'An Island of Strangers’? # 203. 17/06/2025

Out of Many, One People

Welcome to a debate that may take on different guises but will never fully end. And perhaps where being too sure of your own opinions is a major enemy.

‘An Island of Strangers’?

Last month in reviewing the Policy Exchange report on ‘A Portrait of Britain: Religion and Ethnicity’ I was sceptical about the report’s concern, particularly articulated by Trevor Phillips, that lack of integration in Britain was a matter of concern. Only to find that at that very time it was to be given high profile, and highly controversial attention in Sir Keir Starmer expressing concern that we be ‘an island of strangers’ with reference to his Government’s White Paper on immigration.

The controversy over Starmer’s remark centres on a hermeneutical issue. The ‘suspicion’ exegesis interprets ‘strangers’ to mean ‘the strange people who have come into this country’ – the Powellite interpretation. The generous (and surely correct) reading is that the strangers are now ‘us’ – all of us who because of widening linguistic and cultural diversity are now finding ourselves having less in common with our neighbours. Starmer’s point is not that ‘they’ are strangers threatening ‘us’, but that ‘we’ are all becoming strangers to one another. Behind his phrase is a rightful stress on the importance of neighbourliness, a sense of community, the blessing of good relationships.

In this respect we are seeing – rightly, I think – a shift in the weight of the Government’s stance on ethnic and religious matters, of now leaning away from emphasising diversity, identity and multiculturalism and towards stressing integration and a strong sense of national unity and coherence. Seeking to give proper weight to both unity and to diversity in the nation, as in churches and other intermediary bodies, involves a constant and never finished shifting and weaving of policies and emphasis. Nonetheless, there are several factors in play at present that should cause the government to emphasise unity and highlight their concern to promote integration, and which lie behind the White Paper on immigration and the concern that we not be ‘an island of strangers’. Equally, as I shall go on to say, there are some things government can not do and which lay a burden of moral and relational response on the whole population.

As regards government policy there is proper concern that adding one million people in a year to the national population - following substantial increases over the past few decades that have disrupted the once long-settled plateau of a national population of 50 million - lays too much stress on the national infrastructure. Further, a stress born by the most disadvantaged people in our society through the shortage and rising cost of housing and the downward pressure on wages for unskilled labour. It is the worst form of political sectarianism to say that because Reform’s antennae have picked up this discontent that the traditional parties recognising it is merely pandering to racist populism. Reducing the national level of population growth is a responsible expression of social justice.

But unavoidably entwined with the infrastructure pressures caused by large scale immigration is widespread hostility to immigrants themselves, distressingly exemplified by the riots of last summer. Disentangling how far that hostility is simply resource rivalry over against cultural dissonance is complex. The current riots in Ballymena seen simply directed against ‘outsiders’ – Roma, Eastern European, Filipino – without much attention to appearance or deeply divergent religious views. On the other hand, whilst the presenting issue behind Brexit was immigration from Eastern Europe, it was often bound up with hostility to people who were dark-skinned and religiously/culturally different. In the face of Brexiteer intentions, the biggest minority ethnic growth in the 2011-2021 inter-census decade was of ‘non-English whites’ – very largely eastern Europeans.

Alongside these two dimensions of national policies and attitudes are two dimensions emanating from within the ethnic minority population. One is that of cultural encapsulation. The rate of cultural integration varies enormously between different ethnic/social class communities, nor is separation inevitably problematic. I live a couple of miles from probably the most visibly and socially separated (and growing) population in Britain – the Haredi Jewish community focussed on Stamford Hill. But their very separation means that there is very little animosity or conflict. On the other hand, the sexual abuse of teenage white girls by grooming gangs has been a toxic form of ethnic interaction that has caused widespread popular anger. This has been made worse first by official slowness in acknowledging the problem, and then by obfuscating its roots – initially by vaguely referencing ‘Asians’ and only slowly recognising that it was predominantly by Pakistani Muslims. Officialdom’s coyness here has simply reinforced the white working-class grievance that the government is defending everyone’s interest but theirs.

The encapsulation that removes restraint from abusing already supposedly morally degenerate ‘kafirs’ has also fuelled the sudden political emergence of a specific ethno-religious vote, that impelled four Muslim MPs into Parliament last year. This understandable bloc vote in support for Gaza won’t be a continuing political issue but the fact that such a bloc has already crystallised once increases the likelihood that with further turns of the world political dice then other occasions will arise when Muslim votes elects MPs – and potentially majority-shifting ones – over issues outside the UK.

What steps, then, should be taken to work towards a society where all feel at ease; where people sense an affinity with neighbours, workmates and the national population that generates increasing trust and empathy; where there is a sense of national cohesion and belonging that issues into respect towards all fellow-citizens?

