Dele Ogun came to Britain from Nigeria aged 7. He is now a lawyer, practising in London and a keen campaigner against the top/down federalism imposed on Nigeria by British civil servants and against the top/down federalism imposed on Britain through the EU by British civil servants and politicians. With me, he is a member of the National Committee of the Campaign for an Independent Britain which campaigns for Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union. He has given his permission for this letter to be circulated.
“The Nigeria experience shows that it is hard enough to integrate cultures within a shared race, it is harder still to integrate races. A permanent under-class with a colour badge is always a dangerous thing to leave lying around. This was my mother's take on the matter when I spoke with her earlier today (although her words were not so high-browed).
“These troubles have come as no surprise to me. The seeds were sown in the short-sighted post-colonial policies that sponsored and propped-up crooks and bad leaders in the former colonies just so that the gravy would continue to flow. The Foreign-Office failed to see that the children of the lands thus blighted would be left with no alternative but to find their way to the Mother country and that unless opportunities here were opened up quickly (i.e through affirmative action) to absorb the new arrivals, resentment would simmer. If there were opportunities in the West Indies and Nigeria etc most of those on the streets would not be here.
“These riots happened on a smaller scale in Tottenham 25 years ago. There is every certainty that they will happen again and again with increasing incidence and intensity if all that is done is to offer more grants to fund youth-centres and mentoring schemes. The solution needs to be much more far-sighted. The solution lies where the problem was created, in the Foreign Office. It requires a truly ethical foreign-policy that recognises a shared interest in a peaceful Britain and in viable former colonies. It requires recognising that the tide of immigration is best arrested, and then reversed, by advice and support that will leave these former colonies viable so as to attract their people back home (which is where they really want to be). This is not to be done by DFID giving Nigeria, for example, with all our wasted oil-billions, "financial aid" but by sharing political experience such as the Devolution Bill to manage our own internal contradictions that were created by the colonial encounter.
Dele Ogun, Solicitor, London”
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