A Nation of Immigrants? A Brief Demographic History of Britain (CS58) - Softcover

David Conway

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1903386586 ISBN 13: 9781903386583

Publisher: Civitas, 2007

Synopsis

Examines the history of immigration to Britain, and notes that the small numbers involved in the past allowed for the local culture to prevail. Current trends of large scale immigration may change that.

About this title

Review:

`Britain is losing its identity as a nation thanks to record
immigration levels, a think-tank warned yesterday. Mass unchecked flows
into the country - especially under Labour - will soon lead to political
breakdown, said Civitas.' -- Front Page of the Daily Express, Saturday April 21, 2007

`Britain risks losing its identity under a flood of immigration,
says a damning report out today... The think-tank Civitas warns that our
national identity is in danger of disappearing beneath the flood of
different nationalities pouring into Britain.' -- The Sun, page 2, Saturday, April 21, 2007

`Immigration may be threatening Britain's status as a country... a
pamphlet by social policy think-tank Civitas said the UK may already have a
reached a "tipping point" where it can no longer be regarded as a single
nation.' -- The Daily Telegraph, Saturday April 21, 2007

From the Back Cover:

Since 1997, Tony Blair's Labour government has effectively
abandoned restrictions on immigration into Britain that have been in place
since 1905. It is now taken as a fact of life that there will be constant
large-scale immigration into Britain. Defenders of the government's
position argue that Britain is a mongrel nation, resulting from hundreds of
years of immigration, and that we are all either immigrants or descendants
of immigrants. According to this view, there is nothing special about the
present situation, and nothing to worry about.

In this study David Conway shows that, until very recently, Britain's
immigrant population and their descendants comprised a relatively small
proportion of the total population. Earlier waves of immigration -
Huguenots in the eighteenth century, Jews and Irish in the nineteenth
century - were comparatively small in number and time-limited. Immigration
took on larger dimensions in the second part of the twentieth century, and
is now at a level that is altering our national demographic profile.

The relatively high level of social harmony Britain has enjoyed results
from the fact that earlier waves of immigrants, being small in number, had
to adapt to the prevailing culture. Now our culture, and our nation, are in
danger of fragmenting as large immigrant populations decline to integrate.
If Britain is truly destined now to become, for the first time, a nation of
immigrants, it may be that in the process it ceases to be a nation at all.

About this edition

• Publisher: Civitas
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1903386586
• ISBN 13: 9781903386583
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 104