Spalding anti-immigration protest: April 2013

Spalding has a problem with immigration, as does Boston. However, the greatest problem faced by the residents of these two towns is not so much the immigrants themselves, as the political system and legislation that has enabled and encouraged the latter to settle there. One cannot blame the immigrants for wishing to seek a better life given that EU regulations have legally entitled them to come and work in the UK. Our dissatisfaction should not be directed at these people, but at the EU, our Government, our mainstream political parties and those employers who seek to use immigrant labour to their narrow self-advantage and to the detriment of the wider society.

Although it would be churlish to state that every aspect of EU membership has been negative, on balance, both in practical terms and in matters of democratic principle, membership has neither been welcomed by nor beneficial to a large segment of our population. The free movement of labour between member states has been one of the most visible and most negative aspects of membership. From the perspective of certain vested interests – notably unscrupulous employers keen to drive down wages irrespective of the impact upon living conditions – the importation of cheap and often highly qualified and motivated labour from the EU accession countries of the former Soviet bloc has been welcome, but from the viewpoint of ordinary people here at home struggling to find work that will pay a living wage and enable them to live what would hitherto been seen as a ‘normal life’, it most certainly has not.

The people of Spalding are tired of having their concerns relating to unprecedented levels of immigration ignored or branded as ‘racist’, and inspired by recent anti-immigration demonstrations that took place in nearby Boston in November and earlier this week, they have decided to take to the streets at a date yet to be fixed this coming April. Its organiser, Dean Everitt, told the Spalding Guardian that this march would be followed up by marches in Boston, Wisbech and Lincoln, culminating in a march on Westminster. Details of the protests are to be posted on the Spalding Immigration Issues Facebook page.

Mr Everitt stated:

Europeans cannot come here and think they can act in the same way as they do abroad. People don’t want drinking and urinating in the streets, overcrowding in properties and lack of jobs.

Residents are becoming afraid to go out, especially at night. We’ve had six murders in three years – and that’s just Boston and Spalding.

In addition to the problems listed by Mr Everitt, there will of course be associated issues generated by a large influx of non-English speaking children into local schools and pressure placed upon health and social services. Whereas our large urban centres have been subject to such pressures for decades, these problems are new for small towns such as Boston and Spalding which have seen recent immigration create a staggering growth in population. By 2008, some estimates placed Boston’s immigrant population as high as one quarter of the total, and the 2011 census indicated that the population of the borough as a whole had increased from 55,800 in 2001 to 64,600.

This specific problem recently received an airing on the BBC’s Question Time in which the BBC’s favoured Professor of Classics Mary Beard dutifully sang from the globalist open borders hymn sheet, extolling the many ‘virtues’ of Boston’s immigrant influx, blithely brushing aside the concerns of locals. However, as can be seen from the second of the clips below, Beard’s sunny evaluation of the situation was soon washed away by a contribution from a local woman of half-Polish descent who highlighted the general nature of the problem whilst providing some specific examples.

Such is the discontent generated by the immigrant influx, that even Boston Labour Councillor Paul Kenny has been compelled to grant some form of recognition to public concerns. Thus, this week he attended a House of Commons conference entitled ‘Immigration to the regions: how do we ensure that no-one is left behind?’ with a view to raising questions about ‘street drinking, employment and issues surrounding Houses of Multiple Occupation (HMOs)’. However, the only genuine solution to the specific problems experienced in Boston and Spalding, as well as to the wider negative impacts of mass immigration across the country as a whole, is to take a genuinely robust approach to immigration which involves a de facto closing of the borders, with allowance being made for only a very small number of immigrants to enter the country under genuinely exceptional circumstances. As for those who are allowed in, citizenship and its attendant rights should be granted only after an extended period of residence providing that the individuals concerned have fully integrated and proven themselves to be of good character.

We remain in a period of exceptional economic crisis, and whereas mass immigration does not lie at the root of this crisis, it has certainly made it harder to cope with; further immigration will do nothing other than exacerbate our many problems in the areas of employment, housing, health, education and social services. Leaving the EU will only be part of the solution, for the abandonment of the false belief in the morality of globalism will be a necessary precondition for regaining control of our borders, as this is what allows our borders to be so porous. Will the protesters from Spalding and Boston recognise this truth and draw the necessary political conclusions, or will they be bought off with some sop from Westminster?