Even when the guest-worker arrangements ended – as they did between Germany and Turkey in 1973 – still the people came. And the people who had begun as ‘guest-workers’ became part of the countries they were in. Some gained citizenship. Others enjoyed dual citizenship. Within five decades of this process beginning – in 2010 – there were at least four million people in Germany of Turkish origin alone. Some countries – notably France – took subtly different approaches to this. For instance, when France opened itself up to immigration from Algeria it did so honouring the idea that, as Charles de Gaulle said in Algeria on 4 June 1958, ‘In the whole of Algeria there is only one category of inhabitant – there are only fully French people with the same rights and the same duties.’ Nevertheless, when the movement from North Africa into France began in earnest, even de Gaulle privately conceded that France could only be open to other races so long as these people remained a ‘small minority’ in France. De Gaulle’s confidants allege that he himself was deeply uncertain that France could absorb many millions of incomers from other backgrounds.¹

Yet although there were differences in post-war immigration, each European country had the similar experience of a short-term policy creating the longest possible repercussions. Each country found itself playing endless catch-up – the result of the need to make up major policy decisions on the hoof. And in each country the debate similarly shifted with the decades. As the predictions of the 1950s were shown to be wrong, so were those of the subsequent decades. Expectations of the numbers that would come, as opposed to the numbers that actually did come, saw endless disparities in every country. And while government statistics told one story, the eyes of the European publics told another.

In response to public concern, governments and mainstream parties of all political stripes talked about controlling immigration – sometimes even getting stuck in a competition to sound tougher than each other on the matter. But as the years went on it began to seem as though this might merely be an electoral trick. The gap between public opinion and political reality began to look like a gap caused by other factors than a lack of will or deafness to public concerns. Perhaps nothing was done to reverse the trend because no one in power believed anything could be done. If this was a political truth then it remained wholly unmentionable. Nobody could get elected on such a platform, and so a continent-wide tradition arose of politicians saying things and making promises that they knew to be unachievable.

Perhaps it is because of this that the principal reaction to the developing reality began to be to turn on those who expressed any concern about it, even when they reflected the views of the general public. Instead of addressing concerns, politicians and press began to throw accusations back at the public. This was done not just through charges of ‘racism’ and ‘bigotry’, but in a series of deflecting tactics that became a replacement for action. All of these were identifiable in the wake of Britain’s 2011 census, including the demand that the public should just ‘get over it’.