Revenger

30

As battle raged on Netherton Street, Mark Adams was outlining his own vision of a country slipping out of control.

The bizarre assassination attempt had left the crowd edgy and ill at ease. It had taken Adams a while to calm them down, talking almost conversationally, and avoiding controversy or even passion. Now, though, he felt that they were ready to get back to the tough, no-nonsense speech that they’d all come to hear.

‘I am not a racist,’ he began. In the press boxes and TV studios the media people, many of whom had only just finished filing their copy on the shooting, sensed the start of the real political story of the night. In the box where Adams’s inner circle were sitting, Alix saw the men in suits lean forward as if sniffing the air for the mysterious aura of public approval or rejection. She felt fierce pressure on her hand as Nicki Adams squeezed it again, quite unconsciously, unaware of this physical expression of her tension and excitement.

Adams waited, letting the words sink in before he continued, ‘More than fifty years ago the great equal-rights campaigner Dr Martin Luther King said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” That’ll do me…’

In the press box a Guardian blogger and columnist called Dan Brix muttered loud enough for those around him to hear, ‘He’s got a nerve. A right-wing racist quoting Dr King… it’s like Hitler quoting Rabbi Blue.’

‘But I cannot escape the simple truth that the population of this country is undergoing a massive demographic shift,’ Adams continued. ‘This is the result of an entirely deliberate strategy, planned by your political leaders without your consent or even your knowledge. For years they have told you lies about trying to control immigration. They never had any intention of doing that.

‘So now I’m going to tell you the facts, based on the government’s own figures, and I’ll leave you to decide what you think when you’ve heard them.’

Dan Brix tweeted: ‘Adams moving on to immigration. About to scare us with “official” numbers #justlikethenationalfront.’

Up on the screens, the shots of Adams’s face had given way to an outline map of the United Kingdom as he said, ‘In February 2012, the government published its official National Population Projections, showing the potential effect of immigration on the population of Great Britain over a twenty-five-year period between 2010 and 2035.’

Adams was talking with calmness and clarity, reassuring his audience that even if the facts and numbers seemed complicated, he’d make them all easy enough to understand.

‘They wanted to know how much difference it would make if there was a lot of immigration, a bit of immigration, or none at all. They started out with the population in 2010, which was a little over sixty-two million. At this point, England was already the sixth most crowded country in the world.’

The map suddenly filled with little graphic figures, most of them concentrated in England, packed so tightly that there was hardly any room between them, while the wide open spaces of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland remained almost empty. Then, superimposed on the map, appeared the number: 62 MILLION.

Adams let the image sink in, then said: ‘Now, imagine there is no net immigration at all — that the number of people coming into the country is no greater than the number leaving — well, in that case the population rises from 62.3 million to very nearly 66 million by 2035. That’s an increase of 3.7 million.’

More figures filled the English section of the UK. Now they were packed even more tightly. Then the graphic image changed to a close-up of the West Midlands, with the outline of Birmingham like a great black ink-spot in the middle, as Adams said, ‘Now to give you some idea of what that means, the second biggest city in England is Birmingham, and it has a population of almost exactly one million. So that’s the equivalent of more than three new cities, each the size of Birmingham, we’ve got to find room for… in one of the most crowded nations in the entire world.’

Splat! Splat! Splat! Three more Birmingham-sized black ink-spots splashed on to the screen, obliterating the rest of the West Midlands.

‘But actually, we’re not going to need three Birminghams. We’re going to need much, much more than that,’ said Adams.

The screens switched back to the map of the UK, and great arrows started moving towards England, and the numbers of little people began multiplying out of control, so that they merged into one great seething mass.

‘You see, the idea of no net immigration is a total fantasy,’ said Adams while all this was going on. ‘By the government’s own admission, the actual net migration figure is closer to a quarter of a million extra newcomers to this country every year… And if we carry on at that rate, the population in twenty years’ time will be more than seventy-six million people, and living in this country will be like living on the platform at Piccadilly tube station in the middle of the rush hour… everywhere… all the time.’

The figure ‘76 MILLION’ up on the screen was bigger and more menacing than any other had been. But Adams was still in documentary-presenter mode: ‘So let’s just sum this all up. If there is no additional immigration, this country’s population goes up by 3.7 million… But in fact there are two hundred and fifty thousand extra immigrants every year and the population is going to rise by 13 million… So that’s almost 10 million extra people who are all immigrants or the children of immigrants.

‘Meanwhile, the people who are already here… particularly the average, white, middle-income men and women who think of themselves as the backbone of this country… well, they’re not having very many children at all.’

Adams’s forehead creased with a frown that looked almost apologetic. ‘In fact, you could say that if they’re not careful… if we’re not careful… those average Englishmen and women are going to become extinct.

‘So forget the polar bear… forget the panda… forget the whales and the creatures of the Brazilian rainforest… if you want to see an endangered species, just go and look in the mirror, Middle England… because it’s you.’