And it was presented as the end of the world as we know it. Trust me, I was there at the time.
Which is being presented as the end of the world as we know it.
And yet mightily overblown. Again.
A reasonable thought on the face of it, but wrong. Immigrants from the sub-continent came to work in factories, transport and the health service. The Ugandan Asians came from a mercantile, entrepreneurial tradition, which is why they were in East Africa in the first place. They looked for and found gaps in the British market and filled them.
Sub-continental immigration (presented as a very serious cultural threat by the familiar voices - Mail, Express, Torygraph, Tories - and the now-extinct trades union dinosaurs) brought us curry-houses, initially to serve the immigrant community.
Something that's usually missed is that population increase generates its own economic growth, and not just in Polish shops; the demand it generates is general. EU immigrants are disproportionately of working-age, working, earning, and spending. Take that away and there's an automatic recession.