21 Burton Street, Loughborough
Immigration
Sir: In 1970 the Tory Party promised the country to halt massive immigration. In 1972, after Uganda, in response to massive public outcry Mr Carr promised that there would be no more "Ugandas". In 1973, Mr Carr, still Home Secretary, told a sceptically vociferous Tory Party conference at Blackpool that immigration was about to be "strictly controlled" and that massive immigration was about to be ended.
Now we know that the figures were not only wrong, but remained unchecked and unnoticed by those responsible until two years later; and the real position is as under: a. Annual Intake from New Commonwealth with Home Office permit to settle on arrival: 36,000 p.a.
b. Number as above, permitted to settle by Home Office, after they should have returned home: 19,000 p.a.'
c. Annual total, so far: 55,000 p.a. This in itself equals two Ugandas a year. It excludes unwanted aliens such as Spanish, Chileans, Bangladeshis, Turks, Vietnamese, and unemployed Irishmen seeking British dole benefits. It also excludes legal New Commonwealth entrants who are still in the country but have not yet asked, or been given, permission to settle; plus illegal, immigrants. • The adverse balance of NC legal entrants at
, airports is now running at over 80,000 a year, of which some 55,000 are accountable for by the Home Office as above. This leaves some 25,000 legal entrants to accumulate annually in Britain. The additional, number of illegal entrants and others coming in by sea is not known.
Thus the annual intake of alien immigrants of non-British stock is exceeding 75,000 a year; a figure approaching double that in 1969 when the Conservative Party promised that it would be reduced. All this has resulted from the incompetence if not negligence of progressive liberal do-good conservative leaders who never want to know: how else can they explain the erroneous figures of 17,000 a year surplus arriving in the UK when their own Department is giving permits for figures exceeding double that amount? Clearly, none of the senior officials of the Home Office are trustworthy, neither is it the first time when they have showed unacceptable innumeracy, as MPs will recall from the 5,000 letters written in about the incompetent Green Paper on firearms and violent crime.
Clearly the Conservative Party, as a result of past irresponsibility over immigration stemming from the mid-1950s and the failures of those who followed the Butler and Macleod policies, now have two major problems to resolve — firstly how to stop these annual Ugandas, and — just as important — what is to be done about the Home Office officials and Tindersecretaries who would be made redundant for their failures and deceits ages ago were they not civil servants. Let us hope that Mr Whitelaw can come up with some solutions so that the Home Office actually implements Conservative policy for a change, when the Tories are in power.
D. M. G. Pilleau Oak Tree House, Old Green Lane, Camberley, Surrey
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