MICHAEL Howard’s plan for Britain to fix an annual quota for refugees and asylum-seekers made me shiver. The very word ‘quota’ reminds me of Britain’s quota for Jews which prevented so many from fleeing Nazi Europe and therefore closed all doors of escape from Hitler’s Final Solution.
The centenary of the Aliens Act is in 2005, which was the first law regulating the mass arrival, of mainly Jewish immigration, to this country.
Mr Howard, the son of Romanian Jews, now feels prompted to suggest a quota system, which would force Britain to withdraw from the l951 Refugee Convention in contravention of European Union laws.
Since September 11, 2001, the fear of the ‘stranger within’ has intensified. A century after the Aliens Act, refugees from European countries, have mainly assimilated.
Jews have kept their religion mainly in the home and the Italians and eastern European Christians posed no religious conflict. Afro-Caribbeans have suffered enormously from ignorance and racism but at least laws are now in place to protect their civil rights. Now many fear an assertive Muslim community whose veiled women and bearded men seem to challenge the hard-won freedoms we have fought for including gay rights and women’s emancipation.
Mr Howard’s call for a quota is not only a response to the perception of Muslim isolationism. Separate ghettos and women in the hijab have entered into the arena of threats to the concept of free speech.
Many are beginning to ask if we will soon be forced to burn books which offend minorities. And we know where book burning led. The concern now is that we who have fought for the freedom to write what we want are forced to self-censor. Birmingham Repertory Theatre’s production of the play Behzti (Dishonour) written by the Sikh writer Gurpreet Kaur was so violently opposed by her fellow Sikhs that the theatre pulled the show.
After the fatwa on Salman Rushdie, the threat to writers appeared to come only from outraged Muslims. When furious Sikhs demonstrated there was surprise. Feeling left out of the picture, Christians screamed loudly at the BBC for showing the iconoclastic Jerry Springer Show last month. The muddle between freedom, respect, religion and culture is now on everyone’s lips.
I believe God is a man-made construct and any law which stops me criticising my religion, or anyone else’s, is a step back into the Dark Ages.
Obviously criticising someone’s ethnicity is racism and the two should not be conflated.
The real problem here is one of linguistic shoddiness. We talk of ‘race’ when in fact the whole concept is a 19th-century imperialistic construct which has percolated down to the 21st. There is no Jewish race, black race, or Muslim race. We need to be clear. The Commission For Racial Equality needs renaming.
There is only the human race. Chinese, Caucasian, African, Asian and Middle Eastern people are genetically the same. Only when we can separate ethnicity from religion can we start debating seriously. The real issues behind Mr Howard’s declaration appear to be about numbers.
Many ask: “How many immigrants can the island take before danger arrives?” Danger is in the air but the danger I worry about is that which faces arrivals whose neighbours resent sharing the benefits of our comparatively rich country.
What can we do about making refugees feel British and connected to the host country?
Minorities living in ghettos where English is not the first language face real problems. In Camden so many Muslim women I meet in my council block, speak no English.
They are prisoners in their communities and this certainly alienates them from the host society. I do not fear mass immigration but I worry for those who arrive with no English and who live in a mini-Bangladesh or Pakistan transplanted here. It is mostly the women who are disenfranchised and, even if Camden sends them notices about health and education in Bengali, many do not even read in their language.
We need to understand that the problem is not immigration, the problem is literacy. This could also be said of so many white English people too but that’s another long debate. No to quotas, yes to the formal education of immigrants so they feel at home in English and are able to help their children gain from the educational, artistic and cultural wealth that is ours to share and celebrate.
• Julia Pascal, who lives in Bloomsbury, formed the Pascal Theatre Company in 1985.