British pollster reveals how Labour's refusal to listen on immigration cost them power... and is now damaging democracy

Deborah Mattinson has run focus groups - snapshots of the voting public - for the past 20 years. In that time she has been made plainly aware of the needs, wants and fears of the British people. She claims that the immigration debate - dismissed too quickly by politicians as bigotry - is in fact a clear cry from voters that they are afraid for their families and their communities. She writes:

I’d started running political focus groups for Labour in the Eighties. This gave me the perfect vantage point to see the birth of New Labour - and its subsequent ups and downs - through the eyes of voters.

What struck me most was the huge gulf between the electorate and the political classes. While politicians in the Westminster village are obsessed with the trivia that purports to be matters of great importance, voters worry about issues that directly impact their families and their communities.

This is deeply damaging to democracy. Above all, this gulf between voters and politicians is felt most strongly when it comes to immigration.

After running focus groups for 25 years, I can honestly say I’ve rarely sat through one without the subject being raised. This week, immigration was never far from the top of the news agenda. First, two Church of England vicars were arrested for allegedly running a bogus immigrant marriage racket.

Then, we heard that ministers were considering a deal to bypass the proposed immigration cap and allow more foreign students into Britain.

It was also revealed that 17,000 immigrants told to leave Britain have won their appeal to stay after Home Office officials failed to turn up to the hearings.

Feelings have always been strong, but are often expressed hesitantly. Someone might say: ‘I’m not being funny or anything . . .’ then introduce the topic nervously, waiting to see if others would agree. Some even say: ‘I’m not being racist or anything . . .’ before making their point.

In my experience, most voters are not racist - they are worried that their homes, jobs and public services are under threat. They fear their livelihoods are being undermined by people who, having come to Britain as recent immigrants, have made a less significant contribution to the country. This, they feel, is fundamentally unfair. Often, these views are most strongly held by the poorest.

At the 2001 General Election, turnout dropped dramatically from more than 70 per cent to less than 60 per cent. Some of the safest Labour seats in working-class strongholds saw a fall of up to 20 per cent.

Labour MP Margaret Hodge’s constituency of Barking & Dagenham was typical. There was widespread concern from the traditional white working class about the number of immigrants there. Mrs Hodge asked me to conduct focus groups to look into the problem of low turnout. I found that many people had not voted because they felt it would not make any difference to their lives.

Politicians’ silence on immigration had fuelled this anger. Mrs Hodge urged the government to address the problem. But her plea was ignored and she was vilified by her Labour colleagues.

Things had worsened by the 2005 General Election. During the campaign, I ran a series of focus groups with women voters in the marginal seat of Watford for Radio 4’s Today programme.

Reporting on the first meeting, the BBC journalist Iain Watson said: ‘So, what issues would sway voters in the next election? Initially, most women talked about public services - health and education, in particular. But then it turned out that there had been an elephant in the room.

‘As soon as one person was brave enough to admit spotting it, suddenly most of the others could see it, too.’ One after another, the women voters said: ‘I’ll be honest: I was too frightened to mention immigration because I thought it wouldn’t be politically correct. ‘You’ve got all the asylum seekers who can come in and we fund them finding houses and they’re saying we can’t have pensions for our own people...’

These views confirmed opinion polls at the time, which showed immigration was at, or near, the top of people’s concerns and that eight out of ten agreed that ‘immigration laws should be much tougher or immigration should be stopped altogether’.

A year before Gordon Brown became prime minister, I ran a major focus group study. By then, immigration had become the main issue. We described our findings to Mr Brown and senior Cabinet members. We explained immigration was a vortex issue - its whirlpool effect engulfing everything in its wake.

Voters were emphatic. They believed the NHS couldn’t cope because too many immigrants were using its services (for example, the Office for National Statistics recently revealed that nearly a quarter of babies born in Britain have immigrant mothers).

They thought schools weren’t able to teach properly because they were struggling with large numbers of immigrant children who couldn’t speak English. They believed people couldn’t find work because immigrants were prepared to take jobs for much less money. And they said families found it impossible to get accommodation because the government gives priority to immigrant families.

It’s important to point out again that, despite the strength of these feelings, it doesn’t mean people are racist. Quite simply, many voters feel the economic security of their families is under threat. In the most part they included young families struggling to pay their mortgages, anxious about unemployment and dependent on public services that they knew were straining at the seams.

People get angry when they think others are getting rewards unfairly, while they work hard and struggle. So they get angry at immigrants and welfare cheats in the same way they get angry at bankers with huge bonuses.

The truth is that none of this is about racism, but simply about fairness - getting what you’ve worked for and deserve. Many politicians fail to understand this. They confuse genuine fears that immigrants are taking up scarce resources with racism.

Indeed, this has been one of the gravest misunderstandings between voters and the political class that cries ‘racism’ or ‘bigotry’ whenever genuine concerns about immigration are raised.

Gordon Brown’s description of Gillian Duffy - the Labour-supporting grandmother from Rochdale who famously tackled him over her concerns about immigration during the election campaign - as a ‘bigoted woman’ is very telling.

I always fed back voters’ views about immigration to Labour’s high command. But despite the subject being such a hot topic, it was never put at the top of the political agenda. There was simply no appetite to listen, let alone act. It was as if politicians were in paralysis.

Hugely frustrated, voters felt they were being silenced on a subject that mattered to their daily lives.

In 2007, when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, he introduced an Australian-style points system (under which potential immigrants from outside the EU can qualify for entry based only on strict criteria), but by then it was too little, too late.

Back in Margaret Hodge’s constituency, feelings were running high. In the autumn of 2009, the news broke that the BNP leader Nick Griffin was planning to stand against her in the General Election.

I returned to Barking & Dagenham to run another series of focus groups. Mrs Hodge’s reputation was strong - she was known to have worked hard in the constituency - but people felt beleaguered. Once again, immigration was the top issue. The consensus was that Barking ‘had it first and had it worst’. As one resident put it: ‘We’re the dumping ground.’

In this traditional working-class area, people felt neglected and angry. They also complained that the community had changed beyond recognition - not becoming multi-racial in a positive way, but with an uneasy clash of cultures. A typical comment was: ‘It don’t feel like Britain no more.’

Twelve BNP councillors had recently been elected in the constituency and Mrs Hodge was determined not to let her seat fall into BNP hands. She wrote an article for the Daily Mail calling for a points system to give housing priority to local people, stressing that she wanted to see immigrants treated fairly, but that ‘concern for refugees should not prevent us from having the debate about immigration in the context of fairness to the people who have lived in and contributed to the affected communities’.

At the General Election, Mrs Hodge bucked the national trend - her re-election was one of Labour’s decisive victories. The BNP came a derisory third and all 12 BNP councillors lost their seats in the local election. Mrs Hodge was a local hero: here, at last, was a politician who was prepared to listen to voters and speak out on their behalf.

But the debate goes on about immigration. The coalition Government has just announced a cap on non-EU immigration. However, focus groups suggest this may well be another ‘too little too late’ initiative, paying lip service rather than really dealing with the core issues.

In any case, voters are worried about levels of immigration from EU countries as well, and their complaints often centre on the immigrants who are already here rather than those who still want to come to Britain.

In my new book, I use the phrase ‘Peter Pan politics’ to describe how voters are kept in a childlike state by ‘adult’ politicians - fed a drip of promises and soundbites, but excluded from the real debate. What they deserve is a grown-up debate about immigration. This is the only way to heal division and banish racism. It could be the first step in mending our democracy and rebuilding the relationship between voter and politician.

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