caribbean people do well in the United States, and this is attributed here to a different history and different role models. Yet, migrants to Britain and migrants to the United States are very often brothers and sisters. In my mother’s family, some went to America, some to the UK. They migrated within years of each other, stayed very close and they were all the product of exactly the same history. The truth is that, just as all migrants of Caribbean origin in the US are not Colin Powell or Harry Belafonte, all persons of Caribbean origin in Britain are not suffused with what this book describes as ‘self-inflicted cultural wounds’.
Equally problematic is the way that people who happen not to share these fearful views on immigration are stereotyped. Strangely, the book complains about ‘immigration law firms who are battling to bring as many people as possible from poor countries to rich countries’. I know many immigration lawyers. They mostly try and give a professional service to their individual clients; they are certainly not striving to increase immigration in total. But throughout the book talks in fevered tones about ‘mass immigration advocates’. I do not know anyone who believes in mass immigration as such, just that in a globalised world immigration is a fact of life and such people should be treated fairly.
It is worth pointing out that it is not immigration (as Goodhart insists) that causes low wages and job insecurity. Low wages are a product of liberalised labour markets, exploitative employers and weak trade unions. He is also quite wrong to claim that the left ‘assumes a society without any pre-existing attachments or sense of community’. He has clearly never read any EP Thompson.
Nobody doubts that in a worldwide economic downturn people will be fearful of the ‘other’. So it is the job of progressives to make sure there is a firm but fair immigration system. Ed Miliband is right to address labour market issues. And to the extent that anti-immigrant sentiment represents real issues about job insecurity and the lack of affordable housing, it is vital that Labour address those issues.
But we should stand firm against urban myths about immigration and the right’s politics of loss and demonisation. We immigrants are so much more than the stereotypes paraded in The British Dream. And we are British too.
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Diane Abbott MP is shadow minister for public health
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The British Dream: Successes and Failures of Postwar Immigration
David Goodhart
Atlantic Books | 416pp | £20
“And we are British too.”
But are you English or Scottish or Welsh? Merely calling yourself British is almost a sign of difference these days.
British is just a catch all phrase, I remember an American showing me proudly his British passport, I just told him, nothing to be proud of mate anyone can call themeselves British nowadays. There was I suppose once upon a time when as a foreigner you had to earn a British Passport, now they are given out like confetti
Our job as progressive, Diane, is not to support virtualy unlimited migration from people who have nothing to offer the UK in terms of skills or experience (and I’m thinking illiterate spouses from Pakistan and Banglasdesh here). Neither is it progressive to open up your labour market to unlimited immigration from the poorer parts of the EU. You say immigration doesn’t drive down wages. I would suggest that this contention is false (as the House of Lords report on immigration suggested….)
I’m very glad you feel British, as you should. Clearly certain communities feel less British, possibly because they have failed to leave incompatible cultural baggage behind. You know, things like keeping women as chattels, not learning English, being incapable of keeping their religion in the private sphere, that sort of thing.
Trouble is, too many on the Left can’t even look at these questions, let alone search for solutions.
You are not an immigrant. You were born in London. That was nine years before Jamaican independence, so your parents were British when they came here. They were only arguably immigrants. You are unarguably not one.