Farrukh Dhondy | Will Britain Turn into a 'Tinderbox', as Asylum-Seekers Set Off 'Civil War'?

OF CABBAGES AND KINGS

“Shah Jahan

Feasted on betel nut and paan

His confidantes said, ‘It’s idle to exist chewing this crap

You should build something worthy of the King of Hindustan’

Shah Jahan was dismayed

He went to the mosque and prayed

For the soul of his beloved wife, who died and needed a tomb

So, he had the foundations of the Taj Mahal laid….”

From Wi Guru to Wi Fi, by Bachchoo

We need to talk about Lionel. So, let’s see what she has recently, publicly opined. (If you are a bit confused at my calling her “she”, don’t be -- I assure you it’s a gender-neutral name, like “Satish” for Punjabis?)

In one national newspaper, Ms Lionel Shriver writes “small boats and sky-high legal immigration will continue to wreak demographic havoc. This change is permanent. Millions of immigrants from clashing traditions will bring only more of their friends and families.”

In another of the national weeklies, of similar political persuasion, she writes a diatribe challenging the idea of Europe and Britain having some standard common-sense rulings on “human rights”.

Thus: “So, no matter how limitless an inundation of indigent foreigners and how finite their own resources, European states literally owe nationals from all over the world a living. Because housing is a ‘human right’. … Food is a ‘human right’. Health care is a ‘human right’ (often extending to sex- change operations). The umbrella of ‘human rights’ does nothing but expand and now protects not merely citizens but anyone from anywhere who rocks up on your patch.”

Thus spake Lionel Shriver, the immigrant to Britain from the USA who now lives in Portugal.

I said, gentle reader, that we need to talk about Lionel, but soon it became clear to me that we need to talk about a lot of other people who are on the same nasty page, one of them being a person called Lucy Connolly who, some time ago, declared on social media that she was in favour of “mass deportation now!”. She moved on to a provocative strategy: “Set fire to all the f***ing hotels full of the b****rds for all I care, while you’re at it, take the treacherous government and politicians with them…”

That is clearly provocation to arson and murder of those who land in unsafe rubber dinghies on the southern coast of Britain seeking asylum and a home here. Some of them are genuinely fleeing from the threat of extreme persecution and death from countries in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere. Others, it’s true, may simply be getting away from poverty and trying to seek a better life in Europe.

They are not arriving in the UK in “millions”. Neither are they allowed to bring in their “friends”.

These are exaggerations of poisonous prose that Lionel has invented. And, of course, she hasn’t presented any evidence that asylum seekers were afforded sex-change surgery as part of the health care which she insists all asylum seekers are guaranteed. Of course, none of the readers of the publications for which she writes columns would venture to ask her for evidence of the claim.

Connolly, however, was prosecuted and sentenced for her incitements. She was the naïve, the unfortunate one. Several journalists of the same persuasion, obviously wary of crossing the line from anti-asylum-seeker opinion into provocation to killing asylum-seekers, phrase their urgings more carefully, They wipose as the harbingers of unrest and even of a civil war in the UK provoked by the attempted immigration of the wretched of the earth.

The investigative, satirical magazine Private Eye has, in this fortnight’s edition, quoted fifteen such journalists, most of whom, reporting on the gathering of potentially riotous crowds outside the accommodation, most of it crowded and humble, for the asylum-seekers awaiting examination of their claims to stay, say Britain is a “tinderbox” which will any minute descend into civil war.

Yes, there have been eruptions in several British cities where mobs gathered outside the hostels or “hotels” -- as Lionel would have it -- (Not the Savoy or the Ritz???) to protest against the presence of asylum-seekers. Counter-demonstrations of other citizens, who oppose the rise of these openly racist and extreme right-wing gatherings, show up and both are controlled by the local police.

The-anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-asylum-seekers brigade’s supporters in the media then write this tinderbox stuff. At its most dangerous, it’s the right wing, The Lionelist version of “The End of the World is Nigh!” None of these commentators bother to look at the demographic profile of crime, service, taxation, etc, as a whole. They have made an industry of tinderbox scare-mongering.

A small step back would statistically indicate that the immigrant population as a whole pay their proportion of taxes which far exceeds any sum the taxpayer pays to house and feed asylum seekers.

Then most immigrants working in the NHS as doctors, nurses and carers keep that institution going, as do the workers in the hospitality and transport sectors.

Then there are even immigrants who earn their ample shilling filling space in right-wing newspapers.

So, not all loiterers claiming food as their human right, or gang-rapists! Now, gentle reader, you may have got the impression that I am totally against Ms Shriver’s contentions and demands. Wrong. I absolutely support her antagonism to asylum-seekers being given sex-change operations and treatments on the National Health Service.