A FEW WEEKS AGO, Pickwick was visited by one of Wisbech's most celebrated - or notorious - depending on your point of view, public campaigners. In the aftermath of the Daily Mail/Ellee Seymour controversy, she had written to The Wisbech Standard, but they had chosen not to publish her letter. She asked if it could be put on this blog. So, here it is. The opinions are hers, not necessarily those of Pickwick. What are your views? Is she right, or is she taking an extreme view. AS ALWAYS, YOUR VIEWS ARE WELCOME via the comments link.
To the Editor, Wisbech Standard
Dear Sir,
Political blogger, Ellee Seymour, is almost right, but not
quite. Commenting on the recent Daily Mail article about Wisbech, she says that
‘...a third of Wisbech’s 20,000 population is now said to be Eastern European.’
Statistics are funny things, and Ms Seymour’s mistake, though a common one, is
too important to be overlooked.
Until a decade ago the population of Wisbech was indeed
20,000. But if, as seems evident today, one in three of the town’s population
are now from Eastern Europe, it means that these incomers have in fact
increased the population by 50 per cent, to a current total of around 30,000.
By anybody’s reckoning this is a huge population explosion, and goes some way
to explaining why local people have a distressing sense that they are being
slowly but surely elbowed out of the picture by this rapid and continuous
influx of foreign-speaking settlers.
When their numbers are relatively few, immigrants will
usually make an effort to integrate socially with the host community. But the
new immigrants to the Fens are legion, and therefore feel little need, or
desire, to integrate at all. They are employed en bloc in the fields and
factories, and they lodge together in shared rooms or houses, each different
East European nationality sticking closely with its own. They have established
their own shops, selling their own kind of food, in their own language. Some
even run their own exclusive pubs in the town. Others have been further dis-integrated
from the local populace by being granted their own separate church services,
again in their own language. We have also seen how an increasing number of them
have felt sufficiently well established to start having children, or have
brought other dependent family members, even grandparents, over here to live
with them. So the population keeps on growing, and with no apparent upper limit
in sight. Everything is guesswork; nothing is known for certain.
Will Fenland councillors please wake up and start giving
their electorate some simple facts, however uncomfortable. For example, have
medical and NHS dental services in Wisbech been substantially increased in
recent years to cope with the situation? How many foreign nationals are living
in subsidised Council accomodation in the Fens? How many migrants’ children are
now attending local primary and secondary schools? How many local immigrants
are currently unemployed, or receiving benefits or pensions? And what is the
jobless total among young Wisbechians? In the last three years, what proportion
of local crime has been committed by foreign nationals? And finally, why is
Fenland Licensing Panel continuing, against all police advice and public
protes, to grant drinks licenses to yet more outlets in Wisbech, when the town
is already awash with hard liquor and its damaging consequences?
Yours,
Victoria Gillick,
Wisbech
