THE ENDLESS DEBT TO THE POLES:

SNP’s Swinney accuses Blair of xenophobia (Alan Crawford, 2/22/04, Sunday Herald)

In Edinburgh tomorrow evening author and journalist Neal Ascherson will tell an audience of influential guests at the Royal Society of Edinburgh that Polish immigrants are the solution to Scotland’s woes.

He told the Sunday Herald: “By God, what Scotland really wants is Poles. Poland is a highly educated place, and what we really need is Polish entrepreneurs. All these brilliant, hungry kids who know how to use money. As soon as they’ve got a few dollars together they settle down and start a small business. It’s that extraordinary kind of energy I think we might just get from a fine inflow of Poles.”

Ascherson echoed Swinney’s sentiments, criticising “stupid gesture politics because of the Daily Mail”, adding that “the idea of Poles coming in as sort of hairy, cheap labour and taking jobs away from honest working men is a complete misconception”.

Tory former whip Michael Brown, in The Independent, also argued last week that he would “have no hesitation, as a Tory, in espousing the most liberal attitude towards immigration from Poland”.

He wrote that, on his experiences in the 1980s representing Scunthorpe, which has many Polish emigrés, “it was the Poles who provided dynamism and enterprise”, being “natural workers, entrepreneurs and businessmen”.

“Indeed, the fewer Poles there are in Poland and the more of them in Britain, the better for our economy,” he added.