An island of strangers in their own country

Immigration dominates politics in Europe and America in ways it had never done previously. It is the main platform of all right-wing movements that are mushrooming everywhere on both sides of the Atlantic.

As a political problem immigration is not just concerned with arrivals whether lawful or unlawful which – despite claims to the contrary by successive governments – can be managed under current laws. In politics the term immigration is used loosely to include all the demographic changes that have already taken place from the 1960s onwards. These resulted in the presence of sizeable settled immigrant communities and all.  the rights they enjoy that makes some indigenous English people – including it seems UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer – feel strangers in their own country.

The prime minister was in preacher mode last Monday when he introduced his proposed reforms of immigration. He preached about the importance of rules and how they reflect British values. Britain, he said, risks becoming an island of strangers if immigration is unchecked.

His diagnosis was presented as a prognosis, but the cure he proposed was inappropriate to the problem the indigenous English face of significant immigrant communities already lawfully settled in UK some of whom do not share the same values as them.

The PM was talking as if the UK does not have the legal means to control immigration, when the truth is that the government has a panoply of legislative means to control and prevent new immigrant arrivals and remove illegal entrants and overstayers. Most immigration control is effected by immigration rules of practice that can be changed without any need for primary legislation.

In UK immigration law was unknown as a legal subject until 1971 when it was rationalised in the first comprehensive piece of legislation on the subject. The Immigration Act 1971 – passed partly in response to Enoch Powell’s rivers of blood speech in 1968 – closed all the doors that enabled immigrants from the Commonwealth to settle freely in the UK.

Since then, there have been so many pieces of immigration legislation and so much case law that it became a specialist branch of the law in its own right. So when the prime minister warns that Britain is in danger of becoming an island of strangers, people who believe there are already too many immigrants may be forgiven for thinking that is closing the door after the horse has bolted.

It is no good restricting the numbers eligible for citizenship. The grant of citizenship is discretionary and will not reduce the number of people of immigrant heritage because most have settled status anyway.

The reason why raising the spectre of becoming an island of strangers is so controversial is because his diagnosis implies repatriation as the cure, which is what the extreme right is groping for in UK. Although we are not there yet, it will not be long before it becomes respectable now that a Labour prime minister of all people has floated it camouflaged under the euphemism of stricter immigration control.

Keir Starmer did not just pander to xenophobia last week, he quoted Britain’s top anti-immigration politician of the 20th century, Enoch Powell. His island of strangers’ soundbite was obviously borrowed from Enoch Powell’s famous ‘rivers of blood’ speech in 1968 in which he said that the indigenous English found themselves “strangers in their own country”.

It is inconceivable that Starmer’s speechwriters were unaware of Powell’s anti-immigration diatribe in 1968 in which he made the case in support of the Englishman’s right to exclude, discriminate and repatriate immigrants.

Powell had expressed views that were offensive in polite society, but they reflected the views of lower and middle England – probably 80 per cent of the English population. Nothing has changed since, except that in Nigel Farage and his Reform UK there is now a political party purporting to be respectable whose raison d’etre is positively Powellite.

Powell was an eloquent intellectual maverick whose anti-immigration views were condemned by the establishment. Repatriation in particular went into hibernation until it was revived by President Donald Trump in the US in 2025 whose ripple effects will soon arrive in UK and Europe.

Rivers of blood was an inaccurate description of what Powell actually said in 1968: “As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see the river Tiber foaming with much blood,” is what he said.

His allusion to the Roman is mysterious. According to Roman mythology the prophesy of the Tiber foaming with much blood was told to the Trojan refugee Aeneas by Sybil the Greek priestess after he landed in Italy – much like many refugees land there today.

Aeneas was a Trojan who escaped with some of his men from Troy after they were defeated by Achilles and the Greeks: “Oh you who are done with all the perils of the sea, yet greater await you on land… War fierce war I see; and the river Tiber foaming with much blood,” is what Sybil the priestess tells him.

It is not clear why Powell refers to Aeneas as the Roman not only because he was Trojan but also because Rome had yet to be founded and it was Sybil who made the prophesy.

Perhaps it was because in one version of Roman mythology the Romans were descended from the Trojans. Romulus who murdered his twin brother Remus and built Rome was said to have descended from Aeneas.

Powell was a classical scholar as well as a linguist. He was a professor of Greek and spoke Urdu – an intellectual heavyweight even if he got “the Roman” wrong. However, he was a flawed politician as he himself acknowledged in 1977 when he said that all political lives end in failure because that is the nature of politics and human affairs.

He denied being racist and it is true that he did not bear the hallmarks of a racist. The fact that his speech was quasi-prophetic shows no more than that he had insight into the soul of lower and middle England that resents the presence of immigrants in large numbers. 

But while people prefer England to be inhabited predominantly by English people, they are first and foremost fair-minded and unlikely to go down the repatriation route.