AFTERTHOUGHT

The danger in our midst

FERDINAND MOUNT

The shadow is dark and ever more menac- ing, not to say fraught with danger and disaster. We cannot lightly contemplate a continuing invasion on such a scale. No Roman sage could have reason to lament more poignantly the incursion of the Goths and Vandals than any thinking citizen of today who has the courage to face the situa- tion as it really is and not as the besotted human engineers would have us believe it to be. For our very identity as a nation is threatened. Some of these immigrants may in time learn our ways and settle down to be decent, unassuming members of our polity. But can we assimilate them in such numbers? For I repeat that it is a question of numbers. From a net inflow of 25,000 in 1958, the numbers have grown steadily until they reached 33,000 last year, the population of a small English borough.

It is said that the first language of many of these people is English, but English of what a kind! Distorted by guttural growls, the slurring of some consonants and the exaggeration of others and disfigured by the absence of grammar and the presence of impure variants of our speech, the effect of this patois, sprouting unbidden and unfore- seen in the heart of our great cities, must be to drive to despair any responsible teacher in our schools. It is said that the alien customs of these immigrants are but a colourful addition to our society, that the knives sported by their young bucks and their weird musical instruments which murder the sleep of honest citizens are but an adjunct to the rhythms of their native dances, that their foul brews and noxious potions can but enrich our homely tables. Yet the blindest optimist cannot gainsay that their offspring are spawned in a school of gang warfare, and that their notorious addiction to strange stimulants can only deepen the bitterness of their exile. And this bitterness is all too easily translated into violence.

For they came here of their own free will. but they bear a sense of grievance which would try the patience of an Anglican saint. In vain do we point out the generosity which we have shown to their backward economy. Over the last ten years alone, we have poured out nearly £200 million in aid and we have created 193,000 more jobs in their native lands. Yet still they pour into our overcrowded cities. What then is to be done?

That missionary of mobility, Mr. Enoch Powell, has reassured the denizens of these unhappy lands that movements of labour and of industry are essential to economic progress. He has asserted that 'what we denigrate as "congestion" in the South-East may be among the greatest assets of what we are pleased to call "this overcrowded island" '. That is easily said by Mr. Powell in Belgravia; it is not so easy for the luck- less inhabitants of King's Cross.

Nevertheless it may be that we are power- less against the pouring not merely of quarts but of gallons into a pint pot. It may be that all attempts artificially to arrest the John Wells will be back next week. invasion is an economic nonsense.

It is said, moreover, that many of these immigrants are of considerable value in our hospitals and on our great projects of civil engineering. Yet surely this economic benefit, if benefit it be, is far outweighed by the moral degeneration of our race. What hopeful future can we descry for the good English Hodge or Higgins who is swamped in the classroom by a sandy- haired rabble of Mackintoshes and Mc- Tavishes? As I write, I have before me a letter from an elderly lady. She writes: 'Last Saturday on my way home, I was knocked over by a gang of youths. They used obscene language to me which I blush to repeat and were much the worse for drink. As I lay in the gutter, they threw rolls of toilet paper at me and waved noisy rattles'. I ask you this: how much longer must the frail and the helpless be subjected to such humiliations?

Time is short if we are to defend our territory against these self-righteous attempts to force a multiracial society upon us. As the poet Powell, Anthony not Enoch, has so truly said:

Alack! they ever stream through ENG- LAND'S door,

To batten on the rich, and grind the poor, With furtive eye and eager, clutching hand

They pass like Locusts through the South- ern Land:

And line their purses with the Yellow Gold, Which for each Scotchman, London's pavements hold . . .

What are this race whose Pride so rudely burgeons?

Second-rate engineers and obscure sur- geons, Pedant-philosophers and Fleet Street hacks, With ev'ry quality that Genius lacks. , .

The remedy is plain. We must not be de- terred by those mindless accusations of racial prejudice with which the 'best people' will belabour us. We must hasten to carry out the measures which Mr Powell has out- lined with such courage and honesty:

Against this Land of Porridge, Scones and Slate, Let us rebuild THE WALL, before too late, To keep for ever from our native shore The sottish Scotchman, soaked with Usquebaugh. . .