Until the latter half of the last century, Britain had almost negligible levels of immigration. Unlike America, for instance, Britain had never been a ‘nation of immigrants’. And although there was often a trickle of people moving in, the mass movement of people was almost unknown. In fact immigration was so unknown that when it did happen people talked about it for centuries. When discussing migration into the United Kingdom today one can expect someone to mention the Huguenots – those Protestants forced to flee persecution in France to whom Charles II offered sanctuary in 1681. The Huguenot example is more resonant than people realise. Firstly, because despite the proximity of culture and religion enjoyed by French and English Protestants of the time, it took centuries for the Huguenots to integrate into Britain, with many people still describing themselves as coming from Huguenot stock. But the other salient point about the Huguenots – and the reason people cite them so frequently – is the matter of scale. It is believed that up to 50,000 Huguenots arrived in Britain after 1681, which was undoubtedly a huge movement for the time. But this scale was in a wholly different league to the mass immigration Britain has seen in recent years. From the period of the Blair government onwards Britain has seen an equal number of immigrants to that one-off number of Huguenots arriving not once in the nation’s history, but every couple of months. And this immigration was by no means composed of French Protestants. Another example often given to defend the ‘nation of immigrants’ story is that of the 30,000 Ugandan Asians who were brought into Britain in the early 1970s after Idi Amin expelled them from Uganda. In the UK memories of this one-off influx are generally coloured with pride and good feeling, not just because it was a demonstrable and limited relief of a desperate people, but because those Ugandan Asians who arrived in Britain often made a palpable and grateful contribution to public life. In the post-1997 years of immigration the same number of people as that one-off 30,000-strong influx arrived into the country every six weeks.

The movement of people in recent years – even before the European migration crisis – was of an entirely different quantity, quality and consistency from anything that had gone before. Yet despite this fact, it remains one of the most popular ways to cover over the vast changes of recent years to pretend that history was similar to what is happening now. Not the least advantages of this suggestion is that any current problems arising from migration are nothing we haven’t dealt with – and triumphed over – before. It falsely presents any current challenges as normal. But revising the past is just one attempt at a staging-post argument. After this come a whole range of implicit and explicit claims which respond to mass immigration by pretending either that the country of arrival does not have a culture, or that its culture and identity are so especially weak, worn out or bad that if it did disappear then it could hardly be mourned.