Official website of the BPP

The buses, trains and planes coming from Poland to Britain used to arrive full and return almost empty but today they are leaving with no spare seats. The Polish economy has responded to EU investment as Britain has started to feel the effects of the American recession.

The grim predictions of the Daily Mail have proved to be nonsense. Our health service has not collapsed under pressure from pregnant Poles. Our children have not been forced to attend Mass and speak Polish. And the Poles have not eaten all the swans and geese in our public parks. It’s estimated that almost half of the recent immigrants from Poland have gone home.

The low cost and availability of travel has changed immigration. When people left home to seek their fortune in another country it used to be forever. Many of the Scots and Irish who came to England in the Fifties and Sixties never went home again. Even the short journey to a neighbouring state was beyond their means. But with modern air travel you can be in Warsaw in a couple of hours or in Capetown or Sydney overnight.

“Free trade” means that we cannot protect our industries, secure our borders or insulate ourselves against cheap-labour imports. When the price of oil goes up we immediately pass it on to the motorist. And if the international banks restrict credit we must follow. We sell our exports at the going rate and allow forces beyond our control determine the value of our currency.

When our economy is booming people flood in but when it suffers a downturn they either go home or go on the dole. This is not a political opinion but an economic reality that’s as dependable as gravity. So long as we are part of the global system we are at its mercy.

If we really need immigrant labour we should chose those that are capable of assimilation. The Poles have shown that they are good workers who are prepared to go home if they run out of work. Half a century of government
propaganda has convinced some immigrant groups that they have a right to be fed and looked after.
But history shows that people must change places in response to economic forces.

Poland; A resurgent and proud nation

When Ian Smith declared Rhodesian independence in 1965 there were 300,000 White settlers. They controlled the land and farmed it so efficiently that the country was self-sufficient in food and exported a healthy surplus. The Rhodesian dollar was a solid currency and the Smith government had enough money to fight an African uprising. But Rhodesia was defeated by the combined effect of Anglo-American sanctions, the Portuguese revolution and the imminent collapse of apartheid in South Africa.

Today Zimbabwe has the world’s lowest expectation of life and its highest inflation rate. The Whites that contributed so much to Zimbabwe have nearly all left. The Africans have taken back their land and the White Rhodesians have gone home. Only 30,000 Europeans are left. Mostly retired people who eke out a desperate existence on money sent by their friends and families who have decamped to Europe, America and Australia.

The White Rhodesians are bitter that they have lost so much. Many of them fought in the Bush war and felt passionately for their adopted country. But the fact is that there were never enough Whites to hang onto Rhodesia without outside help. The die was cast when Margaret Thatcher installed Robert Mugabe in power in 1980. There could be no future in Zimbabwe for outsiders that had come thousands of miles to make a living.

Many of the Blacks and Asians in Europe sill feel like. Despite the efforts of the race-relations industry they have kept quite rightly kept to their own traditions, languages and loyalties. Some may feel that they belong but most are tied to their homelands by international communications and cheap airfares. The days of once and for all migration are over. Home is only a plane ride away even for second and third generations. It’s only natural that many immigrants prefer to educate their children in their own countries. And it makes perfect economic sense to retire back home.

But the threads that bind nations together are not simple. It’s not just race, or language or culture. The Jews are united by their tribal religion whether they come from Russia or Ethiopia. This is yet another factor in the complex web of Identity. Many people feel that a West Indian, who speaks English, plays cricket and drinks beer is more British than a “foreigner” who speaks a language that we cannot understand. As the young woman from Barking said: “I would vote BNP if my kids weren’t mixed race.”

There were plenty of White Rhodesians who identified with Africa. They were not all bigots, any more than the South Africans who are misrepresented by the popular press. We are all subject to our common humanity. But when populations are driven by economic imperatives finer feelings tend to be forgotten. Repatriation will eventually happen.

This may not be fair, anymore than it was fair to uproot a million French citizens from Algeria, half a million Portuguese from Angola and Mozambique or a quarter of a million Europeans from Zimbabwe. History is full of migrations and expulsions resulting from wars, revolutions and economic upheavals. There must be nearly a million White South Africans in Britain. And if South Africa follows Zimbabwe on the road to ruin we might get another four million. That would be a good time to plan an equitable exchange of populations throughout the world.

Changing places