We see the world through many windows

Last night I watched an interview on Channel 4 about last year's anti-immigrant disturbances with a panel of three people, Dr Lisa MacKenzie, Sunder Kathwala and Adam Kelwick. All have widely different backgrounds and experiences but what struck me as a consensus was the view that people are not being listened to.

Now when it comes to immigration and the pressures it has created it is very easy to come to polarised arguments for and against. But perhaps the skill and empathy shown by Imam Adam Kelwick in recognising each other's humanity and then each other's view is what is needed.

Now it is very easy for people to say that politicians are not listening, indeed perhaps they are not. But we have something worse in my view especially in the rural towns and area that I originate from in Lincolnshire and that is a class of people that are not affected directly day to day by the pressures and negative consequences of immigration whilst stating it is necessary, essential and positive. This view is nearly always given from a point of relative financial or geographical comfort.

This is the difficulty in that as I travelled around Lincolnshire I saw widely different experiences in what I regard as more comfortable towns, such as Louth, Horncastle or Bourne compared to Boston, Holbeach or Spalding. People's views on immigration were primarily predictable by where they lived and what their needs were. Indeed only recently I met two of my friends that were extolling immigration as a necessity for the food and farming industry whilst denying the consequences. I value their friendship too much to make a large argument out of it on the few occasions that we get to meet. But I found myself angry as they have not lived in a street with the consequences of this, worked in a factory or farm in recent years, or known personally many affected by the pressures caused by this view. Their location of living and social contact was, in my view , narrower than mine. This experience is one I have repeatedly come across as my work and volunteering tended to bring me in contact with more middle class or relatively affluent people. Indeed many of them unconsciously protected themselves and their families from these consequences with such things as private healthcare, private education, better schools, and good living locations.

In other extremes the othering of business is much greater. I was on an online forum recently marvelling at the British businessmen that were extolling the importance of immigration to their businesses whilst some of them sat in their apartments in Dubai. Business ownership that is divorced from the communities in which their businesses operate is a hazard of our times.

The problem is perhaps one of class and business necessity. The reality is that those in farming and food industry need immigrant workers because they cannot function without them. But what I find infuriating is an abject denial of the consequences of this combined with a lack of realisation that this is a self-imposed problem, by some businesses, over many decades. Sadly we have seen a race to the bottom on pay and conditions which has eroded and continues to erode living conditions of all workers in the industry. Over time the argument about immigration becomes bizarre because yesterday's immigrants are today's residents and they too are now experiencing the same consequences.

The thing that struck me when I visited Spalding earlier this year was a couple of chats I had with people who were themselves immigrants from Eastern Europe originally that were criticising immigrants coming into the area to work. What had happened under Covid is that the value of employment and pay increased in the food industry. Now this "covid premium" was lost and people that had been gladly employed directly at a higher level of pay had been let go and replaced with agency or lower payed incomers, usually fresh immigrants. They complained that being paid lower only worked for those living in multiple occupancy housing or very poor conditions such as caravans, or those just here temporarily taking money home. They found it amusing when I asked, "Wasn't that how you started when you came here?"

This is the problem in South Lincolnshire, we now have a layering of immigration and settlement that has happened rapidly over three decades. This has happened at the same time as we have seen a disappearance of the large family businesses that invested in the community and people replaced with large corporations that do not have the same involvement as well as substantial underinvestment in resources.

This I recorded in my book Marsh Fen a Town. However, we now have a literal dumping of people into communities already under pressure across the country, whilst people on either side wave placards and post opposing views that immigration is or is not a problem the simple fact is that it IS a problem, but one of many and until people start looking at life through each other's windows rather than denying each other's experience this will cause conflict.

Channel 4 panel interview 28 July 2025