The Centre For Social Cohesion

Thus, he ridicules UKIP’s call for ‘zero net immigration’ by suggesting it would be impracticable to enforce, as well as unacceptably dirigiste. He writes: “Yes, we’ve had one die in Oldham, so you can come in…whoops no, sorry, Mrs Baxter in Stoke has just had twins.’

Here, Mr Aaronvitch has clearly confused ‘zero net immigration’ -- which simply means that, over some given stipulated period, the total number of immigrants to some given country has not exceeded the number of people who have emigrated from it -- with ‘zero population growth’. ‘Zero net immigration’ has nothing whatsoever to do with the number of births or deaths to have occurred within a country during any period. All it would take for the country to adopt a policy of zero net immigration would be for it to allow no more immigrants into it in any given year than had left it the previous year.

No more worthy of serious consideration are the reasons Mr Aaronvitich gives against the Conservative Party’s proposal for ‘annual limits’ to be imposed on the number of economic immigrants allowed into the country. He writes:

‘Think about this. We will have a national plan for immigration that would try to second-guess the decisions of a zillion local businesses about who they want to employ and when, [that] would attempt to thwart the ambitions of hundreds of thousands of qualified workers, and still expect our economy and our society to remain as dynamic as they are today. And all of this will be on the basis of a best guess made in committee by people who may have no idea what is going on in the world’

It is difficult to know where to begin disentangling all the loose ends in this argument. First of all, economic growth is largely a function of an increasing capital-to-labour ratio, and so hardly depends on steadily increasing numbers of workers in a given economy. Second, where there exist specific skill shortages only economic immigrants could fill, employers can easily and quickly make their needs known to government, just as they have long been required to do under schemes that have required them to apply for work permits for immigrants whom they wish to employ. Third, there is more to quality of life than the dynamism of an economy. Current high levels of immigration to Britain are arguably slowing the pace at which its citizens are coming to terms with their mutual diversity and learning to get along amicably with each other rather than retreating into self-segregated enclaves where mutual fear and mistrust incubate.

However, Mr Aaronvitch’s greatest ire towards those who speak of the need for immigration controls is reserved for what I have argued in my recent Civitas publication ‘A Nation of Immigrants?’, although Mr Aaronovitch refers neither to it nor me by name. Instead, he prefers to refer to my essay somewhat contemptuously as ‘a pamphlet from one of the fustier right-wing think-tanks’. This is how he dismisses its central thesis that recent high levels of immigration have threatened social cohesion in Britain by undermining its claim to be able to be considered still a single nation:

‘Arguing that while Britain has absorbed previous waves of immigrants, this time the very existence of the UK is under threat…. Back in 1905 the TUC had it wrong about the Jews and in ’68, one imagines, old Enoch was just foolin’ with his bloody Tiber. Today, according to the boffins at Civitas, it’s for real.

‘Civitas’ case is in some ways confusing – the pamphlet speaks about the “seemingly reckless pace and scale on which immigration has recently been allowed to proceed”, without ever spelling out what the problem is supposed to be. Is it racial disharmony? Potential ethnic conflict?’

Mr Aaronovitch is right that I do claim in my essay that the recent scale of immigration to Britain has been different, in a way that renders it far more threatening to social cohesion, than previous immigration waves, but quite wrong that I do not make plain where the threat lies. I argue that there is something about recent immigration to Britain that distinguishes it from earlier waves of immigration and renders it potentially far more of a threat to social cohesion than these. By the way, in an essay covering Britain’s population history since the last Ice Age, I mean by ‘recent immigration’ that which has taken place since 1945, especially since 1997, not just or primarily that which has occurred since 2004.

What that crucial difference is has been the sheer volume and scale of recent immigration, relative to the size of Britain’s extant population. There has never been any previous period of Britain’s history, since the time that it came to be or contain a state or nation for anyone to immigrate to, when it has experienced immigration on the scale on which it has done since 1945, and especially since 1997. As was emphasised in the book, this combined with the low fertility levels of the indigenous population is threatening to effect such a profound change in Britain’s demographic composition as is liable to undermine social cohesion. For increasingly, instead of people sharing deep common cultural roots and ties with the country, our towns and cities are increasingly becoming inhabited by people lacking such common ties and roots and who, as a result, are finding it increasingly hard to identify with each other or with the country in which they are living. That increasing lack of common identification on the part of Britain’s populace must make it harder for them to remain a nation, and a British nation to boot. Those, like the present writer, who would regret the passing of the British nation must find cause for regret and concern in that prospect, even should Britain continue to remain densely populated and the economy there to continue to grow.

This is not neo-Nazi, racist ranting, but genuine concern that has nothing at all to do with race, religion, or colour. For while Britain has indeed historically been most closely associated with a specific ethnicity and religious creed, for centuries it has not confined full membership only to those of some specific race or creed. That is precisely why Britain's passing as a nation is to be so deeply regretted and resisted. For the likelihood is that, without its remaining one, such increasing religious and ethnic diversity as Britain is currently experiencing will result in ever greater mutual animosity between its inhabitants who will increasingly seek and find an identity for themselves in what divides rather than unites them.

I very much enjoy reading Mr Aaronvitich’s columns about his battle against his paunch by taking up jogging and about how he passes the time shooting the breeze with fellow literati in Hampstead coffee bars. I do wish, however, he would stick to writing about such subjects as these on which he clearly has some claim to authority, rather than his venturing into areas that demand some cerebration rather than simply a lot of huffing and puffing.