We'll regret it if we panic on immigration

When you see a photograph of cheery migrants scrambling onto a freight train at Calais, or strolling happily off at Folkestone to make their asylum application, always remember Corporal Jones's slogan in Dad's Army: Don't panic. If we hope ever to construct a workable policy, panic is the worst possible frame of mind. Take, as an example, David Blunkett's addle-brained new plan for open prisons in the countryside for young male migrants. They'll just saunter off into the British job market, and never be seen - officially - again.

Young Michael Marks, who went on to found M&S, was once just such a migrant. Fleeing from Russian anti-Semitic pogroms, he caught a boat at Hamburg. A tout had sold him a ticket, supposedly for New York. To his disappointment, he was offloaded at Hull. But he made his way across late-Victorian Yorkshire to relatives in the Jewish quarters of Leeds and Manchester. The rest is retail history.

But it wasn't long before the Government passed an Aliens Act, the first-ever restriction on outsiders just turning up in Britain and settling. In due course, Jewish refugees from Hitler were snared in these regulations. Nor did it help that many Jews already here were wary of higher numbers, for fear of local retaliation.

This may seem like a distant dream, or nightmare. Or perhaps not, when a Finsbury Park synagogue can be vilely desecrated. But it's a story to remember when official reports - the facts behind the photos - confirm that migration into Britain is at an all-time high, and rising. If we panic, we'll be ashamed of ourselves afterwards.

Net immigration into Britain - that is, the difference between the total arriving and the total leaving - rose to a record 183,000 in the year 2000. By the end of the 20th century, about threequarters of Britain's population growth came from international immigration. Here, "Britain" means mainly England; "England" means mainly the South-East; and "South-East" means mainly London.

The recent population surge in London has little to do with " dinkies" ( double- incomenokids couples) moving into Clerkenwell lofts. The authoritative Joseph Rowntree Research Foundation reported that resident Londoners move out, in legitimate pursuit of more elbow-room for their families and better public services. But the capital's demographic pot is more than topped up by arrivals from abroad, and by the higher birth rate of some migrants. Younger than the London average, they're more likely to have children.

But what should we do? Some commentators mutter that we should "learn the lessons" of Le Pen's high vote in France, and the political success of the heirs of the bizarre Pim Fortuyn in Holland. But there's little sign, fortunately, that Britain's electorate has fallen into this snare. In London, paradoxicallywe can be relieved that the British National Party's focus on exploiting local grievances in Burnley and other northern towns left them standing at the electoral post. In Bexley's Northend ward, once the site of the party's national headquarters, analysis shows that they managed only seven per cent of this month's vote. In Tower Hamlets' Millwall ward, where they once briefly had a councillor, it was only 3.7 per cent. Their highest share was 10.3 per cent, in Hillingdon's Harefield ward.

I'm not speaking up for complacency. Nor am I saying that immigration - whatever its social benefits - causes no social problems. It's supercilious to dismiss the grievances of those who voted BNP. They're representative of many who either abstained or voted for their usual mainstream candidate, but who still feel that somehow their neighbourhood has been "taken away" from them.

It's patronising to say that all they need is an antiracism course. The Rowntree study underlined the severe consequences for housing and planning which follow from the present pattern of people moving into and out of London. (If the green belt is under pressure, this is largely why.) David Coleman, a respected population expert at Oxford University, points to the downside of increasing the supply of cheaper labour. The NHS couldn't be run without overseas-born staff - but does this, he wonders, push it towards being a Lada, rather than a Rolls-Royce, service?

I was brought up just over the hills from Burnley, and it's true that in South Lancashire and West Yorkshire the shortterm drafting-in of immigrants to keep clapped-out textile mills going - rather than spend money on new capital equipment - was a social disaster. Before long, the mills closed anyway. Thousands of Asians were dumped onto the unemployment register. So were thousands of whites. All were victims of an illthoughtthrough policy.

The worst thing we could do is to operate some kind of taboo on talking about these issues. Blunkett is treading a fine, but not always delicate, line. In January, he launched a scheme to make it easier for highly skilled people to come to Britain. He is currently consulting about a scheme for the lower-skilled. But he's also spoken, Thatcher- like, about the risks of "swamping".

Some of the easier answers turned out to be grossly misguided.

Dispersal is one of them. Whatever London boroughs thought, it helped no one to tip migrants into sink estates in other cities, where the local population resented them. In Glasgow, this has so far resulted in one murder.

In other cities, it has produced much misery. Like Michael Marks all those years ago, new arrivals need the help of their families and friends. To deny them this makes things worse, not better. Whether new migrants should have the same rights to public housing as everyone else is a different question. Better to encourage greater self-help.

London is the biggest magnet for migrants, and is destined to remain so. I see no likelihood that any hole-less fence will be erected around it. The answer lies elsewhere. Yes, migration must be managed. Yes, local anxieties must be taken seriously. But calm deliberation is the right response - not panic.

Paul Barker is senior research fellow, Institute of Community Studies