OPINION: From Flemings to Huguenots to Jews, the answer has been immigrants
Jewish News' historian Derek Taylor on how Britain has relied on open borders for centuries.
Britain is a country of immigrants. We wouldn’t have had sufficient weavers if we hadn’t let the Flemings in from Belgium in the 12th century. We needed the Huguenot silversmiths and watchmakers when they left France in the 1680s. The Jews who came in from Eastern Europe after 1880 made up for the lack of tailoring workers and created the mass clothing industry. The Italians and Germans provided the waiters we needed in the back half of the 19th century.
With massive unemployment in the slump in the 1930s, the Jews in Germany needed a refuge, particularly if they worked in synagogues. Rabbi Dr. Solomon Schonfeld went to the Home Office to get the visas. The officials were sympathetic but explained that they already had well over a million unemployed and emigrants could only be given visas if they had skills which were otherwise unobtainable in this country.
Rabbi Schonfeld assured them that his immigrants had such skills; they could make tsitsim! The Home office came up with the visas.
Now your favourite restaurant in the hospitality industry may well be terribly short of staff, but we had that problem in the early 1970s. The government had decided to give £1,000 for every new hotel bedroom built. It was a reaction to the crowds of tourists expected with Boing’s creation of the 707 airplane. The rooms were built but the British didn’t fancy working in restaurants. It wasn’t part of our culture. There was a staffing crisis.
The answer had to be immigrants but the Home Office needed persuading. They had the right to accept or withhold visas. When the problem was explained to them, they agreed to allow an unlimited number of immigrants from – The Philippines. Like the Flemings, the Huguenots and the Jews, the Phillipinos solved our problems. By 2015 there were 130,000 Phillipinos in the country. Diligent, hard working, law abiding and courteous. The hospitality industry was saved.
One of reminded of the old joke of the lady who stood up at the Jewish wedding reception and called out “Is there a doctor in the house?” and when a male guest confirmed he was a doctor, the lady said “I wish you should meet my daughter!”
Now if we want a healthy tourist industry today and you’ve given up cooking, then immigrants is what you need. You need immigrants from countries where working in tourism is very acceptable. Where if your son or daughter was working in a hotel or restaurant, you had no need to hang your head that they weren’t brain surgeons.
Now in Britain it’s different. One of reminded of the old joke of the lady who stood up at the Jewish wedding reception and called out “Is there a doctor in the house?” and when a male guest confirmed he was a doctor, the lady said “I wish you should meet my daughter!”
The British make wonderful hall porters and hotel housekeepers. Hotel general mManagers are very international in origin. I asked one, who had been in the country for many years if he now considered himself part of the British hotel industry? He said he accepted that he was still a foreigner. So I asked him if he was still part of the Italian hotel industry, where he was born.
“Certainly not” he expostulated “I’m a Venetian!”
There are very few Brits whose ancestors came from the tribes of Britains. They were driven into Wales by the Anglo-Saxons long before the invasion of William the Conqueror.
We are a nation of immigrants and perhaps that makes the development of a multi-cultured society a little easier for us than, say, the Japanese.
Over the centuries we’ve got the question of allowing emigrants into Britain absolutely right. Let’s hope we go on that way.
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