After yesterday’s landmark decision on the Bell Hotel in Epping, the next question must be: where do we go from here?
What is essential to understand is that yesterday’s High Court judgement was what might be called an ‘Al Capone reckoning’. One ultimate actor, the state, and by extension the government, has been humbled on a mere technicality. The Essex hotel was deemed in breach of contract for using its rooms to accommodate refugees, rather than paying guests. The state was not brought to heel on its ethically unsound and socially corrosive laws on immigration and re-settlement.
That the Home Office sought to block Epping Forest council’s application for an injunction is important. Campaigners and the public will still face an elite establishment – especially, despite yesterday’s judgement, a judiciary – that has an intransigent and indulgent attitude to migrants, and a slavish, literal-minded adherence to human rights laws.
The fundamentals of the migrant crisis, then, have not been resolved by the closure of the Bell Hotel. They will not be resolved by the closure of other hotels, either. Illegal migrants will still come to Britain, and they will still be housed. This crisis will end in the same way it was always going to: with changes in policy and attitudes.
We have already witnessed the effectiveness of one stern response. That was the Rwanda scheme. Although the plan for its establishment was fraught with difficulties, when it did briefly come into law last April many illegal immigrants responded by taking flight to the Republic of Ireland, as complaints by the Dublin government at the time attested. This principle of deterrence must be re-visited. Keir Starmer’s plan to ‘smash the gangs’ has not worked.
A government that really wanted to stop illegal migration would consider more stringent measures, such as automatic deportation of illegal immigrants or those with criminal convictions languishing in our prisons. These policies would prove popular, but Starmer isn’t going to enact them. One might imagine that only a Reform government would.
The ultimate ‘uncompassionate’ policy is the unsayable one: stop picking up migrants from their boats in the first place. Return them to France, with or without the French government’s cooperation. This would most likely contravene maritime law and cause legal challenges and a diplomatic fallout with our neighbours.
Lurking behind so many of these preventative measures are not legal or political obstacles, but rather intangible ones, those which can’t be revoked or reversed by diktat, legislation, court ruling or vote.
Attitudes need to change and lazy assumptions need to be dismantled
In order for matters to change for good, attitudes need to change and lazy assumptions need to be dismantled. The first is the one parroted by those with no imagination, no will or just no wish: this is that there is ‘no solution’ to this fundamentally global problem. There is, as outlined above. It just takes determination and the willingness to risk the opprobrium of bien-pensants. Passive and defeatist mantras should have no place anywhere in political discourse.
The second is to confront the idle axiom that British people today increasingly hate foreigners. This is mostly untrue. Rather, many are angry at the increasing number of immigrants and their decreasing quality. If there is ire directed against one group of people, it is the liberal elite and those who have favoured cheap labour in their factories and homes. It is imperative that the thought-terminating accusation of ‘xenophobia’ is ignored or rebutted.
A third shibboleth contains other weedy platitudes: that migrants who force their way onto our shores are ‘fleeing persecution’ and ‘are only seeking a better life’. That first bromide is refutable. Those who come by boat are arriving from France, a democracy where no-one is persecuted by the state for their beliefs or ethnicity. The second statement represents a worrying detachment from reality. Of course illegal immigrants are seeking a better life. We all want a better life.
The ultimate mindset which demands the most patience and perseverance in overturning is the embedded belief and unspoken truism that ‘compassion’ is inherently good. Sometimes it manifestly isn’t. Sometimes, voicing compassionate sentiment only improves the feeling of well-being among those who voice it. Immigration policies based on compassion have so far only served to increase feelings of resentment and anger among the native population.
Yesterday’s judgement about the Bell Hotel matters, but real change will only come when we upend the conceit that compassionate beliefs or saying nice things necessarily correlate with or result in positive outcomes. Only an unfashionable attitude and ‘uncaring’ policies will solve the migrant crisis.
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