We have lost control of our national borders

NO CONTROL: With reference to the letter from J M Burke (The Sentinel, November 9).

I too am a regular viewer of David Dimbleby's Question Time on BBC1 and I agree that the programme featuring Nick Griffin, of the British National Party, on October 22 gave me the impression that it had been set up and that Nick Griffin was not given a fair hearing.

I would like to see him on Question Time again. I would like to hear the BNP's policy on immigration and, more to the point, how they propose to round up and deport the many thousands of illegal immigrants who have managed to avoid the border controls over this past decade.

But I believe the roots of the problem could be laid at the door of the late Harold Wilson and his Labour government all those years ago when they brought in the Commonwealth Immigration Act allowing any citizens of the Commonwealth – most of our former colonies – to come and reside here and, as Harold said, it gave us the right to live in their countries. The Conservatives opposed the Act and as the late Enoch Powell told them, this country would never be the same again and he gave his prophecy that it would result in "rivers of blood" in future years.

And so they came in their thousands and thousands to 'latch on' to our welfare services and our benefits system with stories of some of them even claiming for children that they had left behind in their home countries (no records were available to query the claims). These things enraged most people in this country and I am afraid that for many the feelings are still there. This was utter madness on the part of the Wilson government who, as I remember it, passed the act to fill vacancies in our labour force. Our current Government has been sadly lacking in the control of our borders and without doubt this has exacerbated the feelings that people already had towards the immigration problem.

ALBERT DICKINSON

Sneyd Green