It has been dubbed population replacement: The displacement of indigenous European populations by mass immigration, particularly from the Muslim world, and the cultural transformation which goes with it, enthusiastically facilitated by the powers that be across Europe. There has been much concern expressed on this site and beyond about the levels of immigration bringing this about and about the islamisation of our societies resulting from it.

That’s one half of the equation. The other side is the dramatic fall-off in birth rates among European populations to below replacement level. The UK’s annual birth rate per 1,000 population is 12.22, just below that of France. Italy’s is 8.84 and Germany is even lower at 8.42. For the population to maintain itself at replacement level, the number of children born per woman needs to be 2.1. In Italy each woman now has on average 1.34 children. In the UK births per woman are rising notably due to the number of foreign-born mothers. For comparison, Afghanistan’s birth rate per 1,000 is 38.84 and Somalia’s 40.87. Niger tops the list at 46.12, one of 36 African countries with a birth rate over 30 per 1,000.

A few years ago I was quite comfortable with population decline from an environmental point of view. I know there’s great scepticism in UKIP and the wider right to any notion that our planet might struggle to sustain ever-growing numbers of humans, that any resource may become depleted, or that increasing development might degrade the environment or threaten biodiversity. However I do believe that far too much of this overcrowded island has already been lost to concrete and I don’t see how we can accommodate the current rate of increase without destroying even more of our countryside.

Of course, falling birth rates among the indigenous British has not led to a falling overall population and a re-greening of the land. Economists worry about who will be working to pay the pensions of an ageing people. Big companies want their market to expand, not shrink. Politicians welcome mass immigration as a solution which enables them to virtue-signal at the same time. Paul Collier shows in his Book ‘Exodus’ how immigration is a socially-costly short term solution to those problems, which compounds problems in the long term. (I thoroughly recommend his book and may eventually get round to writing a review of it in these pages.)

Commentators have recently noted the number of leaders of Western countries who are now childless, suggesting that this means they don’t understand what it’s like to bring up a family and that they perhaps have little stake in a future in which they have no children or grand-children to grow up in – a particularly cruel criticism of Theresa May, who found herself unable to have children, rather than being childless through choice.

We not only have a culture which seems to promote the impression that family life is uncool, unattractive and even politically incorrect, but many people don’t see how they can afford it. No wonder people are deciding not to have kids.

On the subject of immigration, Anne Marie Waters has been a vocal campaigner against Islamisation in the UK and I have previously been an enthusiastic supporter of her bid to lead UKIP. She is also a lesbian. Peter Whittle and David Coburn are also openly gay and vying for the UKIP leadership. From murdered Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, to the many gay supporters of Marine Le Pen, to the recent Gays Against Sharia rally in Manchester, homosexuals are increasingly outspoken critics of Islam. They know how they are treated under Sharia. The attitudes of the British Muslim community was amply demonstrated in their Twitter reactions recently to the first UK Muslim gay marriage.

The participation of gays is of course welcomed by UKIP and much of the right. Moreover it enables us to dispel the old image of the right as being reactionary and intolerant and helps us to get our message across to a wider younger audience.

How does our embrace of homosexuality fit with our defence of the traditional family though? Surely the normalisation of homosexuality has played a part in the collapsing indigenous European birth rate!

I have to confess that, as a shy young man lacking confidence with girls – and as a keen leftie – listening to the political lesbians demonising and denigrating all men did nothing for my self-esteem or mental health, and didn’t leave me with a warm fuzzy feeling about lesbians. Of course not all lesbians are raging man-hating feminists. It just so happens that they find they prefer women – and who can seriously argue that their preference impinges on anyone else’s freedom? Just because someone is homosexual, doesn’t mean they can’t also be pro-family.

Is it possible to argue that modern Western society promotes homosexuality? Certainly no amount of cool gay pop stars or school sex education lessons saying it’s OK could make sex with another man appeal to me. Then again, I see a lot of young women walking hand-in-hand in our local studenty area. We now have transgender awareness being introduced in schools and children being encouraged to question their gender identity at a young age. Research has found clusters of transgender children in schools where the head-teacher is particularly pushing this agenda. Are we confusing impressionable young minds?

This is the 21st century though. You can have gay families, lesbian families, all sorts of non-traditional families. Adoption and IVF are available to gays, lesbians and single women. Older women can give birth with donor eggs. There have been instances of transgender men giving birth. How long till transgender women can have a womb transplant? Is it any less healthy for children to grow up in a non-traditional family? I haven’t seen any research to answer that. Surely it’s better than growing up in an environment of domestic violence, mental health problems or addiction.

“I don’t mean to come on strong, but I am concerned,” as Parliament/Funkadelic said in a song coincidentally entitled ‘Biological Speculation’.

[To be continued tomorrow in Part 2, which is a must-read!]

Photo by James Cridland

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