Islam versus Europe

There have been some reports in the British press today about how the government is planning an advertising campaign to deter Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants from coming here, telling them how bad Britain is and how terribly cold, etc.

Ministerial consideration of launching a negative advertising campaign to deter Bulgarians and Romanians from coming to work in Britain next year is "bordering on the farcical", Keith Vaz, the chairman of the Commons home affairs select committee, has said.

Vaz warned that such propaganda tactics had been used in the past and been found to be counterproductive.

The campaign, which would focus on the downsides of British life perhaps by suggesting jobs are scarce and it rains all the time, is one of a range of potential measures to stem immigration to Britain next year when curbs imposed on both country's citizens living and working in the UK will expire.

Source: Guardian

This tactic was indeed tried long ago, when the third-world hordes first began to pour into Britain. It didn't work, as the fact that someone called Keith Vaz is now chairman of the home affairs select committee proves.

Unable to persuade the Caribbean governments to restrict the issue of passports, the British government looked to other means at its disposal, often accompanied by the use of unequivocal language, to persuade the island governments to limit the access of their subjects to the United Kingdom for settlement. Much of this work was done by publicising the difficulties facing potential migrants to Britain. An official film was made for distribution in the Caribbean showing the very worst aspects of life in Britain in deep mid-winter. Immigrants were portrayed as likely to be without work and comfortable accommodation against a background of weather that must have been filmed during the appallingly cold winter of 1947-8. The Colonial Office, for example, sent Caribbean governments copies of figures of unemployed colonials in the United Kingdom, figures expressly collected for the purpose of dissuading further entry. In the aftermath of the arrival of the Empire Windrush, Creech Jones tried to assure his Cabinet colleagues that he had done all he could to prevent ‘these influxes’:

Not only has the position about employment and accommodation in the United Kingdom been explained by me to the Governors in correspondence but a senior officer of my Department visited Jamaica and certain of the other West Indian Islands last year and made great efforts to explain the difficulties at this end and to discourage people from coming over to this country on the chance of finding work. There was ample publicity in the Jamaican press of the difficulties men might meet if they came to England. Before the party of 417 left Jamaica they were warned by the Jamaican Government about the difficulties which would beset them on their arrival in this country.

In 1950 the Secretary of State for the Colonies, alarmed by the arrival of the first charter flight carrying unsponsored immigrants from Jamaica, expressed his ‘serious concern’ to the Governor of Jamaica. He requested that a notice entitled ‘Warning to intending migrants from Jamaica to the United Kingdom’ be distributed as widely as possible in the colony. In a bid to deter intending emigrants to the United Kingdom it described conditions of poverty and misery and warned that both accommodation and jobs were difficult to find. It set down three ‘absolute essentials for success in the United Kingdom’: possession of proper qualifications to do work which was in demand; possession of enough money to live on until employment could be found; and a definite offer of accommodation in the area of intended settlement.

Source: British Immigration Policy since 1939: The Making of Multi-Racial Britain by Ian R. G. Spencer