Desmond Tutu is wrong – the British people are not racist for being worried about immigration

As we draw nearer to the January 1, 2014, the arms race of claim and counter claim about the impact of Bulgarian and Romanian immigration to Britain will continue to escalate.

Yet yesterday it soared into the stratosphere, following some hyperbolic remarks from Archbishop Desmond Tutu – in London to receive the Freedom of the City. Talking about the tenor of the debate about immigration in Britain, he remarked:

“I am very concerned. We are beginning to hear the same kind of tune that we had when Enoch Powell was doing his stuff…I thought that was one of the worst moments of your modern history.”

A hero of the South African anti-apartheid struggle he may be, but Tutu is not immune from exaggeration, or just being plain wrong.

The British people are not racist for worrying about the impacts of large-scale immigration. Rather, they are concerned about the future of their welfare state and public services and about a basic sense of fairness.

A YouGov poll in Saturday’s Times asked people what they felt where the most negative effects of immigration. While 20% cited ‘vulnerability to terrorism or extremism’, 49% said ‘increased pressure on public services’.

Nearly a quarter of respondents, 24 per cent, were worried about ‘Britain becoming less British’, yet nearly twice as many, 42 per cent, were worried about ‘increased pressure on and shortage of housing’.

While 23% were worried about ‘increased crime,’ 52% were worried about practical economic effects, such as immigrants taking up jobs ‘that could be filled by British people’ and about ‘downward pressure on wages’ through extra competition.

The same trend is found in a Channel Five poll this week. Again, while 5% complain that immigration has a ‘negative effect on British culture’ six times as many – 31% – worry it has an ‘impact on wages and jobs for British-born workers’.

It’s the practical, everyday effects that people are worried about, not abstract questions of national identity. People are not predicting race riots, but they are expecting jobs, access to housing and services to be affected.

This is why so many greet the prospect of further ill-planned immigration with dread, with 47% of respondents in the Channel Five poll saying Romanians and Bulgarians should have ‘no right to live, work or claim benefits in the UK’.

David Cameron is said to be mulling his response, floating the idea of limiting access to benefits and housing in order to make Britain a less attractive destination of choice. In turn, Labour needs to be clear in its response that the impacts of previous rounds of immigration have been felt unevenly.

In short, unskilled and semi-skilled workers face the sharp end of competition for jobs and services, while the professional middle classes get cheap, black market plumbers.

This basic unfairness is what drives so many people to become angry and resentful about large-scale immigration and so worried about what January might bring.

Angry they may be Archbishop, but that doesn’t make them Enoch Powell.