Joshua Sur­tees

Has Britain learned from the mis­takes of its past and learned to be a bet­ter host? It's a ques­tion I'm pon­der­ing as we move in­to a new, im­por­tant year.On every TV chan­nel the bum­bling mid­dle-Eng­lan­der voice of Nigel Farage has be­come in­escapable. Farage, the leader of the UK In­de­pen­dence Par­ty (Ukip) wants Britain to opt out of the Eu­ro­pean Union and wants to send back eco­nom­ic mi­grants who come to Britain to live and work.

Farage's wife is Ger­man and is em­ployed by his par­ty's cen­tral of­fice, though he doesn't see this as iron­ic. Farage's name must be de­scend­ed from French but, again, no irony. Farage's her­itage, like most of Britain's white pop­u­la­tion, must be a mix of one or more of the waves of eco­nom­ic mi­gra­tion that has tak­en place over the past three thou­sand years.

Like T&T's in­dige­nous pop­u­la­tion of Caribs and Arawaks the ear­li­est Britons were tiny in num­ber and most were wiped out with sim­i­lar vi­o­lence or in­ter­bred with Celts from France, Ro­mans from Italy, An­gles or Sax­ons from Ger­many and Den­mark, Vikings from Scan­di­navia and Nor­mans from Nor­mandy. But Farage, a Eu­ro­pean in the truest mon­grel sense, doesn't want any­thing to do with Eu­rope.

His views at­tract sup­port and have gained enough mo­men­tum to turn his mi­nor­i­ty par­ty in­to po­ten­tial­ly the third biggest par­ty in Britain in a po­si­tion to de­cide the out­come of the gen­er­al elec­tion; maybe even able to form a coali­tion gov­ern­ment with the Con­ser­v­a­tive par­ty.Ukip politi­cians and sup­port­ers are most­ly for­mer Con­ser­v­a­tives look­ing for some­thing more right wing than David Cameron dares to man­i­fest.

It's hard to know whether pol­i­tics is more palat­able with a dis­cernible right-left dis­tinc­tion (like in Britain) or with­out one (like in Trinidad.) Cer­tain­ly eth­nic po­lit­i­cal di­vides aren't palat­able. The prob­lem with an emerg­ing hard right wing in Britain is that there is no hard left al­ter­na­tive: Labour con­tin­ues to in­sipid­ly oc­cu­py the cen­tre ground, too afraid to re­turn to its once core so­cial­ist val­ues even though the coun­try is cry­ing out for ex­act­ly that.

Keen to pan­der to the pub­lic mood on im­mi­gra­tion, Labour toes a hard line, in­stead of re­buff­ing Ukip's ab­surd claims that Britain is over­crowd­ed and that mi­grant work­ers from east­ern Eu­rope are tak­ing jobs and hous­es from British peo­ple.Britain's his­to­ry of wel­com­ing im­mi­grants has been a mixed bag. From the post-War years right up to the 1980s, cheap labour was need­ed and came most­ly from the Com­mon­wealth. Some peo­ple loved the Caribbeans and In­di­ans, oth­ers hat­ed them.

Dur­ing the boom­ing 90s, im­mi­gra­tion wasn't even an is­sue so­cial­ly or po­lit­i­cal­ly, but post re­ces­sion, the self­ish gene kicked in again: sud­den­ly there's no room at the inn.

On Mon­day morn­ing, Lenny Hen­ry (a black British co­me­di­an who fought through an era of overt racism to be­come one of the most pop­u­lar fig­ures in en­ter­tain­ment) was guest ed­i­tor on BBC Ra­dio 4's To­day pro­gramme. He took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to talk about di­ver­si­ty and race in Britain.

He in­ter­viewed An­drew Ram­roop, Britain's first black tai­lor to work on Sav­ile Row (Lon­don's street for the finest suits, shirts and ties.)

Ram­roop, a Trinida­di­an, was born in Main­got Vil­lage, Tu­na­puna, in 1952 and moved to Lon­don in Au­gust 1970, aged 17. It wasn't a warm wel­come in his cold, host coun­try."In those days you just didn't see a West In­di­an tai­lor on Sav­ile Row, it was un­heard of," Ram­roop said. "I tried many places look­ing for jobs and was turned away. When I did get a place I wasn't al­lowed in the front of the shop–if cus­tomers saw you they would leave the shop."

Ram­roop even­tu­al­ly be­gan work­ing for Mau­rice Sed­well, a man who over­saw his de­vel­op­ment and grad­u­al­ly eased him to the front of the shop mak­ing him more vis­i­ble to clients.When the vis­it­ing Prime Min­is­ter of T&T sent his Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary to Sav­ile Row he was so im­pressed with Ram­roop's work he asked him to over­see the whole fit­ting.He went on to dress cab­i­net mem­bers and even de­signed the jack­et Princess Di­ana wore in a fa­mous Panora­ma in­ter­view a few years be­fore her death.

Many years lat­er, in 1988, Sed­well sold Ram­roop 90 per cent of his busi­ness. In 2008, he es­tab­lished The Sav­ile Row Acad­e­my, the on­ly pro­fes­sion­al tai­lor­ing school on Sav­ile Row.What a long and un­nec­es­sar­i­ly ar­du­ous jour­ney for a black man to take. It might not be the same to­day, but what if a Lithuan­ian with poor Eng­lish turned up on Sav­ile Row? Would he have the 40 year rough ride that Ram­roop had, be­fore es­tab­lish­ing him­self, lit­er­al­ly, amongst the Or­der of the British Em­pire? Ram­roop re­ceived his OBE from the Queen in 2008.

Most who mi­grate to Britain come with a sense of am­bi­tion and re­spect (un­like the Ro­mans, Vikings and Nor­mans who in­vad­ed.) It is time Britain re­ceived new­com­ers with the same re­spect. Nigel Farage ought to know this by now.