BACK at the General Election in 1979, Margaret Thatcher stormed to victory thanks, in the main, to a television interview where she said that she "understood people's fears about being swamped."
Thatcher was talking about stopping immigration, which was THE BIG ISSUE after a decade of near unrestricted access to Britain from the former Commonwealth countries.
After the election, nothing was done to stop the flood and discussion on immigration was quietly dropped from the political agenda.
Now I predict Gordon Brown will go into next May's General Election pledging to stop immigration in a last desperate attempt to keep Labour in power.
I believe this in the light of his new "British homes for British people" housing policy launched this morning which pledges to put Britons back at the front of the queue for council housing. And also because of the remarks made by Frank Field on the policy change in the Daily Mail today.
He says:
"Any conversion, even if it's 12 years late, is welcome. But it is a typical act of spin that doesn't deal with the main issue. What whites and immigrants both want is a halt to immigration."
The massive about turn in Labour's housing policy comes after it was revealed that 10,000 newly-arrived immigrant families were housed last year ahead of Brits who had been waiting for years for the same accommodation to become available.
Will this new housing policy influence voters? I don't think so. I believe it will just validate what the British National Party has been saying for the last ten years.
If Labour plays the immigration card at the General Election will that influence voters? Again, I don't think so. I believe it will just confirm everything that we have ever said concerning immigration.
Our opponents will be quick to draw parallels between Thatcher's immigration scam in 1979 - and the demise of the National Front - with any similar trick by Labour to appear to be tough on immigration in order to try to eclipse the British National Party.
But there is no comparison.
The National Front were in terminal decline long before 1979, in fact its peak was in 1976 and even despite the eye-catching 1977 local election results in London, the Party had already started to lose its popularity.
The NF didn't have a single elected councillor and no real local Party structure apart from its numerical strength in London and Leicester. It was a castle built on sand and after the 1979 election it just collapsed and disintegrated into warring factions.
Thatcher's fleeting tough stance on immigration just consolidated Tory voters who had already left the NF and gone back to the Conservatives.
The British National Party is a different kettle of fish altogether. It has 2 MEPs, 1 London Assembly Member, 3 county councillors and over 100 borough, district, town and parish councillors. It has a thriving party structure across the whole country and it is attracting more and more Labour voters as each day goes by.
All Labour's last minute change on housing policy does is to provide a badge of approval for the British National Party and our brave and much criticised stance against immigrants being housed before Brits.
Rather than winning former Labour voters back, it will give others the courage and confidence to switch to the BNP in the knowledge that we have been right all along.
2 comments:
Thanks, Martin, most informative
I've bookmarked this article.
Brown and Labour's really killing problem is that nobody believes what they say. Nobody will believe what they say about race-replacement immigration, which is what it is.
"Tough on race-replacement, tough on the causes of race-replacement", might do it, perhaps. But that would give the whole game away, wouldn't it?
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