A member of our book group is being forced out of West London by Islamification

There’s an article in the Telegraph this morning  entitled "I feel a stranger where I live" (available here) written by Jane Kelly who attends our church and is a particularly feisty member of our monthly book group. Sadly, she has decided to sell her flat in Acton and move out of London because of the Islamification of her community by Muslim immigrants:

I was brought up in a village in Staffordshire, and although I have been in London for a quarter of a century I have kept the habit of chatting to shopkeepers and neighbours, despite it not being the done thing in metropolitan life. Nowadays, though, most of the tills in my local shops are manned by young Muslim men who mutter into their mobiles as they are serving. They have no interest in talking to me and rarely meet my gaze. I find this situation dismal. I miss banter, the hail fellow, well met chat about the weather, or what was on TV last night. 

Ms Kelly’s feelings of alienation have been compounded by the attempt to impose Islamic behavioural norms in her area – the woman in her pharmacy urges her to fully cover her body when swimming (“it’s much healthier”, apparently). A local food store displays a sign informing customers “No alcohol allowed on the streets near this shop”, which is (a) a lie, and (b) none of their bloody business, thank you very much. Just imagine the explosion of liberal indignation that would result if fundamentalist Christians were to behave in a similarly crass, impertinent manner.

Scarily, Jane Kelly’s flat is only five or six minutes on foot from Grønmark Towers, but, while we’re unnervingly close to the front line, she might as well be an hour’s walk away. Property here is a lot more expensive than it is in her part of Acton (as she points out), and – perhaps because of that - our local population is still overwhelmingly comprised of white Britons. There’s been a small influx of Poles in recent years (you can only tell because they tend to put up strange fences and erect weird concrete sheds in their gardens), but remarkably few Asians or blacks (apart from Somali women taking their kids to the local state primary school from the nearby council estate). Whatever the nationality of those who run our local shops, they essentially cater for middle-class Brits. And because we have a Buddhist Vihara nearby, we see more skinny chaps in saffron-coloured robes than fat women doing Darth Vader impressions.

Our main hope that any attempt by immigrant groups to impose their culture on the rest of us will be scuppered is that a lot of gays live hereabouts, who, I suspect, would be the first to volunteer for the barricades rather than submit to being verbally abused by self-styled “Muslim patrols”, as apparently happens in Whitechapel. (If you want your area to remain quiet, respectable,  and expensive while retaining its community spirit, pray for lots of middle-aged gay couples to move in: they do their houses up a treat, appear to have lots of disposable income – no school fees – and are jolly friendly.)

It’s a real shame that Jane Kelly can’t afford a move to Chiswick. She’s an accomplished  freelance journalist (and consulting editor of the Salisbury Review), politically conservative (although independent-minded), and a regular church-goer. The more like her, the better. But the real shame, as she points out, is that she’s moving for a negative reason:

I, too, have decided to leave my area, following in the footsteps of so many of my neighbours. I don’t really want to go. I worked long and hard to get to London, to find a good job and buy a home and I’d like to stay here. But I’m a stranger on these streets and all the “good” areas, with safe streets, nice housing and pleasant cafés, are beyond my reach. I see London turning into a place almost exclusively for poor immigrants and the very rich. 

It’s sad that I am moving not for a positive reason, but to escape something. I wonder whether I’ll tell the truth, if I’m asked. I can’t pretend that I’m worried about local schools, so perhaps I’ll say it’s for the chance of a conversation over the garden fence. But really I no longer need an excuse: mass immigration is making reluctant racists of us all.

It’s strange to hear that Britain is sending troops to Mali to stop Islamofascism being imposed on those who don’t want it, while those who don’t want it in West London are being left to fend for themselves.

The members of our liberal politico-media elite, who are, of course, responsible for this depressing state of affairs, should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves - but they don't do shame. Instead, they'll be busy patting themselves on the back for being so wonderfully inclusive and compassionate and morally superior. As usual, they're not the ones having to pay the bill for their own largesse.