Identity politics by writer and philosopher Julian Baggini in today's Guardian

Article about identity politics by writer and philosopher Julian Baggini in today's Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/19/white-cliffs-of-dover

The language used is moderate and the tone is friendly.  A casual reading reveals nothing particularly remarkable, and if anything the article appears to be a little bland.  Julian Baggini's establishment status as "writer in residence to the National Trust" confers upon his thoughts an aura of respectability. 

However there are two points in this seemingly harmless piece that should cause us concern.

In the seventh paragraph Julian Baggini tells us "we are a nation of immigrants", and in the eighth paragraph he expands "go back far enough and all of us can trace our ancestry to the other side of the water".

On the surface this seems to be a statement of the obvious - go back far enough and we can all trace our ancestry to the Rift Valley; go back even further and we can all claim kin with our far distant protozoa forebears.

The reason the "we are all immigrants" statement must be challenged is because it is an argument that has been repeatedly used in history by one group of people to dispossess another.

Most infamously, it was the offical doctrine of racist and apartheid South Africa.  Drawn up by Dr DF Malan, codified by HF Verwoerd and ruthlessly implemented by BJ Vorster, apartheid was based on the stupendous lie that Afrikaners and "bantus" had arrived in South Africa at more or less the same time, that everyone was an immigrant and that therefore no one group had any indigenous rights to the land.  Based upon this rewriting of history "separate but equal" development of different ethnic cultures became the official policy, although in reality it was not even remotely equal but heavily biased in favour of the Afrikaner immigrants.

You might think that this is a very extreme comparison to make, indeed so extreme that it has no relevance to the United Kingdom in 2012.

But the "we are all immigrants" phrase is a mantra that is gaining increasing currency, and is used to justify post-war mass immigration. 

The people who are going to lose out to unrestricted migration are those communities who depend upon communal assets.  Typically this is going to be the white working class - the indigenous majority who have chief title to the British Isles.  Derided and abused as "chavs", poorly educated and inarticulate, increasingly denied welfare benefits or assisted housing, they are paupers waiting to be decanted and "shovelled out" of the cities into what are effectively bantustans (Stoke on Trent).

Personally I am not affected by all this.  I have sufficient wealth and education to qualify for the professional elite.  But I must protest at the way the United Kingdom is being turned into an offshore international tax haven where the only people who have any rights are those who have the money to pay for them.

If I wanted to be part of a smug self-satisfied multi-cultural multi-ethnic professional elite served by a faceless transient army of peons I would move to Dubai.