Reducing the level of immigration is a start, particularly by reducing stress of housing and health services, and by re-shaping labour supply that increases wages at the lowest end of the scale. Competition for scarce resources increases social tensions and facilitates making ‘immigrants’ the scapegoat for the various discontents people experience. Allied to this is the need for a far more effective government levelling up policies. Last summer’s riots, and similarly present ones in Ballymena, are the outcry of ‘left behind’ communities where immigrants are an easy target.

How to create policies that reduce immigration whilst bearing in mind an ageing population, growing numbers of indigenous people unable or unwilling to work, and the need to fill gaps in health and care services requires a management mind for which I lack both the ability and the knowledge base, but the government is right to urgently address the question.

One running sore in the immigration debate is illegal immigration – ‘the boats’ as a focus of attention. On one level the issue can be seen as overblown. We are here dealing with only a small fraction of Britain’s migrant inflow. Should repeated governments attempts to ‘stop the boats’ actually be successful, still the infrastructure pressure of large scale migration would persist. But illegal immigration does present an economic problem in terms of the housing costs created. More fundamentally it feeds a growing and damaging grievance narrative of national mis-government where cheats can win – through avoiding legal migration channels, welfare cheating, untrammelled shop-lifting, even fare dodging. (Robert Jenrick’s stunt may have been intended to glean potential Reform voters, but he was highlighting an emotive irritant in the body politic. Sadiq Khan should have done it a year ago.) In this sense illegal immigration is simply the lightning rod that draws the ire of widespread popular discontent.

But there are dilemmas the government can not solve. The difficulties stemming from culturally and politically encapsulated Muslims noted above emanate from communities that are not the result of recent migration to Britain. Whilst both the Manchester Arena and Southport attacks were the work of recent immigrants, the more fundamental factors behind both the grooming gangs and the ‘Gaza vote’ emanate from ethnic communities that have been settled for up to six decades. Whilst there are religious and economic factors that reinforce their sense of identity held over against the national mainstream, the experience of racism, hostility, and, notably in the early years the physical violence of ‘Paki-bashing’, has created a powerful separatist momentum that will not be easily reversed. Whatever government policies are pursued over immigration, language or the generation of national cohesion, we have a deep-seated problem with longstanding roots that in significant part has been created by British people themselves.

Starmer, then, was not resurrecting Powell. Powell believed immigration should be reduced, with the possibility of repatriation, because he had a deep-seated belief that integration was impossible. Seeing a Chinese person on a train, he mulled how impossible it was for him to get inside that person’s mind, or for the Chinese person to get inside his mind. Immigrants and natives were simply too irreducibly different for the consequence of substantial immigration to be anything but ‘rivers of blood’. Starmer’s point is the reverse. Integration is possible and desirable. We have witnessed it happening to a speed and an extent that Powell thought impossible. But racist hostility is not entirely done with, and the recent exceptionally high volume of immigration has put that hope under strain.

Multi-ethnic societies contain both centrifugal factors that draw members of society off in different directions, and centripetal factors that draw people together. We under-estimate both factors at our peril. Workplaces, neighbourhoods, sporting activities, churches, special interest organisations, sexual relationships are all centripetal factors that cause people from different ethnicities to relate to each other with growing understanding, respect, and even love. We are no longer strangers. My own impression, living in London, is that overwhelmingly people of all ethnicities have that desire to relate in a friendly way to other ethnicities.

But centrifugal forces are also at play. Simple disagreements that get layered with a spin of cultural or religious difference. Competition for scarce resources lead to deeper fissures. The desire for cultural cohesion that can cause others to feel excluded. And, the elephant in the room, the extent to which Islamic faith will cause substantial numbers of people to follow cultural, behavioural and political routes that will periodically set their faces against the British mainstream.

Back in 1967 John Rex and Robert Moore’s book on ‘Race, Community and Conflict’ identified competition for housing as having a divisive, almost supernaturally evil effect in generating conflict in Sparkbrook, Birmingham. In the present debate David Goodhart has resurrected his ‘The Road to Somewhere’ debate, where for ‘somewhere’ people the loss of a geographically close centre of belonging is a substantial experiential loss, over against ‘anywheres’ whose life has trained them to be comfortable in any changing, cosmopolitan environment. The deep-seated and widespread diversity that now covers much of Britain ultimately requires everyone to develop an ‘anywhere’ orientation. But that is made harder if we fail to recognise the loss that diversity imposes on ‘somewhere’ people. Pictures of ethnically homogenous Britons joyfully celebrating VE Day in 1945 tell us of a world forever lost. We ought not to disrespect those for whom that loss is basic, even as we also respect the loss experienced by those for whom poverty or violence at home has caused them to come to this country. And so, thereby disrupting the homogeneity of life for ‘somewheres’.

The journey towards an ‘Island of Neighbours’ is into the unknown. It has gone far better than Powell expected, and could have been far worse. But Starmer is right to see that a laissez-faire approach to immigration is irresponsible. Careful, thoughtful management is needed. Even if the call to love your neighbour as yourself is even more central.