PROTEST AT DAVID COLEMAN, RACIST SPOKESPERSON FOR MIGRATION WATCH UK!
NO PLATFORM FOR RACISTS AND FASCISTS!
Tuesday 30th January, 4:30pm Kings College London, Surrey Street WC2
(Meet 4:25pm, Temple Underground Station) - called by London No Borders

David Coleman, spokesperson for racist organisation Migration Watch UK, and multiple-time office-holder of the Eugenics Society/Galton Institute will be speaking tomorrow at Kings College, London. Teresa Hayter, author of Open Borders: The Case Against Immigration Controls, was invited to speak at the meeting and understandably refused to share a platform with Coleman.

The European Society and Kings College have not cancelled this event despite being told of Coleman's involvement in the Galton Institute. Join us in protest outside the event and in distributing copies of Teresa's statement (below). Ring 07913 620 581 for further information.

Teresa's statement:

I am very sorry that I do not feel able to share a platform with Professor Coleman. I am also very sorry that the European Society at Kings College London has given him a platform, in the knowledge of his opposition to immigration, and also (because I told them about it) of his long association with eugenics.

Professor Coleman is, with Sir Andrew Green, the founder and spokesperson for a very small organisation called Migration Watch. They receive a lot of exposure and publicity, on the web-site of the British National Party, in the tabloid press and even on the BBC. The latter, apparently, takes them at their word when they say they are an 'independent and non-political body', concerned in an objective and dispassionate way to give the true facts and figures about immigration, that they are not racist and that they are not opposed to 'existing immigrant communities' and are in fact acting in their interests. They merely, they say, are concerned about the pace of immigration and the already over-crowded state of this country.

The problem is that they, and those who support them, are quite deliberately stirring up hatred, resentment and prejudice in a way which is pernicious and dangerous for the rest of us, and for our chances of living together in peace and harmony. They are in a long line of far right, racist opponents of new immigration (we are, of course, all immigrants or the descendants of immigrants, in this country and practically everywhere else). When Green says that he has no problem with immigration from Poland (what about the supposed problem of numbers and over-crowding?) and that he is merely concerned about immigration from 'more distant cultures' in Asia and Africa, he is echoing Sir Cyril Osborne, campaigner for immigration controls
against black Commonwealth citizens in the 1950s and early 60s, who said he didn't consider the Irish to be immigrants, and would be glad to have a good Irishman at his side.

Coleman is possibly worse. Although he doesn't say so, and the BBC doesn't say so, and it is never mentioned on the Migration Watch web-site, Coleman has held office in the Eugenics Society and until recently in its successor the Galton Institute. In an article in the March 2001 issue of the Galton Institute newsletter, following a crass leader on eugenics, Coleman denounces a UN Population Division report (which looked at the possibility of large-scale immigration as a solution to the problem of ageing and declining populations in the rich countries, while not advocating it, as Coleman claims it does), and says that native British women should be encouraged to have more children (again, what about the supposed problem of 'overcrowding'?).

Eugenics, as most people I am sure know, advocates the improvement of populations through breeding, proclaims the superiority of the white race, and denounces inter-breeding. It was taken up by Hitler. It is a dangerous, frightening doctrine and should not be given any credence or support. I believe that, historically and now, immigration controls are explicable only by racism, and that they legitimate, and feed, racism. Even when attempts are made, as they sometimes are by Green and Coleman, to justify controls in terms of British economic self-interest, this is hardly of greater moral validity. As far as I know, Coleman and Green have nothing to say about the suffering and deaths caused by the vast and growing edifice of repression resulting from the, rather vain, attempt to stop the free movement of people.

I do not feel it is possible to have any sort of polite, or honest, or academic debate with these people, who appear to be little more than a very plausible front for the BNP.