We are all churned up when we see heroic, desperate people crammed into inflatables and hoping to make landfall in the UK. As a seafaring nation we know that the real enemy here is the cruel sea. We want to do the best for these travellers in their makeshift vessels and at the same time we recognise that this is one aspect of a global shift of population that is changing the nature of the planet we all call home.
Since the days of Hengist and Horsa and Canute these islands have augmented the existing population by newcomers – to our great benefit. We are happy mongrels, good at getting on with those who wish to join us. The USA has been founded on this understanding: ‘Bring me your huddled masses …’ This has also worked in reverse. In our days of empire we happily exported citizens to empty Commonwealth territories. One trace of this is the advance of the English language to be the international means of communication. Another is the complacent view that there is nothing quite so admirable as an English gentleman, an idea as quaint as P.G. Wodehouse.
But the question remains. What are we to do about a world in which global population movements are the norm? There will always be disorder and worse from which people will flee. We cannot continue willy-nilly to increase the UK population. Calls for the Royal Navy to do something about traffic in the English Channel are clearly less than adequate. So are suggestions of a recourse to a greatly inflated border force to supervise beaches and airfields. We are obliged to ask ourselves whether we can do any better than resort to something extremely distasteful – identity cards. The distinction between legal and illegal persons would be a first step in whatever may then be planned. (There are UK citizens today who retain identity cards from the 1940s.) We are also obliged to take seriously the suggestion that we need a department of state to settle on an optimum national population figure and to take steps to secure it – if necessary by limiting family numbers, as the Chinese have done. The unpleasant shadow of a police-state emerges.
If we are still minded to talk about a Christian country or a Christian civilisation as well as about individual Christian believers, we cannot avoid awkward questions. Spain in its day had to cope with such questions. So did what we now call Turkey. So does the Vatican with its widespread international connections. We have to take account of the misery not only of those on the move in the Channel and elsewhere but that multitude who have not managed to make their way out of the misery of their homelands. The Pilgrim Fathers took matters into their own hands and made for the New World. We can hardly do any such thing. Better to share the responsibility of those who make decisions on our behalf and, while we pray for our rulers, recognise our limitations and seek a better understanding of what we are about.
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