Like many of my generation, I shared digs as a student. Terraced houses were converted specifically to house us to standards that were carefully monitored. Any problems were quickly sorted, landlords visited regularly, and they knew us by name. Never more than five bedrooms, which included the loft conversion, a communal living-room-cum-kitchen, and shared bathroom. A happy experience because we were all students living away from home for the first time. Come graduation, we would soon find work and a place of our own.
Never could we have imagined that we would be living in digs indefinitely with eight, ten, or more, total strangers, most of them undocumented migrants and benefit claimants, crammed together like rabbits, sharing a single room for living and cooking, all at the mercy of unscrupulous landlords. For this is the prospect facing millions of young people – including students – in today’s Britain.
The proponents of HMO conversions highlight their value to those in their twenties and early thirties who would like to live independently but cannot afford one-bedroom flats or houses. They are, they claim, helping to resolve the housing crisis. But by turning family houses across the country into HMOs – the applications are growing exponentially – the supply of family homes and self-contained flats is only diminishing further, making them even more unaffordable for the average earner. And why stop at dividing houses into single rooms? Rooms packed with bunk beds, hostel style, are even more space and profit efficient – as unscrupulous landlords are discovering in some London boroughs, where unlicensed HMOs are now the rule. It is a vicious spiral.
Meanwhile, towns and villages across the country are having plans for hundreds, sometimes thousands, of new homes foisted on them as local councils try desperately to meet targets imposed on them by central government to address the chronic housing shortage. That is, in addition to the twelve new towns of at least 10,000 homes each announced by the government this autumn, along with various ‘mega-developments’ planned for our cities and urban areas, many on green belt land.
Naturally, locals are up in arms, not wanting their pleasant surroundings destroyed, or the spirit and atmosphere of their local communities changed forever by the mass importation of new residents, many of whom will bring with them their own cultural baggage, and consequently have no need, or desire, to integrate.
Our governing class tell us that there is no alternative but to ‘deliver’ millions of new homes, and therefore local communities must play their part. It is a ‘national need’. Yet it is caused in large measure by an unprecedented population explosion fuelled by decades of mass immigration – something that people never wanted and never voted for, but that was inflicted on them anyway by a self-serving liberal elite. Cheap labour provided our governing class with a quick fix for the economy, removing the need to invest long-term in our own people, as well as a handy means of driving down wages and costs. And the mantras of diversity, multiculturalism and inclusion enabled them to cloak it all in progressive liberal virtue, effectively silencing the masses by casting them as racists and xenophobes. The result is a grotesque betrayal of our children, and their children, and of our forebears who built this country and laid down their lives to defend it.
Politicians talk of the need for local democracy and ‘empowering communities’. But this is all blather unless locals have the right to determine who settles in their communities. This is not ‘nimbyism’; it is self-defence. The defence of historic communities and traditional ways of life. Progressive liberals speak of the infusion of vibrant diversity from our cities into our countryside; in reality, it is the replacement of the indigenous people and their culture.
Rural England has no objection to affordable housing for local people, or development that meets local needs. Nor does it object to newcomers whatever their colour or creed who wish to play their part in the community, respect its traditions, and to integrate. But this can only ever be on a small scale. Invasive immigration and forced diversification are another matter. The wanton destruction of our rural communities, their landscapes, their customs and traditions, their sense of rootedness and belonging, is nothing less than a national tragedy.
We have seen the stirrings of a popular revolt in this country, provoked by the housing of single male asylum seekers in hotels, and symbolised by the ‘Fly the Flag’ movement. It has come too late to save our cities. The demographic battle there is largely over. The battle for our countryside has just begun.
