Tue, Mar 02, 2004 page9

• Why the uproar over immigrants in the UK?

  There is something absurd about the philosophy that free movement of capital is fine, but free movement of labor is not

  • By William Keegan / THE OBSERVER
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  Provence, in the south of France, does not get any worse. During a week's break at my rented retreat recently, I thought once again of how God smiled on the French and the Romans were quick to get the message.

  This is not knowledge confined to this side of the Atlantic either. American tourism in Provence was rising fast until first, Sept. 11 and second, French opposition to the war in Iraq -- which has looked more and more well-founded as the months have gone by -- took its toll. But neither has prevented arch US hawk on Iraq Richard Perle from enjoying the comforts of his villa last summer in ... well, in Provence, as a matter of fact.

  But there is always a cloud on the horizon, and in Provence it is the strong showing of the far-right and anti-immigration National Front. It was therefore some consolation to find that opinion polls in advance of the coming regional elections did not show much change in the proportion of National Front supporters from last year -- indeed a slight decrease. And the running story last week in La Provence was that Jean-Marie Le Pen, the grand (if that is the word) old man of the French National Front was being disqualified from registration as a candidate in the forthcoming regional elections because he did not personally own property there, his base in Nice being the property of his Party.

  Any sense of hope one felt about this however was soon dented on return to London, where the tabloid press was in a state of hysteria about the putative threat of mass immigration from eastern Europe, and calling upon the Blair government for tough measures. There is no underestimating the depths to which the right-wing tabloid press in the UK will sink in order to increase circulation by stirring up racial hatred. They are especially good at suggesting that there is a world out there waiting to invade Britain and take advantage of its welfare state.

  Racial hatred

  Unfortunately, on this occasion they have been joined by David Goodhart, the widely-respected editor of the prestigious, liberal intellectual monthly Prospect. The last thing Goodhart wishes to do is to stir up racial hatred, but in claiming that there is a conflict in modern democracies between the "solidarity" a nation needs and the "diversity" of multiculturalism, he has given ammunition to the prejudices of the tabloids at a sensitive time.

  Personally, I think he has raised a false dichotomy, and I am not much impressed by woolly statements such as "the progressive centre needs to ... develop a new language in which to address the anxieties, one that transcends the thin and the abstract language of universal rights on the one hand, and the defensive, nativist language of group identity on the other." Watch this space ...

  Goodhart and others seem to be concerned about the prospect of a big inflow of east European workers after the enlargement of the EU in May. The amazing thing about this is that although enlargement has been in the cards for years, and long been a goal of successive British Conservative and Labour governments, it seems to have taken the British press by surprise. All the surveys suggest that forecasts of large inflows of migrant labor have been much exaggerated. Moreover it has, in any case, been UK government policy for several years to encourage "economic migrants" to fill job vacancies in the UK health service, the British building trades and catering and other services. This all makes perfect economic sense.

  There is something absurd and inconsistent about the recently prevailing economic philosophy which states that free movement of capital is fine, but free movement of labor is not. People tend to migrate either out of desperation or a sense of adventure (in which latter case the migration is often temporary). A decent society should welcome economic migrants and asylum seekers. Indeed, many societies which consider themselves decent are comprised to a remarkable extent of the descendants of economic migrants and asylum seekers.
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