The morality of immigration was the subject of a Moral Maze episode in February 2024. In the context of Enoch Powell’s famous 1968 speech, Sunder Katwala had this to say:
It’s important to understand what is unethical about what Enoch Powell did, because it’s always ethical to contest next year’s immigration — you might want it high, low, or medium. It’s never ethical to contest the immigration of 20 years ago. Enoch was saying “send them all back from the last 20 years”.
Katwala’s claim can be reduced to a basic principle: it’s never ethical to contest past immigration — naturalised immigrants, and their descendants, are off the table.
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This will sound perfectly reasonable and decent to many a progressive and liberal. And, no doubt, these qualities are amplified when this claim is deployed in criticism of Enoch Powell. After all, Powell is the “big bad” of 20th Century British political history — a man whose name “even a Conservative prime minister will regard … as shorthand for racism”. As with Reductio ad Hitlerum, criticising Powell is supposed to mean victory in debate — who else but a bigot would dare respond?
If the charge against Powell is that he deployed racially inflammatory language in his speech (in quotations), he is guilty. If the charge is that he argued against the Race Relations Bill (because it would incentivise “immigrant communities … to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens … and dominate the rest with the legal weapons”), he is guilty. Other common charges, such as Katwala’s claim that Powell called for compulsory repatriation of all immigrants from the past 20 years, are false.
In the recent past, the consideration of Katwala’s principle would have been of interest in illustrating how out of touch Powell was with modern values. When this episode aired, it still seemed on solid ground — at least, in “polite society”. Since then, the riots and the re-emergence of the child-rape gang scandal have solidified the need to decide our national view on this principle. For, it is this principle which carves a dividing line between two political camps: the liberal-progressive order and the patriotic populists.
Katwala’s principle and the case against it
The old order clings to Katwala’s principle, which breaks down into two claims. First, it’s never ethical to contest past naturalisation: once you have acquired a British passport, you simply are British. It doesn’t matter if you are someone with no intention of joining the tribe: no intention of living in harmony with the British people, marrying into them, jettisoning your cultural norms and practices for theirs, and having your descendants be one with theirs. It doesn’t matter if you are actively hostile to the British people, culture, and history. Even if you have simply hoodwinked a rube into handing you a passport, you are still “British” in the most important sense. Thus, a jihadist with a British passport, living in an ethnic enclave, who bases his whole life around a literalist interpretation of his alien religion is as British as any other — Jihadi John is as British as John Bull. On this view, there is no important distinction between this jihadist and a citizen from the same ethnic background who lives amongst the British people; is loyal to the UK; embraces our culture, history, and religion; and marries into the tribe.
Holding a violent ethnic hatred of the native population is about the furthest one could be from joining the tribe
The second claim is that it’s never ethical to contest the right to remain of British-born people of immigrant stock. Once again, it doesn’t matter whether these people have joined — or been born into a family that joined — the tribe. To be born within our gates, to a parent with citizenship, is simply to be “British” in the most important sense.
Take the case of child-rape gangs which have operated in around 50 towns and cities across the country, and which are mainly composed of Pakistani Muslim men. Katwala’s principle insists that these men are our problem, our responsibility. But, if waging sexual war against one of the most vulnerable communities in the country isn’t an example of failing to join the tribe, I really don’t know what is.
In some instances, the victims of these gangs were subjected to hideous racial and religious abuse along with the worst kind of sexual and physical abuse. As survivor Ella Hill reported:
I was called a “white slag” and “white c***” as they beat me.
They made it clear that because I was a non-Muslim, and not a virgin, and because I didn’t dress “modestly”, that they believed I deserved to be “punished”. They said I had to “obey” or be beaten.
The Rochdale ringleader — and proud father of four — Shabir Ahmed said:
We are the supreme race, not these white b******s [pointing to police officers in court] … White people trained those girls to be so much advanced in sex.
Holding a deep-seated, violent ethnic hatred of the native population is, obviously, about the furthest one could be from joining the tribe. Had Pakistani-born, Anglo-Saxon men been doing this to girls in Pakistan — on the basis of white supremacy and Muslim hatred — progressives would be keen to make this point, and I would agree wholeheartedly. We should, therefore, draw the same conclusion regarding Pakistani child-rape gangs.
The Case for Katwala’s Principle
On the programme, Katwala’s argument for his principle concerned fairness. Just as it was fair to allow Europeans who had already settled here before the Brexit referendum to remain afterwards, it is fair to allow anyone already settled here to stay — no matter what future restrictions we place on immigration.
