The Fear Campaign Worked
Polls over the last two years have shown a huge majority (65-75%) in favour of curbing immigration. On the doorstep, person to person, canvassers found that immigration was the number one reason for voting to leave. So why was the vote for Leave at 52% so small?
Reason: the fear of dire economic consequences pumped out at the British people by: the government, economists, charities, bankers, think-tanks, quangos, talking shops at home and abroad, nearly all sucking on the public sector money teat, or in the case of bankers, on their own shareholders’ cash.
Role of Polls
It’s anybody’s guess how many were influenced to switch from their instinctive loyalty to Britain to the Remainers for fear of the threatened consequences. Certainly this campaigner experienced at first hand the effects of the “Fear” campaign such as: “I don’t like mass immigration, but if we leave, we will be ‘locked out of Europe’ (some small businesses); “we won’t be able to travel” (common among students); “our EU grants will be cut off” (scientists); “we won’t be able to recruit the talented people we need” (some businesses, many universities).
Polling reflected these fears, because by their nature some of its questions and questioning tended to imply dire consequences. This was particularly true of telephone polling which consistently showed a significant majority for remain, while internet polling reported a lower figure though still in the end reported a small majority for “remain”.
The Shyness factor
The remain campaign claimed the moral high ground throughout. To be nice to foreigners – all 370,000[1] of them who came into our country for more than 12 months in 2015 – was implied to be the morally right thing to do. No attempt was made by either of the official “Britain Stronger in Europe” (BSE) or Vote Leave to put this huge figure into context: it is 30 times higher than the number of non-EU immigrants admitted for work reasons[2]. It is equal to the whole population of Leeds (757,000) every two years or more than the whole working age population of Sheffield[3] every year.
East of England’s Plight ignored by both official campaigns
Towns in the East of England like Wisbech “Queen of the Fens” in Cambridgeshire, barely 30 miles to the north of Cambridge, which voted 74 : 26 to remain, has over one third East European immigrants[4]. The Fen district, in which Wisbech sits, voted 71 : 29 to leave, almost exactly the reverse of Cambridge itself.
Wisbech which has been entirely English in people and appearance since its origins in the early 7th Century 1400 years ago, its war memorial testimony to huge sacrifice in the two world wars to defend the privileges of Cambridge colleges[5] among others, has in the space of 10 years, since 2004, seen an uncontrolled flow of East Europeans, speaking a medley of languages, allowed in by successive British governments[6].
Cambridge’s response to the plight of what Cambridge people up to about 1990 regarded as their fellow countrymen, was to vote for even more EU immigrants, not just in Wisbech, but all over Fenland East Anglia, and England generally.
Naturally the left-wing media (is there any other type?) pounced with glee on any bit of graffiti expressing hostility to this flow. In any other country, especially the East European countries themselves, such a massive incursion would have been met, not by the odd word of abuse, but wholesale physical attacks. Lucky they are to be in such a kindly country whose people’s forbearance is so easily exploited by all the luvvy groups it is infested with.
End Notes
[1] This is the net figure of all foreign immigrants, plus the net figure of British emigrants (47,000).
[2] Legally admitted under the Home Office tier one category.
[3] Most EU immigrants are of working age.
[4] BBC report 19th January 2012.
[5] Cambridge colleges themselves made huge sacrifices, as for example the Chapel of Trinity College shows, with its 1100 names of the killed.
[6] Starting with the Blair Labour government, in an act of deliberate policy to swamp English people, Daily Express, 27th January 2010, Andrew Neather account.
