On unfairness and discrimination!

“UK to close door to non-English speakers and unskilled workers” - so reads the headline to this article. Priti Patel, Home Secretary, has come in for criticism from some quarters on the grounds that her own parents would not have met the criteria for getting into the UK. While this may well be true, it’s not the best argument against the new measures.

And besides, how many of us are totally defined by our parents? Goodness, I remember wanting to move away from home to study in a place where I was not known everywhere as my parents’ child, my siblings’ sister. I wanted to be my own person. Granted, I did not do a total rebellion against their ideas and way of life but I definitely did not want to be defined purely and simply by my family background.

This does not mean that I totally understand how the child of immigrants ends up as a Tory politician but then, she is not the only one. Take Michael Portillo, for instance. The son of an exiled Spanish Republican who fled Franco’s Spain in 1939, he might well be expected to espouse left wing ideas. His mother, however, was the Scottish daughter of a prosperous linen mill owner, which must have had some influence on his early experience. At school Portillo supported the Labour Party but he attributed his embrace of conservatism at Cambridge to the influence of the right-wing Peterhouse historian Maurice Cowling.

Nature versus nurture, or at any rate educational influences.

No doubt all the apparent anomalies have a similar set of life influences behind them.

And anyway, I am always a little suspicious of political dynasties, where one generation seems to be a kind of clone of the previous one. I would still be more than a little surprised and even offended if our offspring suddenly spouted ideas radically opposed to our own! Such is human nature.

All of this in no way means that I approve of closing our doors to non-English speakers. How do the Welsh feel about this, I wonder? Might they not start to insist on everyone going to love in Wales learning to speak Welsh? I don’t think so. I certainly hope not. I have expressed before now my dislike, nay, disapproval, of the insistence that certain jobs in Galicia require applicants to speak good Gallego.

And what about all those English-only-speaking folk who have gone to live in France and Spain, for instance? Suppose these countries turned around and said they would only accept people who spoke their language.

Openness and tolerance should be the rule everywhere! And common sense! This brings me to discrimination, even though the case in question may be almost self-imposed discrimination. According to this article an alarmingly high percentage of Moslem marriages in England are not legally registered, leaving women in a vulnerable position in the event of divorce, more easily obtained in a religious-only marriage.

Imagine if your Christian church wedding was only legally binding if you also had to have a civil ceremony. That was avoided long ago by making it possible to sign the register in church. Surely the same should be automatic for islamic faith weddings. According to the article, in Scotland and Northern Ireland, weddings do not have to take place in a registered venue, but an authorised celebrant – including imams – can conduct legal weddings anywhere. Surely there is discrimination here. In this, as in other matter, if we are, for the moment anyway, a United Kingdom, surely we should have the same rules and regulations!

 It makes sense to me anyway.