Protect our country: a big book for the Union, volume 2, by Alistair McConnachie, paperback, 314 pages, ISBN 979-8-291836941,
A Force For Good, 2025, £12.
Will In the year to December 2022 the Office for National Statistics estimated that long-term gross immigration was 1,257,000. In the year to December 2023 it was 1,326,000, in the year to December 2024, 948,000.
This excellent book presents a coherent plan for actually dealing with this unwanted mass immigration. Without implementing this plan, or something very like it, we will never be able to control immigration.
Alistair McConnachie, the founder of A Force For Good, puts forward ten core proposals:
1. Leave the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. Under our membership of this Convention, those who cross the Channel are deemed 'legal', despite entering in this subversive manner. We must leave this Convention so that we can declare such passage to be illegal.
2. Imprisonment for those who enter via these three illegal routes:
A. No asylum for those who cross the English Channel, or Irish Sea, in a dinghy or any kind of sea-borne craft. Such people will be fast-tracked to prison – or to one of our proposed Secure Detention Facilities, which will be effectively prisons. At any point during their sentence, they will be able to choose to be put on the next deportation flight to their homeland.
B: No asylum if you enter the UK via the Republic of Ireland either at the land border with Northern Ireland, or across the Irish Sea. Again, fast-tracked to prison.
C: No asylum for 'stowaways' found in, or on, any kind of moving land, water and air vehicle, including but not limited to cars, vans, lorries, aircraft, boats and ships. Fast-tracked to prison.
This will establish the appropriate deterrent. If necessary, a purpose-built Secure Detention Centre will be built to accommodate sufficient people, the numbers of which can be expected to quickly reduce as the rest of the world gets the message.
3. Remove 'inadmissible' asylum claims to country of origin.
4. Legislate to limit the application of Article 8 of the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA 1998) and Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) on the laws of Immigration, Asylum and Deportation.
5. Quota of no more than 2,000 grants of asylum a year. This is 'principal applicants', excluding dependents.
6. Maintain safe country list from which an asylum claim will not be considered nor granted. This should include all countries in the European Union, countries with accession status to the EU, all countries in the Commonwealth, and all countries hosting British, NATO or UN peacekeeping troops.
7. Asylum applications to be lodged, and visas issued, at the British Embassy or Consulate in country of origin
That is, we place asylum-based immigration on the same visa-based footing as any other kind of immigration. A visa would be mandatory and anyone arriving without the visa would be immediately returned.
8. A direct risk to 'life or freedom' must be clearly present. There must be a clear and present danger. The idea that a person might be in danger should not be sufficient.
9. Tighten up the concept of 'humanitarian protection'.
10. Do not participate in UN refugee schemes.
Far too many claim, and are given, refugee status. In 1978, just 400 people were granted refugee status. In 2023, 50,144 were, in 2024, 30,115. These figures do not include dependents. We let refugees enjoy the same treatment as is accorded to nationals, which is clearly a serious 'pull factor' for people to cross the Channel to make asylum claims. It is also well a huge and unsustainable expense for the rest of us.
McConnachie talks good sense about the economics of immigration. For example, he points out that "Every People of every Nation has a moral obligation to do their own drudgery work. Expecting immigrants to do it is like a form of slavery." And he notes that "To the extent that many immigrants find jobs, they are not filling a 'skills gap', they are filling a wages gap, and keeping labour costs low, sometimes on the black market."
He urges ending taxpayer support for immigration support groups: "A basic policy, from day one, will be to defund hundreds of pro-immigration NGOs and 'charities', and to withdraw Legal Aid from the Immigration Law sector …"
Pro-immigration activists call those who want to control mass immigration 'anti-immigrant' protesters. For example, Diane Abbott MP recently argued in the Morning Star (9 August) that "A key point is that the anti-asylum protesters do not have legitimate grievances. They may be extremely exploited at work, live in unfit housing or a loved one may be waiting years on a NHS waiting list. But their grievances are illegitimate precisely because their anger is directed towards asylum seekers or migrants. Their grievances are bogus, racist and illegitimate."
This is to claim that their grievances are not legitimate because the protesters don't then go on to target the government's economic policies. This is to deny the material realities of exploitation, bad housing and poor services, because of the supposed beliefs of the people suffering those realities.
But these people are not so much attacking migrants and refugees as opposing successive governments' open borders policy, a policy which has added to pressures on wages, housing and services.