We can't take any more! Residents of deprived borough speak out as it's predicted Britain will need another Manchester to absorb immigration

Not so long ago, Pam Dumbleton would have been roasted alive. There’d have been booing and cries of ‘racist!’. There she was in the middle of a particularly combative episode of BBC1’s Question Time the other day, and she was not merely raising the issue of immigration. She was lamenting it.

What’s more, she was sitting in the front row of the Broadway Theatre in Barking, one of Britain’s most ethnically diverse communities.

‘Isn’t it time the Government listened to the people about the effect immigration is having in changing our communities?’ asked the 69-year-old retired office administrator. ‘We are now the complete minority.’



Dicing with death: Three migrants make a desperate dash for a lorry as it briefly slows down at a junction near Calais docks

By ‘we’, she meant members of the British-born white working class who are, indeed, now a minority in this bit of London’s East End, according to the Government’s latest statistics.

And that demographic shift is accelerating. Two-thirds of schoolchildren in the Borough of Barking and Dagenham now are from an ethnic minority; at one primary school near Pam’s council estate, the figure is 94 per cent, while less than a quarter speak English as a first language.

This is one of the poorest parts of the South-East, with serious unemployment and the country’s highest birth rate to boot. Even Poundland is being squeezed here. Several 99p stores have opened up on the main drag, only to be undercut, in turn, by a cheeky new 97p shop. Apparently, an 89p store is imminent.

So, was Pam Dumbleton fanning the flames of racial tension with her remarks on Question Time? Hardly. There were a few liberal groans and applause for a man who complained that the BBC should not be giving airtime to such inappropriate opinions. But, interestingly, none of the politicians on the panel chose to quarrel with Pam.

Because, as I accompany her through Barking, it becomes clear that she represents the concerns of a much wider constituency than simply the old white working class. ‘This place has just changed beyond all recognition and in such a short time,’ says Pam, walking with her friend, Joyce Cracknell, an 80-year-old child of the Blitz.

Between them, they run the residents’ association for their 1,200-home estate. ‘We’ve always had immigration here and we’ve always got on together,’ says Joyce. ‘But then we had this sudden influx from the EU and it’s too much.’



Until recently, she was a Labour activist, but has now left the party. Both she and Pam are planning to stand in next month’s council elections as UKIP candidates. ‘Tony Blair opened our borders and they’ve never closed,’ says Pam. ‘Now, we’ve got people around us living in sheds, or cramming ten at a time into a tiny flat.’

One of her two sons, she says, has moved to Cornwall. ‘He doesn’t want to send his children to a school where most children don’t speak English.’

Breaking in: As it halts they force open the back doors and they clamber on as the lorry moves off

Things are unlikely to change any time soon. Although George Osborne announced a new £150 million rail link for Barking in last month’s Budget — to ‘unlock’ the building of 11,000 new homes — this week’s report by the think-tank MigrationWatch summed up the scale of the challenge ahead.

It warned that if Britain is to accommodate all the EU migrants expected here over the next four years, then we will need an extra city the size of Manchester.

You need only look at the current pattern of migration to realise that many of them will end up in this borough (the owners of the Lithuanian supermarket off the high street certainly think so; they’re opening a new Lithuanian cafe next door). Given Barking has some of the capital’s cheapest accommodation, it’s inevitable. This week’s extraordinary photographs of desperate migrants risking death as they jump aboard UK-bound lorries merely underline the situation in terms of non-EU arrivals.

Thankfully, this is no longer a debate about race, as it was when the British National Party was stirring up the protest vote in these parts. In 2006, the BNP even won 12 seats on the council. Today, it has completely disappeared. The debate, now, is about the system.



Among white and black, Left and Right, old and young, one subject on which pretty much everyone in Barking agrees is that current levels of immigration (from Europe and elsewhere) are unsustainable. At one high street cafe, a group of pensioners are huddled round the ashtrays on a pavement table and making their cups of tea last for hours.

