Nesrine Malik’s analysis of Shabana Mahmood’s immigration policies may apply more widely than to second-generation immigrant politicians (Shabana Mahmood is an avatar of open Britain – that’s what makes her fable about immigration so seductive, 24 November).
Twenty years ago, while making a documentary on politics for the Open University, I interviewed a group of 15-year-olds at a school in Moss Side, Manchester. The school had selected a mixed group of children, half identifying as white British, half as second-generation immigrant.
Against my expectations, when discussing immigration, the children of immigrants strongly expressed views similar to those now espoused by Ms Mahmood. “The country is full,” one of them said. I assumed at the time that the children were reflecting the views and language of their parents, with such factors in play as a desire to “fit in” their host country and to identify with the perceived values of their neighbours, a kind of “self-othering” as a natural response to the trauma of migration. Conversely, the white British children were open and accepting of immigrants.
As a (non-Conservative) son-in-law of a former Conservative home secretary, the late Robert Carr, who took the decision to admit refugees from Idi Amin’s Uganda in 1972, I have always found it unthinkable that some more recent Tory holders of that office have abandoned the compassion he personified in favour of a “drawbridge” mentality.
Rev Dr Michael Fox
Little Barningham, Norfolk
