Imagine this.

Interesting as piglet's invitation to use our imagination is, the crux of the matter is that as election after election, after election, came around .... it was the responsibility of the electorate to imagine what Britain would be like if they continued to vote for either of two main parties with a proven record of overseeing sharp rises in immigration while airly dismissing any concerns of opponents of such a policy.

The public's imagination clearly informed them that the Britain that would most likely be built by decades more of either Labour or Tory Government was the way to go, and so they continued to put those same parties back into power every time they strolled along to the ballot box. Had they imagined a better path was available, I'm sure their voting habits would have indicated that way before now. Deciding to use your imagination when it's much too late to turn the clock back is a bit futile ...... certainly for older folks, but for those of younger years it might be an interesting exercise, and to ask their parents or grandparents why they kept voting to continue down the same path even when the evidence of where it was leading must have become blindingly obvious ?

Ian Gilmour, in 1955 the owner and editor of The Spectator records in his own biography the following remark made to him by Churchill about 'coloured' immigration:

"I think it is the most important subject facing this country, but I cannot get any of my ministers to take any notice"

In mitigation it has to be recognised that by that time Churchill was well over 80 and as Roberts comments:

'After his stroke in July 1953, Churchill was a very different beast from the man of wartime 'Action This Day' decisiveness.'

You ever noticed how nobody ever lives in a golden age, they just remember one?

I'm old enough to remember the 80s and I remember plenty of older people then saying that the country had gone to the dogs and things were so much better in their day. I'd bet my life older people were saying the same things when they were kids.

Mme D and oneself often remark to each other on how fortunate we were to have had our formative years in the 1950s and 1960s.

The labour shortage was essentially resolved by the admission of a quarter million Eastern Europeans, principally Poles and Ukrainians under the Labour government in the late forties. Britain also had open access to its traditional 'reserve army of labour' in Ireland which was subject to no immigration controls at all.

In 1949 the Royal Commission on Population reported reported its conclusions in the summer of 1949. This expressed concerns about a future shortfall of people of working age, estimated to be 140,000 annually. It recommended a 'carefully constructed' immigration programme to cover this shortfall, but then cautioned that such a policy "could only be welcomed without reserve if the immigrants were of good human stock and were not prevented by their race or religion from intermarrying with the host population and merging within it (Spencer 56). Geddes (43) notes that the Commission underlined the official perspective that the alien European migrant workers were 'racially compatible' while the ostensibly British colonial workers were not.

At the behest of the Colonial Office an Interdepartmental Committee on Employment of Coloured Surplus Workers from the Colonies was formed to look into the matter, however its report in July 1949 reflected negatively on the ability of colonial workers to provide the skills and work attitude needed in Britain at the time. Nevertheless, a 'pilot scheme' was authorised to bring in 33 Barbadian women to work in the health service. This turned out to be the sole example of such a scheme actually being implemented during Labour's period in office.

The myth that the Windrush Generation were summoned by governments of the day to rebuild post-war Britain is just that, a myth.

If you're going to live in fear then you're not living your life.