Will they – or won’t they?
Tonight sees the public meeting in the Assembly Rooms where those attending will be asked to vote whether or not they favour a protest march in Boston to draw attention to the high level of immigration in the area.
The meeting follows last week’s final session of Boston Borough Council’s task and finish group on “Social Impact of Population Change on Boston” – which we are told has been sitting “select committee-style,” since March.
Between now and the autumn, the group will draft a report based on the “evidence” gathered on issues such as health services, policing, employment, education and the like.
Friday saw a report on this last meeting appear on Boston Borough Council’s website -
and the council’s wish not to have a march came through loud and clear.
Its opening lines: “A main supporter of immigration protestor Dean Everitt has made an impassioned plea for people to vote AGAINST a protest march …” caused a flurry of e-mails to Boston Eye from confused readers who – until they gave the sentence a second look – believed that Mr Everitt had opposed his own creation.
Not so. The plea came from a gentleman named Bob McAuley, “who has stood shoulder to shoulder with Mr Everitt,” and who told the meeting: "It's our democratic right to peaceful protest. It's also our right as individuals to make the decision to march or not. My personal opinion is that the risk of violence and damage to property is far too great. I believe the march could be hijacked and all the good work that has been done will be lost. The protest movement would lose all credibility and it would be a victory for the politicians and for those reasons I would not support a march in Boston. I fully support a protest march in London as it is the government at fault and not the people of Boston."
Without taking sides, there are a couple of interesting issues here …
The first is that if all marches that were threatened by counter protests were called off for that reason, the exercise of the right to protest would all but disappear overnight.
Secondly, a march in London would get no attention whatever – they’re happening all the time – whereas one here would do what the protesters want, which is to be seen to stand up and be counted at a local level by their local “masters.”
However, all of these arguments are currently moot.
From what we gather, there have been noises off,  which suggest efforts to attract large numbers of “no” voters to tonight’s meeting.
This calls into question how representative the meeting might be, and what would happen in the unlikely event of a vote in favour of a march.
Ironically, a couple of days after last week’s task and finish meeting, Boston was again back in the headlines with a report by the Office of National Statistics - which said that certain parts of England have twice as many immigrants as previously thought,  and that in Boston, new statistics show that the number of immigrants in the past five years has trebled to 7,500.
Amazingly, according to the collected “evidence” of just about every organization from the great and the good of Boston, this has had absolutely no effect on crime, anti-social behaviour, education, employment, the health service etc etc.
The borough council website made much of last week’s contribution from Professor Gary Craig, “a leading expert on the impacts of population change” who paid a flying visit to the session.
This was even though he agreed that the Boston area has had one of the highest numbers of migrant workers since 2004 in proportion to the local population and  - that “the impact is bound to be considerable."
However, we came away with the feeling that if he spent a reasonable amount of time in the town, he would be a little clearer about what all the fuss is about and rather less inclined to talk in general and academic terms.
Our feeling is that tonight’s  meeting will result in a vote against a march.
Then we shall have to wait and see what will happen come the autumn - when we expect a conciliatory and tepid report from the task and finish group which will cry crocodile tears and lament its inability to act.
Either that, or it will totally reject the "evidence" of the people in favour of that from politically correct groups which are not allowed to acknowledge a problem.
 

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