Forty-seven years after Enoch Powell made his notorious rivers of blood speech, the only consistent immigration-related complaint raised with politicians in his former constituency appears to be mild irritation over eastern European arrivals failing to understand local recycling rules.
Powell’s declaration that observing the growth of the population with a migrant background was “like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre”, has not proved prescient, and immigration is not a decisive theme of the election campaign in Wolverhampton South West – a critical marginal.
Even in the local Ukip campaign headquarters, the single pledge framed and hung on the wall is not about immigration. Instead it promises: “We will work to provide more free parking for the high street.”
With just 691 votes between them, Wolverhampton South West’s Conservative MP, Paul Uppal, and his Labour opponent, Rob Marris – who lost the seat in 2010 – are on campaign overdrive, searching for the key issues that will win over voters.
Uppal – a Smethwick-born Sikh whose father arrived from east Africa in 1961 and who is one of the descendants of Commonwealth immigrants that Powell was so alarmed about – says local communities have got on “incredibly well” since the speech.
“His widow tells me that Powell would have loved me,” says Uppal during a campaign break in the pub on Saturday. “He had a fear of communalism. The proof of the pudding is that I have been elected in a predominantly white area, with a Christian first name and a Sikh surname.”
Part of his motivation for becoming an MP was to show young Asian people that anything was possible. “It is quite important for young Asian people to have a role model.”
Uppal was 10 months old when Powell made his speech to the Conservative association in Birmingham, but his father, who was working for the Post Office, told him later how difficult it was. “He felt uncomfortable for a while. As a turban-wearing Sikh, he felt very visible.”
As a teenager in Birmingham in the 1970s, Uppal remembers his deputy headmaster chatting to his (mainly white) class and asking: “What’s everyone doing tonight? Anyone going Paki-bashing?” Mindsets have changed immeasurably, he adds. “That kind of attitude is light years from what my own teenagers experience now.”
During his time as MP, Uppal has worked on bringing communities together, championing the creation of a primary free school, with a Sikh ethos (where the majority of children who attend are not Sikh) and getting the local Sikh gurdwara to help raise money for a Methodist community centre.
He has lost half a stone since the campaign began, knocking on doors and asking repeatedly: “Do I have your support?” He is amiable and generally well-received by constituents but, for the moment, the bookmakers favour Marris. Both men have found that jobs and the economy are the main issues raised on the doorstep and both note that the theme of immigration has become a less pressing concern. Both candidates say they are confident they will win.
The few people who raise the subject of immigration most are not from the white, male working-class demographic that makes up Ukip’s support here. They tend to be second and third generation immigrants from the Indian subcontinent, Uppal says, who are concerned about the recent wave of immigrants from eastern Europe, who they believe have been housed by the local authority in an already densely populated and deprived area of St Peter’s near the city centre.
“In the late 2000s the pace of change there may have been quite dramatic,” Uppal says, noting that these complaints have trailed off somewhat recently. “That tension that was there initially has gone.”
During a pause from campaigning, Marris, a former solicitor who was Labour’s MP here from 2001 until 2010, says: “People thought immigration would be the dominant factor, at the forefront of the election because of the apparent increase in support for Ukip. My experience in Wolverhampton South West is that is not the case. This issue is not being voiced as much as predicted.”
He wondered whether this was down to “a perception that the economy has improved somewhat” (hastily adding that there had been no local improvement). “Immigration is an issue that attracts voters’ concerns during tougher economic times. Other issues raised with me are the economy, NHS, housing – with young people concerned about how they are going to afford to buy their own home, which I find particularly worrying because Wolverhampton has some of the cheapest housing in the country.”
He has also encountered “some friction with new eastern European migrants”, often over their confusion about recycling rules, which means that wrongly bagged rubbish goes uncollected. But he points out that recycling rules are complicated and take a while to get to grips with, and that there has not been more significant tension. “East[ern] European migrants are mostly young men who statistically don’t use the NHS and don’t have children, so aren’t taking school places,” says Marris.
His campaign highlights the rise in food banks in the area – from one in 2010 to about five – and focuses on jobs. “Unemployment has gone down in the past five years but at the expense of zero-hour contracts and low wages. 32.4% of those people employed in the constituency are earning below the living wage of £7.85.”
