A visit to England

Janet, a native of England long resident in South America, writes:

I have recently returned from a visit to England and below are some observations from my stay there.

On arriving at Heathrow, my first thought was that by some time warp the plane had landed in an East European dictatorship during the Communist regime. As soon as we stepped outside the plane, a uniformed man barked at us: “Bags down by your sides! Bags down by your sides!” Then a woman with a spaniel came by to sniff all the bags. Soon after, we passed by another group uniformed security personnel who arbitrarily picked on people to show their documents before they even got to the passport section. All of these people were rude and authoritarian. I don’t know if this treatment is only reserved for planes from Brazil but the effect was frightening; I was made to feel like some kind of criminal.

Then I visited Leicester my home town which has a very high percentage if immigrants. Everyone I spoke to complained about the immigrants, including the Poles. I was surprised at this because I went to school with the children of Poles who had escaped Poland after the Second World War and you couldn’t imagine a more law-abiding, hard-working group of people. Apparently, the second wave of Polish immigrants are very different; they dress as though they are on the set of ‘Dynasty’, are heavily involved in prostitution rackets and are always in drunken brawls. How the Polish national character has been coarsened by Communism.

In Leicester all the taxi-drivers and all the local shops owners are from India or Pakistan. Superficially, they seem integrated; all of them were polite and friendly, all had adopted the Leicester accent (which is ugly), they call their customers “luv” and “m’duck,” the shopkeepers inquire after their customers health etc. I tried to imagine the British Government deporting all these people and I couldn’t see it happening; immigration and integration have gone too far. The white people I spoke to in England are very angry about immigration and how it has destroyed employment, health and schools but seemed strangely passive and fatalistic about it all and I understand why.

Then I went to visit Northumberland which for some reason has managed to escape the arrival of immigrants. Practically everyone is white, and whites were doing all the jobs that they aren’t supposed to want to do in the rest of the country. What struck me straight away though, is how old the general population seemed to be. People above 40 seemed to far out number the young and this is another time bomb waiting to go off.

I stayed with some friends of mine who are both civil servants, one of whom works for the prison service. When I started criticising Islam they both looked at me shocked and told me that I was mistaken and that “Islam was religion of peace.” Then it was my turn to look dumbfounded. Apparently, the British Government pays the local friendly imam to got to prisons and explain (indoctrinate) the staff about Islam. When I started arguing with them by giving examples and showing them that Islam was anything but a peaceful religion it was though scales fell from their eyes. On reflection this was perhaps the most perturbing part of the whole visit; that otherwise intelligent people could swallow government sponsored lies, hook, line and sinker.

While I was in Northumberland I visited Holy Island where in the 8th century a group of monks had established a monastery and started the job of reconverting the north of England to Christianity. This is where the Lindisfarne Gospels were produced. I wondered whether in a few decades or centuries time another group of brave monks will have to carry out the same mission.

My departure from England was even more stressful than my arrival. Heathrow is almost totally staffed by foreigners, Indians, Muslims and East Europeans. I couldn’t believe that I, a British citizen, was being bossed about by people that barely spoke English! The East Europeans (I suspect they were Poles) especially seemed to delight in the authority given to them by their uniform ; they were so gratuitously rude. I was wearing an underwire bra which set off the security alarm and the search I was given was so rough and intrusive I had to quell the impulse to slap the woman across the face.

Finally, for the journey, I bought two paperbacks that ostensibly dealt with crime and terrorism. One by Val McDermid and the other by Reginald Hill; both acclaimed writers. The first book was about a plot by a JEWISH woman who had tricked her Muslim lover into bombing a sports stadium to kill her husband!!

In the second the bombs were set off by a group of WHITE vigilantes called “the Templars” set off bombs to kill Arabs to punish them for the death of loved ones in Iraq! In both books Muslims were dealt with very sympathetically

I have come to the conclusion that there is no hope for Britain.

- end of initial entry -

An Indian living in the West writes:

A fascinating e-mail.

I know one shouldn’t laugh at these things but one cannot but help doing it. Janet, I am sure, does not feel amused by what she sees.

But there is a comical side to the whole thing and it is so utterly ridiculous and absurd that one doesn’t know where to start. What is really interesting is that ten years of Labour accomplished what the business-minded (and sometimes equally destructive) Tories could not achieve in decades. While I did not visit Britain in the 1980s and 1990s, I cannot imagine there being even a bare percentage of this current insanity in the Tory era. It is almost as if when Labour got elected, there was this pent-up liberalism that was looking for an avenue to explode (and it got the perfect medium to do so in the shape of Tony Blair). In the Labour years it has really run amok.

Anyway, amusing or painful, there is a certain dreariness to the whole thing that one gets tired of after a while. For some time, I have been looking to leave Europe for good and never ever come back—but current trading and business involvements make that impossible this year. Some close friends who were living in London (and who I used to visit frequently) have recently moved to Singapore and they absolutely love it—the people are polite, there is no crime, the place is clean and if you break the law, they deal with you as criminals should be dealt with—unlike here where child molesters go scot free and do what they want. They also don’t tax the blood out of the middle class to feed and clothe the bums who won’t work and only go around beating people to a pulp or smash things to pieces.

But ultimately, what has tired me of Europe completely (and particularly Britain, where I spend a few months every year) is the sheer sanctimoniousness of the liberal classes, their “causes,” the trivial and utterly inane obsessions of the people and the media—the whole thing is a giant circus which I now watch with some degree of amusement but I want to get the hell out. Good luck to you Janet—you don’t have to live here. I hope to emulate you and get out too—sunnier climes and a more orderly society is what I am looking for.

Singapore sounds like a paradise. I might move there next year.

Alex K. writes:

Janet’s observations on her visit to England were so honest and astute, I can’t refrain from e-mailing my appreciation of them.

