Censorship and the truth about migration

FOR more than 15 years this newspaper has given voice to entirely legitimate public concerns about the huge impact of mass immigration on Britain – from the pressures on public services to the damage wreaked on social cohesion.

And what, in all that time, was the vitriolic response of the liberal establishment? Whenever the issue was mentioned, they cried racism and tried to shut down the debate.

Yesterday Dame Louise Casey – a senior Whitehall civil servant – published a damning report which, over 200 detailed and carefully considered pages, revealed how right we were to be concerned.

Communities unable to cope with the ‘pace and scale’ of migration… Segregation on the rise… Escalating tensions in society… Muslim women facing ‘coercion and abuse’… Home schooled children taught ‘divisive practices’... But even more damning was her assessment of the shameful official response to these profound problems.

Clearly pointing to sex abuse scandals in Rotherham and elsewhere, she said public bodies were so keen to ‘ accommodate diversity’ they condoned ‘regressive, divisive and harmful cultural and religious practices, for fear of being branded racist or Islamophobic’. Attempts to improve integration amounted to little more than ‘saris, samosas and steel drums’.

Which makes the hostile reception she received from some Muslim groups even more depressing. One accused her of being ‘ inflammatory, divisive and pandering to the far-Right’. They are wrong. This serious and unsparing report deserves careful attention in Muslim communities and at the highest levels of government.

Ministers must now ensure it is not left to gather dust. They must address what Dame Louise rightly calls ‘uncomfortable truths’ about immigration, or risk further inflaming social tensions.