Owen Polley: We have not openly debated immigration and integration in the UK

An anti immigrant protest in Belfast city centre on Friday. A section of society, that felt neglected and disadvantaged, has been becoming increasingly angry at what it perceives as special treatment for minority groups. Photo: Mark Marlow/PA Media Assignments/PA WireAn anti immigrant protest in Belfast city centre on Friday. A section of society, that felt neglected and disadvantaged, has been becoming increasingly angry at what it perceives as special treatment for minority groups. Photo: Mark Marlow/PA Media Assignments/PA Wire
An anti immigrant protest in Belfast city centre on Friday. A section of society, that felt neglected and disadvantaged, has been becoming increasingly angry at what it perceives as special treatment for minority groups. Photo: Mark Marlow/PA Media Assignments/PA Wire
​The recent violence in Belfast and other British cities has shocked and revolted most decent observers.

​Obviously, there can be no valid excuses for attacking innocent people, turning on police officers or damaging property, irrespective of arguments to the contrary on social media.

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Like other places in the West, though, the UK has experienced an unprecedented surge in immigration over the past few years and it is willfully ignorant to deny that this has had an impact.

In fact, it’s changed our society in dangerous, unpredictable ways and put enormous strain on resources. The most frightening thing is that we’ve scarcely begun to understand what the eventual effects might be. Indeed, succcessive governments promised to reduce the flow of migrants, but their policies were either meant insincerely or proved ineffective, depending upon your level of cynicism.

That provides some context for the riots, but it cannot justify or even explain them. So, what else is going on?

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The answer is complicated. Undoubtedly, a few unchanging aspects of human nature have contributed. Some protestors have legitimate concerns about migration and got carried away with the mood of the crowd, but others used legitimate demonstrations as an excuse to cause trouble, destroy property or peddle hate.

Ostensibly, the horrific murder of three girls in Southport was the trigger, fuelled by false rumours that the perpetrator was Muslim and a refugee. Too often it became a pretext for rioters to direct their anger at immigrants and their businesses, as well as asylum seekers’ accommodation and the police.

However, alongside an upsurge in bigotry and a desire to target people of a different background, there are deeper factors that form the backdrop to what has happened.

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For example, US-style identity politics were imported to Britain over many decades, with terrible and divisive consequences. Our institutions increasingly accorded rights and special treatment to groups of people, defined by race, religion or sexuality, rather than treating everyone equally, as individuals.

That was a profound mistake.

It resulted in a kind of competition for victimhood, as well as fostering hostility toward some important ideas about our history and culture that bound the UK together.

In the case of immigrants, the authorities often dealt with ‘community leaders’, who claimed to speak for those of a similar background or religion, instead of trying to be blind to people’s colour and origin.

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Rather than help newcomers to integrate and become British, our government encouraged them to preserve their old ways of life and identify themselves with ethnic or religious groups. That ‘multicultural’ approach increased division and resentment, as well as incubating new grievances.

In his highly-recommended book of essays, Ireland Out of England, pro-Union academic, John Wilson Foster, pointed out that this way of dealing with diversity even contributed to the southern Irish in Great Britain stressing their separateness from the rest of the UK and their antagonism toward it. This was a group of highly successful migrants who came from an almost identical culture. In other parts of our society, the impact was more serious.

In recent years, we’ve seen plenty of evidence of these misguided policies, as protestors for Black Lives Matter attacked monuments in Britain and portrayed ‘whiteness’ as an irredeemable sin. More recently, many Muslims have expressed their hatred of Israel and the West openly on the streets, in the guise of pro-Palestine activism, drawing a relatively gentle response from the police.

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It’s been clear for some time that another section of society, that felt neglected and disadvantaged, was becoming increasingly angry at what it perceived as special treatment for so-called minority groups.

On occasion, that sentiment was channelled into the ‘far right’, but more commonly it was expressed as disillusionment with mainstream politics. At the ballot box, it arguably fuelled Brexit and brought about the success of populist parties, like the Brexit Party or Reform UK.

In Northern Ireland, these trends are complicated by our more traditional disputes. In a sense, we were first to experience the full impact of identity politics in the UK and have the political demands of a hostile group portrayed as a struggle for ‘human rights’.

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Many people were surprised last week by the sight of protestors holding Union flags next to emblems from the Republic of Ireland. These were striking images, but they showed that, despite the attempts to imply that Northern Ireland’s violence was a result of loyalist paramilitaries, working class voters in Dublin have been affected by many of the same bad ideas and botched policies as their counterparts in Belfast and Birmingham.

The fierce Irish nationalists proclaiming ‘Ireland for the Irish’ will resent me pointing it out, but their country’s culture and preoccupations are a minor tributary downstream from British culture and preoccupations. That is all the more so in a social media age.

While government policy, unchecked immigration and identity politics have created the backdrop against which these riots took place, it’s important to point out that the blame ultimately lies with the rioters themselves: the louts who targeted immigrants and their property, and the thugs chanting Islamic slogans and patrolling areas like they own them.

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While our society is flawed, the way to tackle its problems is never to scapegoat individuals, many of whom have worked hard, established businesses and contributed to our communities.

At the same time, had we been allowed earlier to have an open debate about immigration, multiculturalism and integration, without dissent always being cast as racism, perhaps some of the tensions now playing out on the UK’s streets could have been avoided.