"The people here are wonderful,” says Jenny Sturgeon, a white Englishwoman who
has lived in Slough for 30 years. “And the ethnic mix is wonderful. It’s how
the country should be. But we get a huge number of people coming in from all
ethnic groups. A shortage of money can lead to tensions. The government has
a lot to answer for.”
The town of Slough, which lies outside the M25 near Heathrow, has the greatest
ethnic mix in the UK outside London. By comparison, even Leicester and
Coventry seem blandly uniform.
Take Malinka, a Polish deli near the library. The large majority of shoppers
are Polish but nonPoles go there too. One who enters to buy sausages while
I’m there is Stephen Cordeiro, a Portuguese-Asian who was born in Kenya. And
I notice that in the deli’s window, among the job ads in Polish for nannies,
waiting staff and handymen, that there’s a card written in English, offering
the services of an “African hair stylist”.
Surveys carried out by the council show that a quarter of the town’s
businesses with more than 10 employees use the new migrant workforce because
– businesses reported – they brought higher productivity and a better work
ethic than indigenous workers.
But inevitably there are tensions. One Polish woman, Aneta Kania, says she had
never seen such diversity till she came to Slough. “I was very shocked by
the mix. At first I thought it was a bit scary.”
Another Polish woman, an economist by training, told me darkly that she had
recently been working in retail “for an Indian” but had stopped doing so
“because they don’t respect you”.
A Sikh with a strong Indian accent lent credence to what that Polish woman
said when he told me “there are too many immigrants in Slough”. Polish
drivers with no car insurance jump red lights, he muttered. And last week
he’d been bothered by Bulgarians ringing his doorbell to beg for money.
Ted Cantle, who conducted the official inquiry into the cause of riots in
Bradford, Burnley and Oldham in 2001, believes that migration to the UK can
bring real benefits. “But building cohesive communities to harness the
benefits long term takes resources.
“It is important that councils like Slough are funded correctly for their
population size and complexity to make sure they continue community cohesion
work,” he says. “Com-munity tensions are sometimes caused by the perception
of competition between groups over resources and councils have to be able to
demonstrate this is not the case.”
Perhaps with that in mind, Slough last week formally protested to the Treasury
that it had been severely underfunded because government statistics
underestimated the number of immigrants coming to the town. Richard Stokes,
leader of the council, describes official statistics as “not fit for
purpose”.
“Estimates have failed to keep pace with what is happening on the ground and
public services are suffering as a consequence,” he says. “The migrants that
come to Slough are hard-working and bring great benefit to the local economy
but the council remains severely underfunded because of these poor
statistics.”
Andrew Blake-Herbert, Slough’s strategic director for finance and property,
says the council faces a £15m shortfall. It has managed not to cut crucial
services but cannot make necessary improvements in areas such as children’s
services and recycling.
According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), Slough experienced the
ninth-fastest population increase of any local authority in the country
between 1991 and 2001. But since then, the ONS contends, the town’s
population has declined by 3.3%, to a total of 117,600. Slough’s own data
suggests the total is nearer 130,000.
To support that figure, the council puts forward an impressive array of
evidence. It points to substantial increases in new housing, the rapid rise
in house prices, the increasing numbers of households from which the council
tax is collected, the high fertility rate among women in Slough (66 births
per 1,000 women, compared with 54 in the country as a whole) and even a
substantial increase in the amount of sewage flowing out of town.
Visiting Slough last week, I found plenty more evidence that the migrant
population is getting bigger. I talked to officials, business figures, and
residents from across the entire community – pale-skinned and dark,
European, African and Asian.
To start, I visited the busy road near Slough’s massive trading estate – the
largest in Europe – where coaches from Poland stop illegally to disgorge new
arrivals. And I talked to a resident who watches that happen twice a day,
sometimes more.
Tadeusz Chruscik is Polish but he’s been living here since 1942, having served
in the Polish Air Force. (Some 130,000 Poles settled in Britain during and
after the war.) He says he’s met some people who get off the coach without
the slightest idea where to go, having got on after having too much to drink.
The sheer numbers arriving here simply can’t be housed properly. The council
is paid by central government to ensure that three-storey houses are not
overcrowded but lacks the funds to check buildings with only two storeys. As
a result, many migrants endure dangerously crowded conditions.
Colin Rodgers, manager of the estate agency B Simmons & Son, says: “I’ve
seen places where there are three beds in the lounge and three in the dining
room. “ I’ve also heard stories, from quite believable sources, about people
using those beds in shifts.”
Property, it hardly needs adding, has become unaffordable to many people.
Baber Zafar is 21 and has lived in Slough all his life. In the town square,
Zafar says immigrants have put so much pressure on house prices that he is
moving to Spain.
By a grim irony, the rising property market recently resulted in the closure
of Slough’s immigration counselling centre. It has now moved to Southall,
west London, explains one of the counsellors, Qazi Anisud-din, because
rising rents in Slough made the old premises unaffordable.