They all have their gripes with the council and the Government about the ‘invasion’ of foreigners who, they believe, are clogging the housing lists, surgery queues and buses. A blind couple with a pair of guide dogs complain bitterly that many local ‘foreign’ shopkeepers refuse them entry ‘because they’re scared of dogs’.

They all preface every remark by saying that are not racist, but merely feel forgotten. One of the gang is retired NHS switchboard operator James Beckles, 81. ‘I just don’t agree with this European thing,’ he says. ‘It’s putting too much pressure. There should be controls.’ James is an immigrant himself, having moved to Britain from Guyana in 1952.

And, like the rest of the group, he believes that open borders and easy access to the benefits system are making it hard for people like himself. ‘People find it too easy to live off the State. I was never out of a job.’

Dangerous: A foot can be seen disappearing into the back of the van. They climb in when lorries stop at T-junctions

It’s market day and Marvin Brightly, 33, is dividing his time between his stall selling CDs and his Caribbean foodstore just down the road. He says that the pressure on housing from all the newcomers means that young men like him can never hope to qualify for social housing because they don’t tick the right boxes.

‘You’ve got to have a kid or be a substance-abuser before they have to house you,’ he tells me.

His friend, Ella Francis, a 27-year-old single mother, agrees. ‘You’ve got the Government making all these cutbacks, but if they stopped letting all these foreigners in, they wouldn’t have these problems.’



Ella refuses to claim benefits. She leaves her son with her family while she works as a civil servant during the week and tops up her wages by working weekends in a call centre.

‘I suppose I might be better off on benefits, but I’m trying to buy my own place,’ she says. ‘I’ve got a neighbour with six kids who says to me: “Why work when you can live off the State?” And I tell her: “I’m working all day so you can stay home and watch Jeremy Kyle”.’

Both are the aspirational children of parents who moved to Britain from the Caribbean in search of a better life. Both are lukewarm Labour voters. Both think the system is failing when it comes to immigration and benefits. ‘How can Bulgarians just come over and start claiming benefits?’ asks Ella. ‘It has to change.’ All the immigrants I meet are either in work, or married to someone who is. Usman, 47, a security guard, is manning a friend’s market stall and chatting to his friend Lamin, 33, who works at McDonald’s. Both are from the tiny West African dictatorship of Gambia and love it here.

‘It doesn’t matter how beautiful your country is if you’re not free,’ says Lamin. ‘Here, we’re free.’

This remains staunch Labour territory. At the last council elections, the party enjoyed a North Korean-style clean sweep, winning 51 out of 51 seats. But a protest vote now seems to be coalescing around UKIP, reinforcing the recent reports that the party is making inroads into traditional Labour heartlands.

Hidden: Migrants jump the wall of the flyover on the dual carriageway into the ferry port at Calais, to try and get onto the moving lorry

Just last month, it was announced that another Labour councillor in Barking has jumped over to UKIP. Tariq Saeed brings the number of defections to four and gives UKIP a presence in the substantial local Muslim community — though his arrival was eclipsed by racier headlines about UKIP leader Nigel Farage and his eye for the ladies.

Down at the Broadway Theatre, where they filmed Question Time, I find a plaque on the wall. It commemorates the reopening of the venue by a former mayor of the borough, Ron Curtis. When I track him down, he tells me he has decided to come out of retirement and run for UKIP at the next council elections — at the age of 80.

The main parties need a fresh immigration narrative in places like this — and fast. Another MigrationWatch report has rubbished the received wisdom that immigration makes a ‘substantial’ contribution to the public purse.

Last year’s University College London report (much-lauded by the liberal Left) claimed that migrants had contributed £25 billion to the economy since 2000. Revisiting the same data, MigrationWatch now claims that the true figure is a net loss of £27 billion.

Government pledges to reduce net migration from six figures to five have been shown up as worthless. According to the latest figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS), numbers rose by more than a third in 2013 to 212,000.

