Immigration has been the elephant in the room of Labour politics for many years. Even when Ed Miliband pointed out that it was there, sitting right next to us, many Labour activists chose not to see it.
But Ed Miliband is beginning to make a habit of talking about immigration. It is a habit that most British people adopted a few years back. Labour has a lot of talking to do to catch up.
One thing that stops some Labour activists talking about immigration is a belief that views about immigration are intertwined with those about race. They are not.
When HMS Admirable Windward arrived in Tilbury Docks in 1948, carrying the first migrants from the Caribbean, and for most of the succeeding few decades, it was easy to equate race with immigration. It isn’t like that now.
One of the last times I took a taxi in Oldham the driver said to me “why don’t our doctors speak English anymore?” I gave a wry smile as I thanked my Asian cabbie.
From the values based polling The Campaign Company conducts we typically find that over 60 per cent of most populations believe that ‘there are too many foreigners in my country’. Usually there is little difference between the views of the white community and those of the black and Asian community. After all why wouldn’t black and Asian people hold the same views as other British people?
In Ed Miliband’s first foray into this territory he acknowledged Labour’s most glaring mistake; its approach to the transition rules for accession countries, or more bluntly put, letting too many people into the country too fast. This apology is certainly warranted. It is clear that Ed Miliband will not allow himself to become a prisoner of the previous Labour government’s mistakes.
But what is more important is that the last Labour government’s mistake was based on a belief – implicit if not explicit- that immigration is an economic tool, nothing more, nothing less. And it is this misguided view that Ed Miliband must repudiate if he is to have a real chance of breaking through on immigration.
There are economic consequences of immigration and certainly some low paid workers feel they are in competition with migrant workers who are prepared to earn less than them, because they are still earning more than they would in their country of birth and can see the prospect of a better tomorrow. America was built on such dreams.
But this is not the root cause of widespread anxiety in Britain. As Matthew D’Ancona, writing in the Telegraph after the Eastleigh by election, observed “this is a bad era in which to live if you like uniformity, continuity and predictability”. For many socially conservative voters, immigration is simply the most visible manifestation of change, and confirmation that they have no control over their own community and local environment, and this holds whether you identify with the left or the right of the political spectrum.
For these voters we have moved from a world where you knew your neighbour, your local butcher, the bobby on the beat, and you trusted the tradesman and the local bank manager, to one where you are lost in a sea of change.
Of course, we cannot wind back the clock and we need to compete in a global market, but Labour must get to grips with the ‘narrative of loss’ that pervades. It must understand why mass immigration has provoked such anxiety. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that if Labour gets this issue wrong it could cost it the next election.
One of Ed Miliband’s most understated achievements is the unity that broken out in the party. Virtually no other opposition in history so recently ushered from office by an angry electorate has picked itself off the floor with such ease. But he must now use the capital he has earned to take the party on a journey.
In his political broadcast devoted entirely to immigration Ed Miliband began to get to heart of the matter – ‘we should spend more on teaching English than on unnecessary translation services’.
The only way to address concerns about change is to emphasise where we are similar – what binds us together – and to work to recreate the familiar. For those who enjoy cultural diversity there are now ample opportunities to seek it out but for those who are anxious about the changing character of their area there is only demoralised acquiescence, occasionally punctuated by voting against the established parties for someone who will ‘speak up for England’.
Ed Miliband has taken a decisive step towards redressing an historic weakness that imbued Labour thinking for many years, but he now needs to flesh out the argument about integration and address concerns about rapid social change more overtly. Only then will Labour reconnect with many voters who yearn for one nation, but cannot yet see where one nation Labour fits in.