"I'm not racist," Rose told me over a cup of tea, "but immigration has got too much."
It was the 27 August 2011 and I was in Romford, Essex, on the first day of a three-month tour around the UK seeking the views of ordinary people about the state of British society for my book, British Voices.
"I go on the bus," Rose went on, her voice shaking a little, "and there are lots of people not speaking English. I used to know every family in this street but now I hardly recognise anyone. People come and go and you don't know them - it's like a different country now."
I was reminded of Rose when I saw a Yougov poll commissioned by the Progress thinktank in which 56% of those polled said they were in favour of ending all immigration to the UK, more than half of whom were strongly in favour of such a policy. Only 39% of people were opposed, and only a third of them were 'strongly opposed'. It is always dangerous to give too much credence to individual polls but such negative attitudes towards immigration are hardly uncommon (see, for example, this from Ipsos-Mori and this from Populus). Even in the context of this trend, the suggestion in the Yougov poll that a majority of British people would like to end all immigration to this country merits further reflection.
Before going further, it is worth noting that I am in the minority of people in this country (according to Yougov) who are strongly opposed to stopping all immigration to the UK. Yet the poll and others like it remind me of why I wrote a book which seeks to understand the attitudes which lie behind the figures in opinion polls: faced with such results, it might be easy for someone with my views to dismiss or to ignore the findings. But to do so would be to gloss over the concerns people have and to fail to understand - or even to try to understand - why so many people feel the way they do.
On a political level, the perils of not seeking to understand attitudes about immigration were highlighted in the run-up to the 2010 election when Gordon Brown was overheard referring to Gillian Duffy, a voter in Rochdale, as "bigoted". The moment seemed to encapsulate not just how out of touch many voters felt the Labour Party was, but also the gap in understanding between the political class and the rest of the country. I don't know Ms Duffy, but I do know from travelling around researching my book that a lot of lies behind the way people feel about immigration: concerns about jobs, public services and housing of course, but also something deeper, a sense that the country is changing in a way that people never expected and that they are struggling to come to terms with this change. "No one ever asked me if this is how I wanted my country to be," one man said to me on my travels, and I'll never forget it. Politicians would do well to remember such sentiments too.
That is not to say, however, that trying to understand those who have a different perspective is always easy. I remember, for example, finding it extremely difficult when, during our interview, Rose used the word 'coloured' to refer to people she saw on her local bus: it is a word which I imagined would have very negative associations for many of my readers and I considered at length whether I should reproduce it in the book. Ultimately I chose to do so, believing that trying to sanitise the concerns that people had would simply leave those feelings to fester. The sentiments people express and the language they use when talking about immigration often makes for uncomfortable reading (see, for example, the first chapter of the book here) but you have to start from where people are.
Immigration is an issue which politicians seem to struggle to talk about because of these negative associations, but if it is seen as a route to talk about the underlying insecurities people feel then it should be seen as a significant opportunity to reconnect with people. The country has changed hugely, trust in institutions has fallen, a job for life is an idea of the past while the future looks deeply uncertain. It is no wonder that many people feel anxious and insecure. Addressing those insecurities does not mean abandoning pro-immigration principles or pandering to anyone - it means having the humility to accept that many others see things differently, seeking to understand why they do and trying to change their minds. All of us who disagree with people like Rose at the very least owe them that courtesy.