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A history of immigration in Europe is a useful reminder that the issue has always been mired in political controversy
When I first worked on migration issues in the Cabinet Office at the turn of the millennium, a letter crossed my desk from the then leader of Kent county council, complaining about the number of asylum seekers, and mentioning that Kent had “no prior history of multicultural diversity”. In fact, Dover was represented in parliament by Thomas Papillon, a Huguenot refugee, in the 17th century.
This historical amnesia seems all-pervasive when it comes to political debate in the UK. How many times have we heard politicians or the press complain that “we can’t talk about immigration”, when it has been a controversial political issue for more than a century, from the Aliens Act 1905 to Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech to the Brexit referendum? Continue reading...