The former Archbishop of Canterbury has not been afraid to challenge the political orthodoxies of the Anglican Bishops in the past and he has now signed a statement from a cross-party grouping that says immigration is too high; that a UK population of seventy million is "too many"; and that public confidence in politics won't be restored without immigration being controlled. Damian Thompson notes that no other bishop signed the document put together by Frank Field and Nicholas Soames.
The statement warns about the rise of the BNP:
"We are convinced that failure to take action would be seriously damaging to the future harmony of our society. Nearly a million votes by our fellow citizens for an extremist party amount to a danger sign which must not be ignored. For too long the major political parties have failed to address these issues and the intense, if largely private, concern that they generate throughout our country. If politicians want to rebuild the public’s trust in the political system, they cannot continue to ignore this issue which matters so much to so many people."
On the Today programme Lord Carey warned that the nature of recent immigration had created a sense of real unfairness. PoliticsHome recorded his contribution:
"We're not calling for a ban or anything like that, because we welcome people from abroad," he insisted, but said there had been a "very unprecedented level of immigration in recent years." He added: "If we don't do something about this we play into the hands of the BNP... they're working and exploiting frustration and a sense of alienation on the part of the white working class... "We've got to reverse this sense of unfairness."