“Fair treatment” might mean rules-based, equal, or reasonable treatment. In public policy, reasonableness must take precedence. Why follow unreasonable rules? Why treat people equally when doing so is unreasonable? Therefore, if the case against his principle (given above) holds, Katwala’s argument falls apart on the issue of integration — as it would be unreasonable (unfair) to allow those who have refused to integrate to stay. Why reward bad behaviour?
My suspicion is that the proponents of this principle see its ultimate virtue as protecting against ethnonationalism. It provides a kind of mental cordon sanitaire, which demarcates what is politically acceptable from what “it wouldn’t do” to argue for. Perhaps this is why Katwala characterises Powell as totally rejecting the possibility of integration:
[Integration] was said to be impossible for people like me. My dad came [on] the Whitsun Bank Holiday after Enoch Powell made that famous speech. That speech was saying “If Sunder Katwala’s born in this country it will be the funeral of everything. He will never be us.”
In reality, Powell made no such claim. His argument was essentially that integration is difficult but not impossible. The “every thought and endeavour” of “many thousands” of immigrants was geared towards integration, but this was not the general trend. As he said in his speech:
Now, at all times, where there are marked physical differences, especially of colour, integration is difficult though, over a period, not impossible … Hitherto it has been force of circumstance and of background which has rendered the very idea of integration inaccessible to the greater part of the immigrant population — that they never conceived or intended such a thing, and that their numbers and physical concentration meant the pressures towards integration which normally bear upon any small minority did not operate.
Beyond Powell’s exegesis, it should be painfully obvious that rejecting Katwala’s principle does not amount to arguing for an ethnostate. The case against it (given above) is about integration, not ethnicity. Some have joined the tribe; others have not. To contest the right to remain of those who have failed to join the tribe is not to contest the right to remain of all non-Anglo-Saxons and non-Celts.
Liberty provides another argument for Katwala’s principle: upholding the liberty of British citizens is good, and this means allowing them the freedom to live as they wish. If they wish, for example, to live parallel lives in parallel communities — say, by setting up sharia courts — that is simply their liberty in action.
This argument errs in assuming that the liberty of British citizens is an unalloyed good. For example, we wouldn’t accept that upholding the liberty of fifth columnists to live as they wish is good. Indeed, in 1940, Winston Churchill had over 1,000 home-grown fascists imprisoned without trial. In this case, the virtue of liberty had to give way to a more pressing need: the need to separate hostiles from friendlies. And yet, those fifth columnists were British citizens! We ought not, therefore, uphold the liberty of British citizens at the expense of all else.
No one has made this point better than Edmund Burke. When considering whether France should be congratulated on her new-found liberty, following the French Revolution, he argued that liberty is only an unalloyed virtue in abstract. When considered in context, liberty may be bad — as when a highwayman breaks free from his cell. Thus, we should consider the context of a case to see the relationship which liberty bears on the other things we care about — such as basic honesty, freedom of expression, tackling crime, a loyal citizenry, and a parliament whose representatives are concerned with British interests (not those of foreign powers).
Prudent Policymaking
The emphasis on prudence highlights another argument against Katwala’s principle: it is a barrier to prudent policymaking regarding immigration. The standard normative model of the policy process includes the monitoring and evaluation of a policy, following its implementation. This is to determine whether the policy was a prudent one. Has it achieved its objectives? Was it efficient? And what were the unintended consequences? If the analysis of the (monitoring) data leads to the evaluation that the policy was wrong-headed, then basic prudence dictates that there must be a change — if necessary, a reversal — of policy. Are we really to believe that this process applies to all areas of policy except immigration?
This brings us back, full circle, to Powell, who began his “rivers of blood” speech: “The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils. In seeking to do so, it encounters obstacles which are deeply rooted in human nature.”
It is human, deeply human, to worry about one’s group. This is as true for the immigrant as for the native. Yet, a government is meant to work in the interests of the nation’s tribe — including those who have truly joined it — not the tribes who come to its shores seeking to carve out a piece of the country for themselves.
The evils perpetrated against young girls up and down the country were wholly preventable. This fact, along with the harrowing details of these crimes, has led to a deep, pained outpouring of anger. This is the anger one must feel to not be swallowed up by the unbearable experiences of these girls. It is the anger we must feel to ensure that silence or vague platitudes are never again allowed to become the easy way out of addressing this. It is the anger we must feel to regain the humanity that political correctness has stolen from us. To avoid more preventable evils, we must discard Katwala’s principle in favour of one which distinguishes between those who are here to truly be part of our tribe, and those who are not.