Of course, the borough council does what it can. In fact, it does more than
most. In the past 18 months it has placed in schools some 900 children who
arrived in Slough from overseas. In other towns, they might have had to wait
weeks or months to be placed, but Slough established a special assessment
centre to speed the process. But it’s slow work: the centre can take only
eight children a week. Last year two primary schools accepted 50 Polish
children and 60 Somalis in just one term.
Not everyone welcomes the flood of pupils for whom spoken English is not easy.
Aneta Kania sends her daughter to St Anthony’s Roman Catholic school but
says there are so many other Polish children there that seven-year-old
Paulina is making slow progress in English. (Kania has poor English herself.
Though trained as a nurse, she’s obliged to work as a cleaner until her
language skills improve. What with bringing up a child on her own, and her
job, she finds it hard to fit in the lessons.) Another pioneering service
set up by Slough council is devoted to dealing with Roma migrants who have
been arriving by the hundreds since Romania joined the European Union in
January.
Eighty-eight unaccompanied Roma children have asked for support from the
town’s children’s services. Six have babies of their own, and seven are
pregnant. To deal with these Roma children, Slough has set up a specialist
team, at a cost of £150,000 since January.
Fiona Mactaggart, Slough’s MP and a former minister in the Home Office, says
the flawed calculations “will not do”. And the ONS itself recognises the
shortcomings of its statistics. Karen Dunnell, the national statistician,
wrote in May 2006: “There is now a broad recognition that available
estimates of migrant numbers are inadequate for managing the economy,
policies and services.”
Even the Poles don’t relish the arrival of yet more Poles. Kania, the nurse
who came to Slough just 18 months ago, says she dreads June, July and August
because that’s when Polish students come here for summer jobs. “There are
too many people in Slough already,” she says.
The legal tangle
Some days ago a newspaper published a photograph of 21 members of a Roma
family. Apparently there are another 80, all relatives and all newly arrived
since Romania joined the EU in January. A social worker in Slough explained
she had nine teenage Roma girls, several of whom were pregnant, in her care.
In theory, Romanians and Bulgarians are subject to a special regime for a
transitional period of up to seven years. They can only come here to work
legally if they are highly skilled, have been granted a work permit or come
under a special quota for temporary agricultural workers. But there are no
checks on the borders. They only have to show a valid ID card and walk in
and they are entitled to stay as visitors for up to three months.
Back to our pregnant teenagers. Why can they not be sent home? The answer lies
in a tangled web of legal obligations. Successive children acts have placed
an obligation on local authorities to care for children in need. The Race
Relations Act 1976 makes it unlawful to discriminate on the grounds of race
or nationality; foreign children have to be treated as British. As for
access to the NHS, pregnancy is regarded (rightly) as a medical emergency so
treatment is automatic.
On top of that, the Free Movement Directive which came into force last year
severely restricts the government’s ability to expel EU nationals even if
they have committed a crime. In expanding the EU to countries which are far
poorer than our own, we have stumbled into a potential crisis.
The free movement of labour has set in hand movements of workers to Britain on
a greater scale than anticipated. At the same time “harmonisation” of social
security has placed obligations on EU governments to provide benefits in the
richer countries that greatly exceed wages in the poorer ones.
Sir Andrew Green
Chairman, Migrationwatch UK
I had to move my children out of the local school as they were the only white kids there and were being bullied. But also, 65% of the other children struggled with English, and the school couldnt afford enough interpreters. My children were completely ignored. GORDON BROWN - GET A GRIP!!
Rebekah, Coventry, UK
I left England seven years ago. I sold the house, upped sticks, and left without ever looking back. I bitterly resented having to pay confiscatory levels of taxes to support the immigrants. The Politicians have been trying to buy the future votes of these millions of poor immigrants, without considering the interest of the British public. But you only need to look at France - where the Government is virtually held hostage by the threatening masses of second generation immigrants - to see what a miscalculation it is. Now I live in the States, where life is much much better, but where the Politicians are stupidly not learning from the mistakes of their European colleagues - however, the American people have been vociferous and forceful in rejecting the proposed amnesty of the illegals from mexico and South America. The European public must be more forceful in defending its interests. Otherwise, England, France, Germany and Italy will be bankrupted by the cost of immigration.
Elizabeth Braithwhite, Tampa, United States
I came back to visit the UK from abroad last month, and I was absolutely amazed at how much Salisbury had changed in the last 12 months. Every other person on the street was speaking Polish, Polish shops were everywhere and most of the advertisments in their windows were in Polish.
I had gotten used to the stupidty of having signs written in languages other than English in East London and Southall. It makes no sense to encourage people to integrate, and then make it easy for them to put up linguistic barriers to integration.
However, what concerned me about the East European tide was that it had come over wholesale with, seemingly, no intention at all to integrate. It's as if they were intent on forming a Polish enclave in the heart of Wiltshire, where they could work in minimum-wage jobs, sending their earnings home before buggering off with the loot in a couple of years.
I hear people saying that there will be civil war in the UK in ten years. I think it's already started.
Brent, Salisbury, Wiltshire
There will be civil war in the UK within the next decade.
On my rare visits back I sense a seething rage in the indigenous British people (at least in those who are not too drunk or drugged up to notice what is happening).