When the Business Secretary, Vince Cable, professes himself to be ‘intensely relaxed’ on the issue, as he did last month, and our EU partners correctly point out that there is absolutely nothing Britain can do about the free flow of EU citizens (or their rights to UK benefits), is it any wonder that the Pam Dumbletons of this world raise their hands on Question Time?

The bald statistics underline the pace of change. In the 2001 census, more than 130,000 Barking and Dagenham residents defined themselves as ‘white British’. A decade later, the total was 92,000, a fall of nearly 30 per cent. They now account for less than half the population. Over the same period, the number of people in the borough, born in Africa and Asia, rose threefold to 20,000 and 17,000 respectively.

Then there are the numbers from the latest EU member states across Eastern Europe. The latest census puts them at 9,100. Academic studies of Eastern European migration in areas such as Boston, Lincolnshire, suggest that the census could be understating the true numbers by at least 40 per cent.

Another pair try to board a lorry in Rue des Garrenne, which is close to the ferry port

That’s because young people, arriving from former totalitarian states and living in unlicensed accommodation, do not always feel inclined to fill in census forms.

On the other side of the borough, I meet one of the new breed of UKIP activists round here. Until a few months ago, Peter Harris, 43, had never been involved in politics. Born into a staunchly Labour Dagenham council house, he has long been a prominent member of the community, establishing a car repair business, which employs 30 people, becoming president of the local Chamber of Commerce, a governor of the local college and trustee of the local sports complex.

Immigration has been going on here all his life, he says, but now he feels compelled to take a stand. ‘This is a poor borough and we’ve got more nought to four year olds than anywhere. We’re having to build schools everywhere, we’ve got to make £164 million in cuts and we’ve got 12,500 people waiting for 1,200 council houses.

‘This place isn’t racist. But it’s saying: “Enough is enough”. People say UKIP are a bunch of amateurs. Well, given all that’s happened, that’s not a bad thing.’

He takes me into a Dagenham pie-and-mash shop. How’s business? ‘Dreadful,’ says manager Dean Tappin, offering me a plate of jellied eels. ‘This is East End food and it’s made properly, not like some factory chicken. But the new lot don’t even try it. We’ve got our old regulars, but a lot of them have moved out.’

A council spokesman points out that the borough has one of the largest social housing programmes in London. It is about to introduce a new landlord licensing scheme in a bid to clamp down on cowboy operators who cram ten Lithuanian builders into a space designed for a family of four. But there is only so much any local authority can do.

Concern: Barking's Labour MP Margaret Hodge acknowledges that people are worried

Barking’s Labour MP Margaret Hodge acknowledges that people are worried: ‘We’re in a period of huge transition, which is very hard for people to accept, but setting targets is not the answer. They don’t work and then people lose trust in the system.’

While pleased to see the back of the BNP, she is worried about the ‘outrageous’ way that other London boroughs are renting buy-to-let properties here and dumping difficult families without even informing the council.

For all the concrete public spaces (even the ‘arboretum’ is paved) and the high-rise blocks, this is a place with a long and ancient history.

William the Conqueror based himself at Barking Abbey. Captain Cook was married at St Margaret’s, Barking, a pretty old church, which somehow dodged the Blitz.

Today, it also has a delightful cafe — unveiled by local boy turned Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey — where you can dine royally for a couple of quid.

I sit down for a chat with the rector, the Rt Rev Dr Trevor Mwamba, assistant Bishop for the Diocese of Chelmsford. He points out that, for all the issues raised by Question Time, there is much ‘beautiful’ cohesion between the different communities in Barking.

He also points out that he himself is an immigrant, having been, until recently, the Bishop of Botswana.

He loves it here, he says, but he, too, concedes that the system has to change. ‘If you have an influx of people and a demand on services, you have to manage that so that everyone can benefit. Otherwise, it’s chaos.’

To which most people around here would probably say: Amen.