To beat Nick Griffin’s lies, frontbenchers have to make the case for immigration

By Mark Spiro

When asked on the Andrew Marr show about where immigrants to the UK should be placed, Nick Grffin suggested “Let’s start sticking them in Hampstead in a place where the liberal elite live”. He went on to challenge the people of Hampstead Town to “See how you people like it”.

As someone who has lived in Hampstead all my life, I was more confused than I was angry about this throwaway comment. The fact is that Hampstead is full of first and second generation immigrants and the community quite simply could not function without them. Go into any locally owned shop or independent business in the area, and a majority of the time you will discover that it was set up by an immigrant, providing employment to local people and providing tax revenues for the council. The “liberal Hampstead elite” does not merely live with and among immigrants to Britain, but comprises them too.

In campaigning as an independent candidate for Hampstead Town ward in the May 2010 elections, I have seen records of the population breakdown, and the diversity of the community is simply staggering. A wide plethora of races and religions are represented among Hampstead’s residents, revealing the BNP leader’s sheer ignorance, and the falsity of the image he is trying to portray: that the only group in favour of immigration is a small collection of ivory-tower Guardian readers who don’t ever come across immigrants themselves. In fact the reverse is true. Some of the places in Britain where ethnic tensions have been at their highest – Leicester, Brixton, Dagenham – are where immigrant and pre-existing populations live in ‘ghettoised’ communities, with no assimilation or interaction.

As I see it, there are two main reasons why Nick Griffin has attracted support for his anti-immigration politics. The first is the failure by public figures from either main party to make the case for immigration publicly. Worried about being branded a member of the ‘liberal elite’, they have shied away from pointing to the positive impact immigrants have in enterprise and public-sector work, as well as on culture. The second reason is the failure of politicians to resolve the policy problems that cause the most dissatisfaction, and for which immigrants make an easy scapegoat. Specifically, the housing shortage is a constant source of ammunition for the BNP.

Regardless of whether I win my election to Camden Council, I will carry on challenging the BNP and campaigning against them. There are more people than one would think who are ready to come out in support of immigration, given the opportunity, as I witnessed when taking part in the protest against Nick Griffin and David Irving’s invitation to the Oxford Union in late 2007. To secure all that benefits that immigrants give this country the argument has to be won, and once some front-bench politicians have the courage to make the case for immigration, others will follow.