The Big Smoke

Melanie Phillips should get herself a good lawyer. Not because her right-wing fulminating about Labour’s recently uncovered policy promoting mass immigration is likely to get her into trouble – little as she likes the fact, she lives in a society where free speech is permitted, even encouraged, so she can say what she likes without fear or favour – indeed, with a nice remuneration package from the Daily Mail – and despite the fact that I find much of it offensive, there is nothing I can do about it. For which thank God, Allah or Darwin, as you prefer.

No, Phillips should talk to a lawyer because of the language they use. From tort law to habeas corpus, the legalese that upholds the institutions of this fine country comes from abroad. Why? Because in 1066, we were conquered by the Normans, and they brought their language with them. Before that, there were the Romans. And the Vikings. And a fair few of our words are rooted in Greek, too (is Phillips aware that even her enthusiasm for ‘the fundamental make-up and identity of this country’ is foreign? ‘Fundamental’ comes from the Latin, ‘country’ most recently from old French – and enthusiasm, come to that, is Greek and means to be possessed by a god or demon).

Culture, like language, is mutable – and our language more than most, which is why it has the finely tuned vocabulary and effortless nuance to allow a Shakespeare to exercise his gift to the full. Cross-pollination is a many-splendoured blessing – for proof, if you don’t want to read the Bard, tune in to Channel 4’s race season , which starts tonight, and asks among other questions,  if it’s better to be mixed race (hint: the answer’s yes).Take the wishes of Phillips, Nick Griffin and the like to their natural conclusion and you don’t end up with a white Britain – not even one with a cruelly limited vocabulary and a load of diseases from inbreeding. No: stop migration retrospectively and Europe – the last continent to be settled – would be empty. Which is one way of keeping out the foreigners, I suppose.

The only aspect of this furore which I feel gives Phillips and her ilk justified cause for complaint is the revelation that Labour talked about controlling immigration while quietly instituting and carrying out plans to do exactly the opposite. What’s with the secrecy? Freedom of speech doesn’t just apply to right-wing columnists. These are our elected officials; they have a duty to keep the electorate in the picture instead of cowering in fear of the (hypothetical) northern white working-class vote but going ahead and doing what they think is right anyway. That’s hypocritical, sly and elitist. Oh, wait a minute – might those be the traditional British traits Phillips is working so assiduously to protect?