Those who can are emigrating (I spend as little time as possible in the septic isle now). The UK is now controlled by the SNAILSHELLs - Smug, Naive, Arrogant, Intolerant, Lousy, Self-Hating, Ethnic-Loving Liberals.
I hope New Labour is destroyed at the next election.
meldrew, Budapest, Hungary
Juan Carlos: I am a UK national visiting Al Andalus right now and I see alot of commitment to the EU which is benefitting Spain's economy enormously. The quid pro quo is the adherence to the EU principles of free movement of goods, services, money and people within the EU region. Therefore YOU cannot complain when there is an influx of non-Spanish EU nationals, albeit from one member state, coming to lie and work in your nation. You cannot get something for nothing, EU citizens of Spain. We are having to deal with non-British immigrants, it's about time you did as well.
Oliver Bennett, LONDON,
Although i am from Malta and i do wish to spend some time and even do some work in the UK, i cannot tolerate situations like slough, and well if the brits are also turning benidorm into a slum, that is not fair too. people should integrate by knowing the customs and the language of the country as many poles have actually done but it seems as if these east european immigrants don't know much english and yes if there are no wage and rent controls the end result would be tragic. the new conservative govt must end all this.
eric, sliema , malta
to allow this kind of drowning immigration is stupid and destructive of the indiginous people.Being pregnant is not a disability and these people are exploiting the political weakness of the british government.How can it be so hard to say NO NO NO.
derek grue, liverpool, mersyside
Dear Mike Spicer,
please make a trip to Benidorm, Spain. You cannot walk one yard here unless facing British bars, pubs, flea markets, "supermarkets", selling all types of goods you can get in Britain. There are thousands of them! The whole city is taken over by British luckhunters! Not one genuine Spanish establishment is left. It is "Little Britain"! Half of the towns cars are on British license plates, British people are leaving rubbish all over the city, British dogs are polluting the streets and pavenments with their excrements, nobody cares to bring a dog bag . . . What do you complain about?
Juan Carlos, Benidorm, Spain
I suppose the Labour MP for Slough thinks everthings OK...
Mike May, Egham, Surrey
I live in Slough. It's the only place in Berkshire a key-worker can afford to live. Virtually every white person you meet is Polish.
There is no community in Slough, though there is plenty of hostility, rudeness, and the potential for a fight every day if you are a young male.
In large numbers, immigrants drive down salaries, drive up house prices and rents, and burden schools and other services. All of these things have occured in Slough.
Garth, Slough, Berkshire
As someone who lives in Slough I can say that it has become overcrowded with other nationalities. It is all well and good abiding by EU law and letting these people come into the country but someone has to call a halt to it or at least manage it properly.
We are all competing for resources such as housing etc and I dont see why I should suffer or be treated as second class whilst someone from Romania is given whatever they need at my expense.
I think this government has been too soft and let things get out of control.
If you look at Slough where the number of Polish supermarkets has soared recently, every corner shop has its own polish section too, polish and romanian registered cars are everywhere and English is rarely heard on the high street I feel like a foreigner in my own country. Maybe i will go to Poland and see how welcome I would be over there?
mike spicer, Slough, England
I knew in '97' that something particularly unpleasant would be the end result of a labour government.
It happens each time people are stupid enough, to trust socialists -with their madcap ideaology- to manage their affairs sensibly and orderly.
However- I think they have surpassed themselves on this occasion with their catastrophic immigration policy.
As Max Hastings wrote-the British will eventually forgive Labour over Iraq....but they won't forgive them for unwanted mass immigration.
antony Graham, southport, England
Lets not beat about the bush, there are far too many immigrants coming to and already in this Country and the place does not have the feel to it that it had even 10 years ago let alone longer. Probably the likes of Tony Blair and his cronies never realise the effects because they live their own cosseted lives driven by chaffeur to and from their luxury houses and back again ,never mixing with the likes of you and me .And they are mean to be the "Labour" Party. All Labour stands for now is lies and incompetence and Iraq, and long gone are all the old values of previous Labour Governments. In short Blair has given away all Labour's values for free.
John, Woking, Surrey
When is all this un-voted for compassion going to stop? Immigrant after Immigrant only tells me to get ready for another tax hike to pay for, and support their children. As an Englishman I am saddened and disillusioned by what this damn Government and the EU has done to my country. I hope that the greatest traitor this country has ever known - Blair - rots in hell.
I am a single man who owns a three bedroomed semi-detached house. I have worked for it and pay for it without any assistance from the Government. I wonder how long it will be before the bleeding-hearts of this country demand that people like myself are assessed on need and removed from our hard-earned homes simply to accommodate yet another unwelcome Immigrant and his tribe? Some of us are not amused, nor are we likely to move over anymore.
It will not be too long before we are assessed on retirement through our local councils as to whether we need "care". It will, of course, be at the cost of our homes and pensions!!
Tony, Rotherham, England
Take back control of our borders.
Tom Katz, Weybridge, UK
After 30 years living near Slough, I left to live on the South coast which is still reasonably English and also, to be able to spend more time in a real foreign country which is called France.
A.D. Osborne, Hastings, England