Powell was Marris’s MP when he was a child. “I remember the upset his speech caused. The fact that the Wolverhampton South West MP made the speech was good for the constituency he served because the reaction against it led to better community relations in Wolverhampton than almost anywhere else in the country. People do need to work at it.”
Meanwhile, Uppal has been showered with support from senior Conservatives from the prime minister down. George Osborne helped chefs prepare a meal at Bilash restaurant on Friday and Chris Grayling visited on Saturday. Uppal has 25 volunteers in the constituency helping him. As he posts letters in the relatively affluent suburban area of Tettenhall, one resident grills him about cuts to adult services and child poverty while some refuse to reveal how they plan to vote but others indicate their vote is his.
An 87-year-old resident (who did not want to give her name), steps out in slippers decorated with pink-eared rabbits, to give Uppal a friendly welcome, before wondering whether there will be a new wave of migration, related to conflict in the Middle East.
“It’s a small island, we can only have so many here,” she says. She tells him she voted for Powell in the 60s and supported what he said at the time, adding: “Anyone who wants to come and make a living that’s fine, but not to drain the country.” Uppal makes a tactful but disjointed response praising Cameron’s statesmanlike qualities and moves on. His only comment on the exchange is that people from the Black Country like to speak their mind.
Many older residents like George Farmer, 84, a former machinist in a local engineering firm, remember Powell’s intervention. “A lot of people were angry – but I voted for Powell,” he says. “I thought that he would have made a great prime minister. I agreed with him without a doubt.”
Listening to a jazz band in the city centre, he adds: “Things have changed. People have mixed together. It is integrated now … but we have still got it to come, people coming from the Middle East, north Africa, Syria. The country can only take so much. He [Powell] would probably have set up machine guns on the roofs.”
A group of younger people, sitting beneath the statue of Prince Albert, say they are not following the election and won’t vote – in fact, none of their friends will be voting, they say, and as far as they know their parents are not planning on it either.
“It’s lack of knowledge and lack of interest,” says Jessica Coulson, 20, who is unemployed and pregnant with her first child. “I’ve seen it mentioned a few times on Facebook.”
“Politicians are overpaid,” pipes up Matthew Perry, 23, a student doing a foundation degree in media.
None of them knew about Powell’s speech. “Enoch Powell? I’ve heard that name,” ventures Simon Nicholls, 23, a chemical engineer, but he did not know where.
The parties’ policies on immigration
Conservatives
As well as offering an in-out referendum on EU membership in 2017, the manifesto pledges EU migrants wishing to claim tax credits and child benefit must have worked for a minimum of four years, and jobseekers will be required to leave within six months if they don’t get work.
New EU member states should not have free movement privileges until their economies match existing members. A Tory government would implement a requirement for landlords to check immigration statuses of tenants and introduce satellite tracking of foreign national offenders.
Labour
Labour promises to bring down low-skilled immigration and strengthen border controls, which means 1,000 extra border checks and tightening of short-term student visitor visas.
The party would keep the cap on non-EU workers, as well as cracking down on the exploitation of migrant workers by unscrupulous employers, banning recruitment agencies from hiring exclusively from overseas. It also pledges to end indefinite detention in the asylum and immigration system and stop it altogether for pregnant women and victims of sexual abuse.
Liberal Democrats
The UK should remain open to visitors and migrant workers who are an asset to the economy with visa processed more quickly, the manifesto says. Asylum seekers must be allowed to work if they have waited more than six months for their claim to be heard.
This should be coupled with a crackdown on human trafficking, illegal workers and colleges who break immigration rules. Indefinite detention should be ended, and secure units should not by commercial organisations.
Ukip
The party, which wants to leave the EU, would put a five-year moratorium on immigration for unskilled workers and introduce an Australian-style points system for skilled migrants, regardless of nationality. All EU freedom of movement would end.
Border agency staff would increase by 2,500 and any working migrants or international students must pay for five years’ medical insurance before they can use the NHS.
Greens
The party rejects any cap on net migration and pledges to abolish the policy that requires a British citizen to have an income of at least £18,600 a year before their partner can come to the UK. The party would make it easier for elderly dependants to come to Britain and allow students to work in the UK for two years after graduating.
Wealthy migrants would not be automatically privileged, especially regarding housing. No prospective immigrant would ever be held in detention.
