from Eastern Europe the Bulgarians and Romanians, the Russians and Ukrainians who represented more than a million. This population was seen by the nationalists as gangsters and Gipsies. The Poles, Czechs and Hungarians were seen as stealing jobs from the Brits but the danger was in fact greater for the Asians and Africans who lost out to this new wave of immigration of a newer kind with a population hardened by generations of Stalinism and Communism. Competition between minority groups resulted in resentment from the longer established minorities became a bone of contention as the Eastern European immigrants claimed priority by virtue of their ‘whiteness’.
o0o
His old friend from Tim Taylor, now political editor of The Times of London, took him to visit a pub they had often visited as young reporters, it was called the Blind Beggar in Whitechapel to the east of the City of London. The pub was famous as a meeting place for East London gangsters in the last century. Now it was in the heart of what was commonly known as Banglatown because its Bangladeshi population. They drove to the pub; the English were still much attached to their personal cars, though their numbers had fallen considerably in recent years. Along Mile End Road Ennis was surprised by the transformation, they passed by a fine mosque with its minarets all built in the brick preferred by English architects.
A dense crowd flowed along the pavements and they were almost all from the sub-continent, the women dressed in saris and many of the men in the baggy trousers and long jackets. It was a scene typical of Dacca or Karachi. The only incongruous element in the street scene was a road works where the men who laboured were all Anglos a contrast with France where Ennis could not remember seeing Gallos doing that kind of low class manual labour.
They parked the car and walked to the pub passing a bearded and turbaned Sikh who was parking his latest model Ferrari with scant regard for the regulations.
It was strange how English society had continued to evolve around its own particular concept of class structure. Class certainly existed in other European societies, however in New England the whole population hung fiercely onto the system, well after the other countries of Western Europe had evolved along more discrete lines. On the continent the demarcation between classes were less visible and their populations less conscious of the difference that nevertheless existed.
Ennis had observed that in a general manner the mass of the English Anglo-Saxon middle class-aspired to an imaginary sort of squiredom, country gentlemen, bearing their badges of status in the form of their cars, houses, jobs, styles of dress and pubs. They were also aped by many of the long established community from the sub-continent who had prospered and risen economically in England.
The pub was a microcosm of New England society where the different classes were visible. As an establishment based essentially on the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages there were no Muslims, and though there were one or two Indians the majority of the clientele were Anglos.
The wealthy Anglo-Saxon upper classes and those aspiring to join them lived out their popular image in districts such as Kensington or Chelsea. The lower classes were excluded from the division of wealth, mostly dismissed to social housing and a perpetual struggle against debt and unemployment; they were joined in a desperate no-man’s-land by those of mixed race who had lost their cultural identity.
Though the Neo populations fell into the class divisions of English society, whatever their aspirations, they were set apart, marked by their origins. The majority of the English regardless of their own social class resented those Neos who achieved success.
Class also had its North-South divide, the South being London and the Southeast, the difference being reinforced by the separation of Scotland and Wales.
The policy of separate development privileged the better off classes and the Neo populations and the result was a country that was hopelessly divided and incapable of any political decision given its cleavages of race and class.
In short Ennis knew that New England was a nation of unspoken Apartheid that practised politics of rightist Nationalism, whilst at the same time but did not hesitate to heap criticism on le Martel's France, when it was politically expedient. However the Lord Lieutenant had a lot in common with le Martel, he was a Francophile and enjoyed his holidays in France where he was frequently a guest at de le Martel’s chateau or in Monaco as an honoured guest of the Royal Prince.
The Brits, whose own nation was reduced to England, gloated over the predicament that the French had got themselves into with Algharb, whilst the French retorted by referring to England as ‘Little Britain’. Both nations had undergone dramatic changes over the last half-century. The Federation with its thirty-two states, who had surrendered their sovereignty and power to the Federal Council in Brussels.
As Scotland and Wales had devolved into independent nations, and Ireland united, England had become diminished. The number of its Federal parliamentary seats had fallen from seventy-two to fifty, the same as Poland.
Though Algharb had solemnly declared its independence and was recognised by the Caliphates and other Muslim states, it was not recognised as an independent state by Brussels, where it was considered an Autonomous Region of France in accordance with the Evian Agreement represented by Paris at the Federal Council, under the tutelage of the Federation.
The Region of Provence that France appeared to have lost in the south was replaced by its gain in the north with Autonomous Region of Wallonia.
At the Federal Parliament in Strasbourg, fluctuating alliances were formed by groups of member states, having generally common interests, vied for influence. The most consistent groups were the Germans and the Latins, followed to a lesser by the Scandinavians, the ex-United Kingdom and finally the smaller states whose only point in common was their weakness.
Paris was the led the Latin group of countries, the most numerous but the most unstable, the second group was led by the Germans who were the most influential and stable, in a crisis they were sure to assemble the most allies.
On the other hand London had the greatest of difficulties in leading a cohesive group composed of the ex-members of the United Kingdom. However, England had a strong cultural influence since English had become the common language of the Federation to the chagrin of both France and Germany.
On most issues the Federation was polarised around the Germans and the Latins. The only point of common accord was the need to find a long-term solution to the problem of Algharb.
London was different from Paris not only by its form and traditions but also by its political direction and its attitudes to its own non-Anglo population. New England preserved its class society whilst at the same time practised apartheid, on occasions benign and often brutal. The upper-class Anglos were not especially pre-occupied by the presence of a large Muslim minority. They did not differentiate between the different non-Anglos descendants of Settlers from the sub-continent, Hindus or Muslims, they were much the same. The only ones who counted were those who had joined the upper classes by their wealth. The rest were mostly grouped in lower-class ethnic communities. The West Indians and other Blacks, with a few exceptions, were low in the class system whilst the East Asians, who tended to be less clannish discretely, penetrated the middle-classes.
The Anglos together with the better-off non-Anglos practised their economic apartheid living in exclusive suburbs and by sending their children to private schools.
However, both Anglos and established non-Anglo Nimbys feared the flow of refugees and economic infiltrators who in spite of the barriers erected by the Lord Lieutenant's regime to stem the flow.
A majority of the Lord Lieutenant’s ruling party, the New England Conservatives, persisted in their traditional anti-European policy. New England, a member of the European Federation, resisted the introduction by the European Parliament of all legislation that would reduce the sovereignty of member states.
It was a mere facade given its feeble minority in the Parliament. There was no alternative to Europe for New England surrounded
by the Welsh, Scots and Irish, all fervent Europeans.
The Parliament in Westminster was composed of the traditional Conservative and Labour parties, but there were also minority parties that defended the interests of the different non-Anglo communities, there were MPs that represented the interests of the different ethnic groups. They introduced and defended proposals for legislation that favoured their own communities.
New England Parliament had its share of humanitarians who defended human rights and the acceptance of new refugees; they counted in their ranks a large number of non-Anglos MPs, who viewed the arrival of new refugees as positive, especially when the new arrivals would reinforce the numbers of their own communities.
Many of the Brits, as the New Englanders still proudly called themselves, pointed the finger at France, for them le Martel was the leader of a fascist and racist regime and the shame of the Federation.
The position of the Lord Lieutenant was more nuanced. The situation of New England was different and in private he sympathised with le Martel. England's ethnic minorities were more fragmented and divided than those of France and had never presented a physical threat to the unity of the country. England's enemies had been within, the English had been