BROWN LOSES FIGHT WITH GURKHAS

30-04-2009

The populist campaign to support the right of the Gurkhas to stay in Britain has delivered a bloody nose to Gordon Brown – but it also masks a deep and disturbing racism writes Stirrer editor Adrian Goldberg.

On my Talksport show I’ve taken the contrarian but sincerely held view that when the Nepalese soldiers signed up for the British army pre-1997, they did so without any expectation of living in this country.

It's only the fact that for the last 12 years their fellow countrymen have been able to stay which has enabled those Gurkhas who were previously excluded to launch a legal appeal.

That is, of course, their right, but I simply don’t buy the line that we are obliged to allow them to stay here. These unquestionably courageous fighting men were effectively mercenaries and were offered pay and pensions – nothing more nothing less.

The government’s cack-handed management of the affair hasn’t helped. After promising that the Gurkhas would be allowed in, they now appear duplicitous after setting the bar for residential qualification ludicrously high. A Military Cross indeed. For that alone, Brown deserved his first Commons defeat.

What’s interesting, though, is how right-wing newspapers normally opposed to widespread immigration – The Sun and Daily Mail etc - have leapt to the Gurkhas defence.

Of course it helps that the absolutely fabulous Joanna Lumley is fronting the campaign – but there’s clearly a benefit in having a scapegoat too.

The Mail, for example, echoing a theme that has emerged across the press over the last few weeks, contrasts the “deserving” Gurkhas with a gaggle of “undeserving” immigrants.

Callers to my programme have also been quick to pick up on this, and anger at the perceived injustice of widespread inward migration to Britain – rather than any specific unfairness towards the Gurkhas – has unquestionably fuelled this debate.

As one listener said last night, “better the Gurkhas, than that lot who shouted ‘baby killers’ at our returning troops in Luton.”

Using an entirely legitimate campaign to smuggle in the nasty poison of racism does a great disservice to all of us – but none more so than to the brave troops in whose name it is being waged.

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