For Those in Peril on the Sea but for Those At Home Too

Silvio Berlusconi was not Angels' choice for Prime Minister of Italy. But he was for most Italians - indeed he has enormous support, from the mid-fifties percent acknowledged by La Repubblica (the Guardian of the Italian press) to the over seventy percent claimed by Berlusconi himself. Wherever the figure lies, Mr Berlusconi has an absolute and undisputed majority.

Despite popular belief to the contrary, the Italian administration at every level is efficient, and works more rather than less according to the rules, with power devolved to lowest effective levels and a high rate of participation in voting and political debate. So what the Italians have just decided to do about immigration is certainly theirs to own, and ours to consider very carefully, because it impacts on the whole continent and confronts issues that are deeply divisive in the United Kingdom.

Italy has decided it does not accept multiculturalism; settle in Italy and embrace their language, freedoms, restrictions, values, laws, practices, or don't come. Italian culture is not unaware and most certainly not cold or unkind, but it is grounded in the belief that it is the most beautiful, the most vivid, the most important and the best. Oh yes, notions of best, and of better and worst, and abject failure, are ingrained. In the last week the national legislature has been acting, with enormous majorities, to assert this. Every attempt by international bodies, the United Nations, the European Union to stop them has been met with most willing negotiations and conciliation, the setting up of whatever safeguards have been demanded for human rights, but they are immovable.

The boatloads of people being trafficked across the Mediterranean by criminal organisations (and do the Italians understand criminal organisations!) are being met in international waters and escorted back to their points of sail on the north African coast. Night after night there are pictures of the appalling condition, both of the sea and the boats the migrants are embarked in, as they are stopped, often hauled out of the water slopping over their vessels, and returned to a place of at least physical safety. For those who claim political asylum a centre for processing claims has been provided under the guidance and control of the United Nations. For the economic migrants, those collected together from an enormous area and packaged for onward transit by the people traffickers, there is application to enter Italy by legal channels. Hundreds and hundreds have drowned in recent years so at least that has been ended, as it had to be. As the Prime Minister said, no-one must be left to die in the sea as have so many we did not reach in time. But rescue cannot confer access. The traffickers must be stopped.

That is the first set of arrangements voted into place. Those voted for inside Italy are severe. Anyone without temporary or permanent resident's status will now find it very difficult to access work, lodgings, health care, schooling, or any welfare service. Both the non-resident and the provider of any of these factors will be liable to fines and/or imprisonment, followed by removal for the non-resident. Right of abode will not be extended automatically to spouses or other family members. To remain requires demonstrating an ability to support oneself by legal and sufficiently remunerated employment. The requirements go on and on.

We sat in front of the television yesterday evening gobsmacked as the deputies were shown giving their votes one by one in overwhelming numbers. The Left coalition broke as the votes were called out and the names appeared on the screen above the Speaker's chair.

What this means for other member-states of the EU is so far-reaching it is hard to think it all through. What is certain is that the people traffickers will not cease their activities; the demand is too great and the profits too high and important for the global grey and black economy. But as each member-state closes its borders and denies internal acceptance of migrant labour and its dependants, other states that do not will be targetted. Few cultures assert their predominance as do the Italians, by English current standards every Italian would be in prison for thought crime. But some stances of multiculturalism are going to give.

Angels first reactions are that these are half measures. This is the implementation of one side of a policy. Our countries have plundered half the world for our living standards, and our value systems depend on not seeing what we have done. These acts should be accompanied by enormous expenditure in making good the lives of those who cannot do it alone. Another is that all the false piety of human rights can be met without even touching the real injustice of economic intransigence on the part of some of us. All these human righters had better get out there facing down the rich, not facing down their unease by unleashing the poorest against the poor. Another immediate thought was the speed, the determination, the unity of will displayed by Italians who have had enough watching the assaults on their world by exploiters of the wretched of the Earth. They have defended what they can, locally. They have resisted the Northern Leagues (Italy's BNP) outrageous demands, they have ignored their own bishops calls for the wishy washy worthlessness of attitude but no action embodied in our current response to the crunching movement of cultural tectonic plates. Once they set aside their elaborate exoskeleton of courtesy, Italians speak senza peli sulla lingua - bare-tongued and, to the great credit of their democratic system and to their willingness to listen, any one of them can appeal to the Tribunal on the propriety and lawfulness of any of this, and will be heard.

It all gives new meaning to:

Most Holy Spirit! Who didst brood
Upon the chaos dark and rude,
And bid its angry tumult cease
And give, for wild confusion, peace
Oh hear us when we cry to thee
For those in peril on the sea.