Gary's views

Gary's weekly views

Each week an article by Gary has appeared in the Plympton Plymstock and Ivybridge News in South West Devon. The articles are published here

GUNS

The spate of shootings in London coincides with a study the Home Affairs select committee on which I sit is holding into the why there are so many young black boys caught up in the criminal justice system. It is an illuminating investigation. Witness after witness, drawn from these minority communities, are telling us that even after fifty years since the SS Windrush brought the first substantial number of Afro-Caribbean settlers to our shores – to do the jobs that indigenous white people no longer wanted to do – still, many of them do no feel accepted or validated as part of British society. Still, now more than ever we are told, despite all of the black faces on TV and our sporting fields, there is a sense of alienation and exclusion among many black boys. It causes them to gather in gangs and find their personal confirmation in gangland activities which seems increasingly to involve drug running and the use of guns.

We have not concluded this study yet, and I do not know what recommendations we will make. But it is unlikely to be about toughening up gun law – but rather trying to find new ways to bring this unhealthy sense of exclusion to an end.

But it brings me back to the real reason why immigration has to be handled so carefully and why the current system needs a major overhaul. Social cohesion. I do not care what colour skin a person has on the outside or where their ancestors were born. But I do care about social cohesion. I do care about the strength of our society and nation. We have always been a country that has grown through immigration (or invasion!) and that is unlikely to change. But any such inward flow of people has to be at a pace and in a manner that does not undermine social cohesion. There is a case now for taking a very robust line indeed towards future immigration, coupled with a five year intensive focus on promoting much greater integration of those who have most recently come to our shores, not least in the insistence of speaking the mother tongue. There is increasing national discussion about the end of multi-culturalism. Good, but we must not leave this at the level of airy fairy debate but should urgently nail down some concrete policies to underpin British values and society before it is too late.
What do you think?

posted by Nigel on Tuesday, February 27, 2007