I went to see new British film This is England with a few friends last night. To be honest I was very ambivalent about the whole thing – I couldn’t quite decide which side of the fence the film sat. it’s about neo-nazis in 1983. a young boy befriends a group of men on the extreme right of the political spectrum. These boys seem very friendly to the boy, who, having a father killed in the Falklands, seems to be taken in by their rhetoric.

This makes for very uncomfortable viewing. These thugs seem like nice people – they are after all, human. They are friendly and tender to the lad. The film is therefore brave in that it does not simply dismiss such people as mindless thugs. It is, I guess, all too easy to do so, and much to simplistic. We must concede that they are not Neanderthals, for were we not to do so would make us as bad as them.

And yet, at the same time, the film almost seemed sympathetic to what they were saying. I disagree utterly with what they were saying – there was not even one tiny grain of truth in it. The fact is, this country needs immigration: without it, we would simply cease to function. Moreover, I think back to the story of my own family: my maternal grandparents came over from Cyprus in the late forties, met, and married. My bappou (grandfather) was a tailor, and had a shop down in London. They worked their socks off all their life: I can still remember watching bappou and yaiya working at their sewing machines up until their retirement. Their offspring are all equally hard working – my aunt doula is a teacher; my uncle is a journalist; my mother is an information scientist (hi mum). They then had six grandchildren: let’s see… at last count, they all have or are doing degrees; two are about to complete PhD’s (hi mark and Chris) I think alex is doing a Master’s; I am about to graduate; I’ve not spoken to my cousin Cyril in a while – does he graduate this year or next year? Luke is also about to enter his final year of his four year bioinformatics degree. That is, all told, one physicist, two biologists, one bioinfomatician, one neuroscientist (something like that) and one film student. So much for this ‘immigrants don’t work’ bullshit.

I reckon it’s a load of urban myths that ‘immigrants take our jobs’ or ‘they just collect benefits’ or ‘they get priority over housing’. Bull. This to me smacks of paranoid xenophobia. I also seriously doubt that they get priority over jobs: while employment quotas do exist, what employer in his right mind would choose anyone because of their ethnicity alone? It is true that most come seeking a better life – which I take as a complement – but it is also true, and often forgotten, that most are fleeing persecution, deprevation, extreme poverty or even torture. Why else would they come all this way. At this point, of course, many point out that migrants could have stayed in the first EU country they came across, and conclude that Britain is seen as a soft touch. I do not think this is quite the case: they come to Britain because they speak the language, or have family here, both of which are the direct result of our former colonial days. Hell, we invited many such people over ourselves after losing India, and windrush. We have a history of welcoming migrants to this country, where they subsequently prosper. Is it any wonder that they want their families to do the same?

There is just so much crap being spoken about the immigration ‘problem’ these days. It plays straight into the hands of the far right, especially when CaMoron starts telling people ‘it isn’t racist to worry about immigration’. It is, because it is born of xenophobia.

I love it when films get everyone talking. This one certainly has. The debate got quite heated on the way home last night. It is also quite important to me too, as I worry that the public mood might be swinging back to the right, which is never a good thing. I fear we are being duped by the Tories once again, and then, as the film I saw last night illustrated clearly, it’s back to the dark days of Thatcherism, but this time with a nice smile.