I’m reminded of Robert Browning’s poem, Oh To Be In England:

Oh, to be in England
Now that April’s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
… That the whole place has been taken over by Muslims and blacks…

Vivek G. writes:

In the writing of an Indian Living in the West, another important facet becomes abundantly clear. Suppose we ask the question: How does the mind of an immigrant work? What’s a plausible answer? That somewhere deep down he thinks that there is no (or need not be a) permanent home. So? Go to a new place, “settle down,” if one has no conscientiousness then even abuse the system, and when the situation deteriorates, which it inevitably will, migrate to another place? Now if one asks another question: What can ensure that in future Singapore will not turn into what Britain is presently turning into? No answer. So? We must entertain a vain hope that by the time Singapore deteriorates, there will be another country “good enough” to migrate to, and so on! But what about those natives of Western Europe (or Singapore) who cannot, and more importantly do not want to, emigrate? What happens to those who consider their country as their home? Some of our “intelligent” friends would say, well, they are “unscientific fools.” Aha! So this is the reward a native hard working white Western European has received for building his “home country”; and then allowing in the “guest workers” in the name of “humanity”!

So my point is that if we keep reinforcing the world view that there is no such thing as “home,” and therefore “home country, ” and if we keep believing (as most immigrants would claim) that “human history” is mostly a record of migrations, there is a great danger in that. It is true that Europeans migrated to America in the early twentieth century. But they made America their “own country.” So even though they were technically “immigrants,” they went there and made the new place their own home.

The difference is between those who will try and make a home even out of a guest house, and those who will turn their neighbor’s home into a guest house! Now who will say that the IQ, race, religion of the guest do not matter? But then, how can I say that? I have been “educated” to be a broadminded, humane, scientific, liberal!

As an afterthought, I suggest, even at the risk of suggesting an oxymoron, that only such an immigrant who voluntarily becomes a “conservative” among the natives, has the potential of “assimilation.” Other immigrants are at best “decent guests,” and what they can be at the worst is yet to become clear, but it is bad enough.

Indian living in the West replies:

Neither Singapore nor Europe are “homes”. I am an expateiate and home shall always be India because that is where I grew up and that is where I shall return. I have always said that I do not qualify as an “immigrant” because I never arrived in Europe with the intention to stay and did not move to Europe to find a job and a better life. Moving to Europe became necessary because of business reasons. I am no more an immigrant in Europe than the manager of an European company in Delhi is an “immigrant” in India (unless he decides to stay in India permanently).

I don’t understand what Vivek G. is objecting to. I have been in Europe a bare few years and now feel Ive had enough and want to leave. I did not create the problems that Europe faces and I don’t intend to sit around and work out a solution. Europe’s problems can only be sorted by Europeans. Not by foreigners like me.

Also, his criticism implies that I moved to Europe when things were rosy and now want to get out now that things are bad. Actually, the first time I saw Paris (or the sub-urbs of Paris, and this was just a few years ago) I was utterly appalled. The same applies to London too. I didn’t think when I first arrived that it was a great place to live. So my opinion has been consistently the same. There is no “immigrant opportunism” that Vivek G. is implying.

I think this is a non-point.

[Deleted Name] writes:

I was really struck by this comment made by the Indian Living in the West:

What is really interesting is that ten years of Labour accomplished what the business-minded (and sometimes equally destructive) Tories could not achieve in decades. While I did not visit Britain in the 1980s and 1990s, I cannot imagine there being even a bare percentage of this current insanity in the Tory era. It is almost as if when Labour got elected, there was this pent-up liberalism that was looking for an avenue to explode (and it got the perfect medium to do so in the shape of Tony Blair). In the Labour years it has really run amok.

This is absolutely correct. Although, if you read something like Peter Hitchens’s Abolition of Britain, you can see the roots of this crisis go back many decades, it is certainly true that the Labour victory in 1997 was revolutionary.

I am from the U.S. and went to Britain in 1995 to study at the University of St. Andrews. I used to regale my fellow students with tales of political correctness at U.S. universities, telling them how being easily offended was a badge of honour for American students, and they were always amused. Back then St. Andrews still had a reputation for being conservative and was overwhelmingly white. Once I was walking down the street and two people from the student newspaper shouted down from a window to ask me what I thought of the verdict in the OJ Simpson trial. I said I wasn’t really sure but it seemed like he was probably guilty. They said, “We haven’t asked any black people, because there are no black people in St. Andrews. But if there were, they’d say he was innocent.” Jocular use of insulting terms like “Kraut” and “Dago” was extremely common and everybody understood that it didn’t betoken rabid hatred on the part of the speaker. There were plenty of liberals but they did not make a point of being offended by everything, nor did they attempt to silence those with different opinions. If you made a stupid comment in class your tutor would tell you so quite plainly. Thick skins were valued, there was no women’s studies program, no queer studies program, and most of my tutors were scholars rather than ideologues.

At the end of my second year Labour won the election. A lot of students were elated. Then I went to study in Germany for a year. When I came back, in the fall of 1998, the social and intellectual climate of the place had changed radically. “Minority” students abounded and everyone walked on eggshells around them. People had become fiercely humourless. There was a general understanding that conservatives should not be allowed to talk about anything, ever. One of the professors gave a speech in which she included homosexuality in a list of the many social problems students were going to have to deal with in their lives, and a few people stormed out of the auditorium, and then she was banished to a desk in a basement somewhere and made a pariah, hardly allowed to teach for her last few years there.

The thing is, it all happened so quickly. Now the place is even worse than your average PC university in the U.S.

David H. from Oregon writes:

The e-mail from Janet is very striking and deserves a wider audience. Why not cross-post it (with her permission) at Gates of Vienna or American Renaissance?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 28, 2008 01:38 PM | Send