Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
68 years ago, shortly after I was born, the world did not look too dissimilar to today. Europe was full of displaced foreigners, many living in barely sanitary camps, fighting a daily battle for survival. Britain, in particular, had received large numbers of these 'foreigners' who were viewed with great suspicion. They were seen as taking away the jobs of returning servicemen; of being a burden on the state; the children as 'swamping local schools'. There was a shortage of Doctors and Nurses, hospitals were under resourced; the war years had left a nation bedevilled by disease, ignorance and squalor. We even had the requisite hate media figures - instead of Lord and Lady Green, we had Lord and Lady Docker with their gold plated Daimlers with zebra skin interiors, swanning around Monaco. Surprisingly, given that many of my generation believe that we fought the war against the Nazi's because of the horrors of the Holocaust - there was a lively seam ...