Sean and Seamus, the hobgoblins down the road, have gone unmentioned for several months. You may have forgotten them, but I have not. They have been travelling in the British Isles and, now returned, are guests round our dinner table.
Why I invite them is anyone’s guess. They drink like fish, and our whiskey takes a pummelling. With each gulp, the social journey on which we are engaged — sentimental enough to start with — becomes ever more emotionally charged.
But invite them I do. I suppose I must like them. Noah certainly does.
Sean is speaking. He is as gruff as ever. “The UK is the arsehole of the world,” he says. I, ever the perfect hostess, say nothing — not because I have nothing to say, but because my mind is full of a joke I heard years ago that made me laugh.
Let me recount it. A pompous Englishman, lost on the meandering roads of the Welsh foothills, stops at the pub in an isolated village to obtain directions. Full of himself, he can’t resist describing the place in the very words used by Sean. “Arrh,” retorts the innkeeper, “and you’ll be just passing through, am I right?”
“Yup, a real shitshow,” Sean continues. “Fooking furriners wherever you go. Dark souls from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Turkestan and every other Stan you care to think of. I canna stand it. Ha! Ha! But actually, no, this influx is not so bloody funny.” The whiskey glass moves unerringly to the lips. Where there should be a sip, there is a gulp.
“Sean has been moaning about them non-stop,” says Seamus. “He cracked a smile when I called them the All Blacks, but otherwise it has been Stanning room only. I cannot stand it.” So saying, he replicates the process of “lift and gulp”. Are the Irish, I wonder, taught this technique at their mother’s knee? Is this a Paddylick Manoeuvre?
Noah, recognising a funny farm when he sees one, intervenes hastily. “Come on, guys, enough is enough. Sean’s concerns about immigration are understandable, but complaining about them is simply useless. The governments — both British and Irish — have chosen to open the floodgates, and the result is inevitable.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Why what?” asks Noah. He is buying time while he collects his thoughts.
“Why did they decide to open the floodgates?”
“It’s obvious. The countries need people to do the dirty work — sweep the streets, clean the loos, and so on. The locals won’t do it, and welfare makes it possible for them to refuse.”
“Fair enough,” I say, “but why not select people who will readily assimilate? Why let in hordes of people whose lifestyle, culture, religion and ethics are so alien to the famous ‘British Way of Life’?” I am being uncommonly forthright, and rather regret “hordes”. It smacks of Attila the Hun, who actually was never a Hun, not even to his concubines.
“Good idea. Sift people on the basis of background! Five points for being white, three for speaking English, and zilch for being what some people used to call a fuzzy-wuzzy. That should play well in the public eye.” Seamus is, of course, being facetious — or at least sarcastic. Or is it the other way round?
I hate his tone, but love the content. Sort of hate the sin, but love the sinner. “Good point,” I say. “No democratic country could pursue a policy of this sort. But what if they fail to assimilate? Then you’ll have a country divided against itself.”
“No,” says Noah. “You tell everyone that assimilation is unnecessary, even bad. Multiculturalism is what we want, you say, and it is what we are sure to get. In a world of plural cultures, each community will develop in its own special way, but come together for the good of the country whenever need dictates.”
“Separate development,” I say. “Where have I heard that before?”
Seamus looks uncomfortable. “Separate development under apartheid was bad because the whites dominated the Blacks. In the UK and in Ireland, the groups will develop separately on a voluntary basis and cooperate in a spirit of kindness and goodwill.”
“You mean, like the Protestants and Catholics in Ireland,” grunts Sean. “Or the Muslims and the Hindus in India. Or the Sinhalese and the Tamils in Sri Lanka. Or the, erm, Jews and the Arabs in the Middle East.”
“Of course there will be conflict,” says Noah. “The stuff about multiculturalism is just political rhetoric. What the politicians are really doing is trying to garner votes. They expect the immigrants they have admitted in droves to vote for them in gratitude.”
“How is that working out?” I ask.
“Depends how you look at it,” Seamus says. “It seems that Muslims, for instance, vote as one. As a result, they vote in their own kind and they are mayors of about a dozen major cities, including London and Birmingham. Multi-gubernatorialism is doing just fine.”
“What?” I splutter.
“Ok, multi-governance. The Muslims stick together and vote largely en bloc. I don’t say that Labour picks up no votes in the process, but they don’t like Starmer, who is generally booed off the stage.”
“Don’t like Starmer? Yer kidding me!” Sean, it seems, doesn’t like Starmer. Neither, for that matter, do I. Queen Victoria said that Gladstone used to speak to her as though she were a public meeting. I feel that Sir Keir does the same. Is it because he is a lawyer and sees us as the courtroom?
I revert to the issue in point. I do dislike digression, diverting though it can be. “How’s the basic cleaning going?”
“Depends on how you look at it,” Seamus continues. “The brushes are still brushing, and the flushes are still flushing. Why, I am not sure. The figures, which I have here on my phone, make dismal reading. The majority of Muslims are on welfare: 63% of them in total, 78% of the women. Britain can’t afford this. Literally, it can’t. The unimaginable is happening — welfare spending has now reached the point where it exceeds the taxes collected.”
I think for a moment. “Is this not colonisation by submission?” I ask. Seamus looks bleakly at me but says only this: “The numbers are relatively small as yet — only four million out of a total population of about sixty million.
Time is not on the locals’ side, however. Muslims may live predominantly off welfare, but they are far from idle. They are actually as busy as beavers.”
Beaver? Beaver? Is the serious-minded Seamus making a joke, a lewd one at that? “The average number of children in a Muslim family living in Britain is between six and eight. Whether in the process of reproducing they lie back and think of England is debatable.”
“That,” says Noah, portentously, “is a cultural referent. Cultural referents are dwindling fast. Soon no one will know what you are talking about.”
I think of Ozymandias, king of kings, reduced to rubble by the vicissitudes of life. But in thinking of him — Trump’s rival in a world of political vanity — I suspect I might be all but alone. I am, I fear, a cultural referent who is dwindling fast.
“Aren’t people protesting as all they cherish perishes around them?” I ask.
“Well, yes,” says Noah. “But when they do, they are often sent to gaol. The sentences can be severe: being sent down for several years is not unusual. Faced with this prospect, ‘Concerned of East Grinstead’ quickly learns to button his lip and butt out.”
“Surely this invasion of an alien culture will lead to civil war?” I become ever more concerned. I now start thinking of the Norsemen, who came to England to rape and pillage. An ancient version of the Rotherham gangs. The picture is hateful.
“Nah, not unless you mean civil in the sense of ‘polite’,” says Sean. “The locals are too busy slugging it out on the football stands.”
He takes another slug and looks pleased with himself. Pleased as punch, but the punching would be mine to deliver.
In bed that night, I turn to Noah and say, “This is how I understand it. The Poms need immigration because living on welfare makes them work-shy. They cannot be selective in deciding who to let in because this would be racist.
“Exploiting the situation, opportunistic politicians are willing to let in masses of people who are really colonisers in black drag. These people, denizens of an alien culture, will overwhelm the locals, who are compelled to submit by force of law. So … it’s goodbye, Pomerania.”
“Something like that,” says Noah. “Oh, by the way, well done with ‘denizens’.”
With a comfortable sigh, the wretched man turns over and falls asleep. I recognise that I once went in quest of a man and returned with a mouse.
Really, our Noah is no benison. But he is an arketype, I suppose.
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