How well-to-do liberals choose to live – A lesson from Primrose Hill

I was walking down Regents Park Road in Primrose Hill  in the heart of London  recently  when  I was struck by a curious thing: the street had a distinctly old fashioned air. There were no  supermarkets, chain stores, no  MacDonald’s, not even a Starbucks or a Coffee Republic.  Instead  there were a string of independent   shops, cafes and restaurants.   The nearest to a chain store were branches of the off licences Threshers and Bibendum. None of the stores was of  mega-size , most were small, none sold  the tat which is the staple fare of  nearby Camden Town.  There was even that great modern rarity  a bona fide fishmongers.    The telephone boxes were the old iconic red ones.  There was a blissful  shortage  of street furniture and  signage.  The traffic was light and the pavements well inhabited  but not painfully crowded. There was not a tramp or drunk to be seen, nor  gangs of young men  loitering.  Apart from an up- market cybercafe it might have been a market town high street  from the 1950s.

Other things were striking.  Although Primrose Hill is in  central London   there was barely a  non-white face to be seen.  Even more remarkably  for these days,   the voices  I heard about  me in the street  were almost all  English.  The staff  in the shops were overwhelmingly white,  and  in  the couple of shops I went into they also turned out to be English. Away from the shops  a  similar unusual  cultural scene obtained, with the large houses and the streets  being overwhelmingly inhabited by  white faces and  English accents.  No council or housing association properties  stand amongst the urban villas . The place has  the unmistakable stench of wealth.

The interesting thing about  Primrose  Hill is that it is one of the favoured  residences of the denizens  of  the media and allied trades. If you talked to them or encountered them broadcasting  or writing , to  a man and a  woman they would effusively tell you of the benefits of multiculturalism, how marvellous  it has been  for the country,  how dreadful it would be if England was the England of old, that marvellously homogenous place so recklessly and traitorously  thrown away over the past  fifty years. Yet these are the people who choose to live in a place which comes closest  in modern London to precisely the  England they ostensibly decry.

These days most of the   Primrose Hill fraternity would also  happily parrot the  globalist creed  as well., for they converted to it when the Labour Party became NuLabour and embraced the Thatcherite economic faith.  Yet they do not choose to live in  an area touched by the economic  fruits of globalism .  Instead, they opt for  a  locality  which is miraculously protected from the chain stores and their ruthless  drive to  destroy the private shop and impose uniformity.   Not for the Primrose Hill set  the  vulgar traipse round the supermarket,  even a Waitrose,  but the old-fashioned and  civilised  shopping   which involves personal service from people who understand  their products and  display  a  civility  which is dignified  rather than chummy.

That most of the inhabitants  of Primrose Hill are card-carrying  members of the “right-on” brigade   is unsurprising , because the only people who can afford to be relaxed about  the effects of globalism  are those  who can  avoid  its  consequences, or at least its most immediate and  obnoxious effects.

Not for them the “joy of diversity”  of  living in a tower block on a council estate  where they are the only white resident. Not for them the sending of their children to schools which boast  “179  languages spoken here”   and  where their  child  is the only white child in his form,  children such as   15-year old  working-class boy Richard Everitt  murdered by a Bangladeshi gang in the  1990s  who attacked him simply because they had decided to harm a white boy .  Not for them gangs of young  men in the streets. Not for them street dealers operating openly before the police. . Not for them an area shorn of  shops except those run by ethnic minorities,  where the only meat available is halal  and  if English is spoken at all  it is spoken as a second language.  Not for them the feeling that they are a stranger in their own land.

The very white, very English, very old-fashioned  world that is  found in Primrose Hill is mirrored wherever  the better-off congregate, whether that be inner city enclaves  such as  Primrose Hill and Hampstead  or  villages in  leafy Surrey or Cheshire.  The  less  well off – the large majority –  must take pot luck .for they cannot move where they choose.  . Those born and raised in  an area which is still   largely untouched by immigration still have the luxury of living in  an English  environment, although  they will not have the further luxury of living in  a world  with the other goods which  those in places like Primrose Hill enjoy such as  independently  owned  shops  with polite, knowledgeable and attentive staff.  But  even those born and raised  in such  places  are  vulnerable to  being forced  out as  house prices  rocket,  east European  immigrants flood  the local  labour market  taking jobs and lowering wages, more and more second homes are bought by  well-off outsiders  and  by the refugees of   middle-class “white flight” from the immigration-infested towns and cities  to those parts of England which are still England.

For the poor  born  and raised in  paces with large immigrant populations  – first, second, third generation  immigrants and so on –  there is no  choice.  They have  to live cheek-by-jowl with the  immigrants, send their children to immigrant dominated schools,  shop in  local stores  owned by immigrants. The older amongst them will have seen  their  previously homogeneous  community  transformed by mass immigration, often at a bewildering speed., but always within their  lifetime.

But it is not only those who  are unmistakably poor who are vulnerable.  Increasingly  those who are solidly middle-class by background and  occupation are finding that  they are being priced out of a means  to escape  the effects of  mass immigration. Our elite have made living  in  an English environment , whether in an enclave in urban areas with a large ethnic contingent or  in an area as yet not subject to mass immigration, an expensive business . Many  of the white, English  middle-class  are finding to their horror that they cannot engage in “white flight” to  areas  where  they can enjoy  a society devoid of all that wonderful diversity  they are supposed to adore.  House prices are too high,  suitable jobs too few. Most disturbingly, even if they do manage to escape they cannot be sure that where they have  gone will not fall to the immigrant wave or  the local  economy be demolished by the  relentless march of the  chain store. To have the best of all worlds – the secure world of  Primrose Hill –  is very expensive indeed.

What lesson can we draw from all this?   It is a very simple one: this is the way people  normally choose to live  when they have the choice.  They wish to be in an area where they are ethnically dominant  because that makes them feel secure.  They choose to  avoid the  de-personalised uniformity of life which is  the lot of the vast majority  who are left  only with supermarkets and chain stores  within reach.  They want people to serve them who are polite and competent.   Of course, not every  person will want exactly the same environment  but the will want the same basic things of an ethnically secure territory, better quality products and   reliable service.