Immigration

Of all the issues this is the most sensitive and raises the rawest passions. Racial prejudice hovers menacingly at the edge of every argument. The subject gets high ratings in the league of things people worry about.

I accept there must be some orderly and fair quota of new immigrants because we are a small country with finite resources. I am very happy that we have a multi cultural society and I am blind to race and colour. I do, however, see real social problems building up in what used to be called working class areas where there are strains on services, resources and housing and where community cohesion is broken down because of a lack of traditional job opportunities in local factories and other important sources of employment. Wrongly those suffering from this deprivation turn to immigration as the cause of their plight. The root cause is the shape and social function of the post monetarist economic model. This model has demonstrated catastrophic flaws leading to crisis and recession, yet the policies of all the political parties appear designed to patch and mend and to keep it going.

There is a shocking degree of failure of the mainstream parties in all of this as we head towards what may become an even greater crisis ahead. This can explode into a frightening combination of financial crisis, ethnic violence and social breakdown unless heed is taken of the warning signs. If the BNP is anything, it is a wake up call. Baiting Nick Griffin is not an adequate response and sidelining his party will have no effect nor even be possible until action is taken to deal with the root. The precise conditions which allow extremist parties to flourish are the ones which the political class have failed properly to resolve.