[bombadillo]

Interesting videos though clearly somewhat dated. Areas like Southall are now completely Asian, at least on the high street (main commercial thoroughfare). And since the time the video was produced there has been more immigration.

What's interesting is the way the people interviewed speak of "colored immigrants." I presume if they were from Poland or Czech, that would be all right. Yet today it is the large influx from Central and Eastern Europe that is causing angst in England.

Immigration has been resisted by common English people right from the start. But their voices have often not been heard. In 1955, there was consternation when the number of immigrants reached 100,000 (though that figure seems like a joke today). In the lat '50s, some Tory MPs suggessted a bill to sterilise immigrant women. And in 1969, Enoch Powell made his famous "Rivers of Blood" speech. But step by step, British governments -- both Labour and Tory -- have tried to make immigration tighter as well as enact various race relation laws that make discrimination in housing and employment illegal. Under the Blair giovernment, immigration figures jumped again, from roughly 100,000 annually in the Thatcher and Major days to 200,000. And I'm not even counting East Europeans (500,000?, 1,000,000? no-one knows).

Britain is a small country and the fears and apprehensions voiced by many of the people in the video are well-placed: these are powerless and ordinary people who are legitimately worried about employment, housing, and ethnic homogeneity. They do not welcome changes that have been inflicted on them by a ruling class that doesn't have to live cheek-by-jowl with immigrants. Call this "xenophobia" if you wish. Any feeling of ethnic solidarity and identity will have a "xenophobic" aspect.