Former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey’s call for reduced immigration into Britain has been taken up by Tory party leader David Cameron.

He said he wanted to see annual net immigration levels fall from the 200,000 figure of recent years to the “tens of thousands” seen under the Thatcher and Major governments.

It is not probable that limousine-liberal, trust-fund kid, never-had-a-job Cameron has any principled objection to mass immigration. What’s going on here is a massive effort to head off the rise of the British National party. The BNP is always described as “far right” in the mainstream media, but they are in fact a national-socialist party with, to put it very mildly, no enthusiasm for personal liberty, free enterprise, or limited government. They are, though, the only people in Britain speaking out against mass immigration, multiculturalism, pandering to Islam, and the destruction of Britain’s national identity. For this they could get a big slice of the vote in the upcoming general election. They got a million votes, and won two seats, in last year’s Euro-elections.

In the collective memory of the British political classes, the country is going through a replay of 1978–79. At that time, too, there was widespread discontent over mass immigration and the privileges given to foreign settlers over native British people. At that time, too, the mainstream political parties were unwilling to touch the issue with a ten-foot pole. Into the vacuum came the National Front, precursor of the BNP but much rougher, with a cadre of street-fighting brownshirt types. (I lived in the London district of East Ham, an NF stronghold, 1969–71.) The great Maggie Thatcher (Whom God Preserve!) killed the NF threat stone dead with a statement in a TV interview in 1978, when she was Leader of the Opposition, that: “People are . . . afraid that this country might be . . . swamped by people with a different culture. . . . We are not in politics to ignore peoples’ worries: We are in politics to deal with them.” She won the following year’s election. Cameron is attempting, in his feeble, dilettantish way, to do a Maggie. Trouble is, Maggie possessed something Cameron lacks. Two things, actually.

The British establishment is pulling out all the stops to destroy the BNP. The judiciary is fully on board, and last October a judge declared the BNP constitution unlawful. The party leader, Nick Griffin, may actually be in jail by Election Day. This might work for the present electoral cycle, but it will be a Pyrrhic victory. People want matters of immigration, population, citizenship, and multiculturalism discussed, however much the elites would rather not. The BNP is not, in my opinion, a pretty sight; but it’s what you get when issues that are important to people are ruled off-limits year after year, decade after decade. “We are not in politics to ignore peoples’ worries: We are in politics to deal with them.” At the Anglosphere’s present stage of political development, that is a very eccentric opinion.

I have thought for a long time that Political Correctness will eventually give birth to demons. I’d be sorry to see those demons first come to light in Britain. However, the current behavior of the British establishment looks astonishingly like a deliberate strategy to bring about just such a dire result.