Just carrying on with unbridled migration will store up trouble
Slowing down the pace of demographic change is vital if we want to have an open and adaptable society
The buildings are nearly all low-lying rubble and the streets are being reclaimed by weeds and cypress trees. But on holiday last week, standing at the entrance to the ancient Lebanese town of Anjar, I could see the striking layout. The town was built by a powerful Muslim caliphate that ruled the Mediterranean 1,300 years ago and was distinctly Middle Eastern.
But it was also arranged on an unmistakably Romanesque grid, with two perpendicular main roads, one lined with columns. In other words, this empire idolised by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – whose fighters were being removed 50 miles up the road – had adopted a rather Western approach to town planning.
Back home, a group of volunteers and archaeologists in Berkshire have just unearthed another piece of Roman architecture: a 1,600-year-old mosaic. At the same time, figures reveal Britain is once again changing under the influence of foreign arrivals to these shores. The proportion of non-native English speakers in classrooms has jumped, in the space of a decade, from 14 to 21 per cent. For many people, the data will stoke anxiety that immigration is rapidly changing the face of Britain.
The human tide washing back and forth across these islands has always been in flux. Sometimes it has brought invaders and raiders, sometimes refugees or traders. Some of the changes they wrought, like that mosaic, are now considered part of “the national heritage”. Others, like the influx of foreign children in recent decades, are seen by many as a threat.
Faced with rapid change, most people seem to choose one of two responses. Either they shrug and declare that Britain is a nation of immigrants whose culture has always been changing. Or they declare that we are under siege and must shut down all migration to avoid a collapse in our civilisation.
The truth lies in-between. Britain, and the Western culture of which it is part, has always, to its benefit, adopted and incorporated Eastern influences. But that does not mean that we should accept unbridled demographic change. Sometimes, it’s necessary to slow the pace. Now is the time for such consolidation. Immigration needs to come down, not to freeze British culture, but to protect its willingness and openness to change.
Fast changes are sometimes necessary and can be preferable to long, drawn-out adjustments. If periods of radical change go on for too long, however, they generate a backlash. A society that was open and adaptable can become angry and rigid. The pendulum in Britain is swinging in that direction, thanks to successive governments’ decisions to ignore public concern about immigration.
The growing presence of non-native English speakers in our schools should not, in itself, worry us. They can hardly be accused of diluting standards. The vast majority speak fluent English and, on average, outperform their monolingual peers. Big changes of this kind can, though, create tensions. Population growth can impose unexpected pressure on school places or housing that governments have failed to anticipate. The concentration of immigrant groups in places like London can open a huge gulf between the country’s global metropolis and its regions, where people suddenly find their country’s economic and cultural centre has become unfamiliar and treats them as deplorable or irrelevant.
And Britain is not, despite some claims, a “nation of immigrants”. By historic standards, this island is notable for the astonishing geographic stability of its population. As a 2015 Oxford study found, much of Britain’s present-day genetic variation maps on to the Anglo-saxon populations who lived here 1,300 years ago: there is even a distinct difference between people who live on either side of the modern Cornwall-devon border, corresponding to the same split present thousands of years ago.
Recent decades have, by contrast, seen modern Britain become a melting pot of peoples on a mass scale for the first time. On the whole, we have coped well. We remain one of the world’s most open societies, a place where life chances for immigrants are just as good as for the native-born. Much like the Roman Britons who put mosaics and columns in their villas – Britain’s first metropolitan elites, perhaps – we have incorporated many foreign influences with gusto.
Adopting foreign habits can be a sign of a strong culture. Like the caliphate that followed them in Lebanon, the Romans were not shy about borrowing ideas. Up the valley from Anjar, I walked around the remains of a magnificent temple complex – the largest ever excavated – dedicated to a particular blend of the Roman god Jupiter and the local god Baal. The Romans and Greeks before them took many ideas from the region, including the first alphabet and perhaps even the custom of burying, rather than burning, their dead.
But a resilient civilisation needs its own, strong identity. We are struggling to pass on some of the values and customs that have kept British democratic institutions going. That isn’t just about immigration, but also about the stunning pace of technological and economic change. We are losing sight of the importance of personal responsibility, free speech, toleration of different opinions, constitutional traditions, delayed gratification, dignified silence, emotional resilience, having aspirations to excellence and fulfilling communal obligations.
Immigration places additional strain on this intangible cultural capital not because immigrants are somehow lesser people, but because these values depend on a sense of trust, familiarity and shared history.
Britain needs to retain its outwardlooking interest in the world, but we also need to look to the past to avoid losing valuable pieces of our own cultural inheritance. All cultures filch ideas from each other and evolve. Several of the most important building blocks for British culture, like ancient Rome or Christianity, came from abroad. But over time, every great civilisation develops distinct forms. Continuing with the current pace of change and ignoring the need to consolidate, as if Britain is a blank slate or an untroubled cultural melting pot, will only store up trouble.