As France descends into anarchy with rioting, looting
and arson because of a policeman shooting a 17-year-old in Nanterre on the
outskirts of Paris, it is easy to look on French difficulties and reflect
fortunately such things don’t happen here.
But of course, such things have happened here. There
were riots in London in 2011 when the police shot someone and further back
there were riots and disorder in 1981, 1991 and 2001. Oddly riots seem to happen
ever 10 years. No doubt we were fortunate in 2021 to still have the pandemic.
Unfortunately, the main reason for the riots in France
is a topic about which it is as difficult to write as it would be if and when such
riots occur in the UK.
A French person was killed by the French police and
other French people have been rioting in sympathy and outrage and to stop French
people being killed by the police again.
This is the level of description, which is allowed us,
because it is racist to make any distinction in identity or nationality between
French people. We are all equally French.
But this will not do as it does not explain anything.
Why is the UK Government trying to prevent people arriving in small boats from
Europe when as soon as they arrive in Britain they become immediately as
British or if they wish English, Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish as the rest
of us?
It is reported that the British Government allowed
around half a million legal migrants last year and will allow one million this
year. Every single one of these new arrivals is as British as everyone else. It
is racist to suggest that there is any distinction whatsoever between someone
whose family has lived in Britain for a thousand years and someone whose family
has lived here for a week. It is a wonder that people who come here on holiday
are not as British as the rest of us at least until they get on their flight
home.
But then why does the British Government want to send
British people to Rwanda? If it is welcoming one million migrants with visas
and Britishness every year, why can’t it welcome a few more who happen to
arrive in dinghies? Indeed, why make them come here in dinghies? Why not send
flights to places where people express a wish to migrate to Britain and bring
them here for free. It could be viewed as a sort of repatriation. After all, if
someone indeed anyone becomes British on arrival it’s simply a matter of
predating his Britishness by a few hours or days.
I can understand us not wishing to draw a distinction
between types of French people or types of British people on the grounds of
harmony between those who live here. We don’t want different classes of citizen
based on where your parents were born. But it has a logical consequence that I
think is behind the Government’s legal difficulties over Rwanda.
What is the distinction between someone who arrives
legally with a visa and becomes immediately British and someone who comes
illegally by means of a dinghy? If both are allowed to remain, there is no
distinction whatsoever between them nor between them and anyone else who was
here already.
The person who arrives by means of a dinghy rather than
a visa is more likely to have suffered persecution or at least hardship simply
because he is willing to pay people traffickers a large amount of money and
risk his life in a small boat. But this makes him logically a more deserving
case than the person who arrives having obtained a visa, who chose this route
of migration precisely because he did not have a well-founded fear of persecution.
Why are we discriminating against people who risk their
lives to come to Britain versus those who are fortunate enough to have the
skills and means to obtain a visa? Why especially when each if allowed to
remain in the UK is as British as everyone else?
It turns out that it must be racist to prevent people
arriving here in dinghies and equally racist to prevent people arriving here by
means of a visa. After all, after their arrival it is racist for anyone to make
any distinction whatsoever between the Britishness of the person with the visa,
the person who arrived in the dinghy and the person whose family has been here for
a thousand years.
The logical conclusion from this is that it is racist
for either Britain or France to have any immigration controls whatsoever. Anyone
anywhere who wishes to live in Britain or France not only ought to be allowed
to do so but should be brought here at the expense of the British and French
taxpayer on the grounds that he will immediately become British or French on
arrival.
The rioting in France will no doubt end soon. But the
cause of the rioting will continue. One French boy is killed by the police and
there is rioting, but this is not really the cause. After all, when toddlers
were attacked by a knife wielding maniac there was no rioting.
The cause of the rioting is that some French people of
whom we are not allowed to make a distinction are unhappy living in France even
though they or their parents chose to migrate there and some other French
people of whom we are not allowed to make a distinction are unhappy that Paris
and other parts of France are being transformed to the extent that if you watch
a French film from the early 1960s, for example, À bout de souffle, Paris is
unrecognisable. The buildings are the same, but a city is not its buildings. The
French people who were breathless in 1960 are so out of breath that they have
expired.
It was racist for them to object to the transformation
of the French population. After all it was beneficial to everyone and there was
anyway no transformation. Everyone living in Paris is still French, equally
French and just the same as when Jean-Luc Goddard was shooting Jean Seberg and
Jean-Paul Belmondo with jump cuts.
Britain isn’t rioting. That is the French way. We last
had a revolution in 1689 and that wasn’t really a revolution. But if you watch,
for example Brief Encounter (1945) and compare it with Britain today you see a transformation
that would to the people living in 1945 be unimaginable and I think quite
horrific.
Of course, we mustn’t grumble as we put the sugar in
our spoon. We cannot even point out the distinction between the Britain then
and the Britain now. After all everyone in Brief Encounter is as British as
everyone living here today. There is no distinction. This is why if we remake
Brief Encounter it will include people who historically were not there.
It is racist even to notice that things were once
different. Let us instead celebrate how we are being transformed by means of a
commemorative fifty pence piece.
But one day I think the French who are
indistinguishable from each other and all as French as each other, might choose
to riot back whether it is racist of them to do so or not. They might choose to
disregard the concept of everyone being equally French on the grounds of what
it has done to them since 1960.
The British on the other hand will do nothing, because
no doubt nothing can be done, and we have to make the best of things. That is our
way.
It is too late anyway or soon will be.
