11/25/2013
Across the Atlantic in Airstrip One, the BBC runs a program titled Sunday Morning Live, “with live ethical debates on topical issues.” (Yes, another one.)
One of their topics on a recent broadcast was “Is Immigration a Good Thing for Britain?” Hostess Samira Ahmed asked a panel of three for their opinions: poet and writer Benjamin Zephaniah, theologian and broadcaster Vicky Beeching and journalist Angela Epstein.
All four were of course stupid, but the palm for stupidity undoubtedly goes to Mr. Zephaniah.
Is immigration good for Britain? Look: Immigration is what Britain is about. The Angles, the Saxons, the Juts [sic], the Celt — Britain is made up of immigrants! Who … Step forward: Who are the pure British people?
The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, who collectively became the English, took lowland Britain by force, driving the native Romano-Celtic British into the mountains and rocky moors of the West, where they became the Welsh and Cornish.
The oldest Welsh poetry is full of laments for the lost lowlands:
Gone are my brethren from the lands of the Severn
Around the banks of Dwyryw.
Sad am I, my God, that I am yet alive.
That poet is lamenting the British warlord Cynddylan, killed in battle by the English … immigrants in the late 650s A.D. (The Dwyryw is a tributary of the Severn.)
Of the ultimate English victory over the British, John Morris says:
The English won England because they were a nation in arms; the British lost their inheritance because their “ill-starred generals” enfeebled and disgusted their own countrymen.
The nature of the Celtic settlements 1,000 years earlier is more obscure, but it was not likely to have been peaceful. Pre-Celtic languages survive only in place-names.
“Purity” is a straw man. The British were settled peoples, with few incomers, for nine hundred years, from the Norman Conquest to the mid-20th century. Probably they wished to remain so, although nobody asked them.
Well, not quite nobody. Ms. Ahmed, the perky hostess of Sunday Morning Live, wound up her immigration segment with a “text and online poll” asking viewers for their opinions on the question “Is immigration good for Britain?”
Eighty-nine percent said no.
You can see essential bits of the program at the Council of Conservative Citizens website, to which I hereby tip my hat.
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