The Archers, in case you are one of the blissfully ignorant and unaddicted, has of late discovered the existence of ethnic “diversity” in this country.

Admittedly, it has a lot of time to make up for; the Windrush set sail in the middle of the last century, but foreigners arrived in Ambridge only at the start of this one.

That fine actor Adrian Lester said recently of his part in the new TV drama Hustle that he felt that at last black actors were making progress because they could be cast as villains as well as heroes, dodgy as well as decent — that is, they are allowed to be just like everyone else. Not in The Archers they’re not! The recent plotline concerning villagers’ attitude to Luke the Suicidal Junkie made this startlingly clear. In the pure corner, helping Luke, were the Selfless Vicar Who Was Married To A Black Lady (now dead), the Saintly Jamaican Mother-in-Law of said vicar and the Sensitive Mixed-Race Daughter of the vicar. In the horrid corner, harassing Luke until he finally hoofed it, was the ignorant white working class. But at least some of them are sorry now and are supporting the vicar in his dream of establishing a non-judgmental shooting gallery on Lakey Hill.

Then of course there is Usha Gupta, a lawyer so saintly that she even defended a prole yobbo who had previously been involved in a race-hate attack on her, and Lucas, the angelic black South African journalist who pops up once in a while to make everyone count their blessings because they’ve never been under the jackboot of an evil fascist regime — though you wouldn’t know that to hear David Archer moaning about the farmer’s lot. But, too good to be true as these characters are, there is something appropriate about their belated arrival in Ambridge — heart-warming, even.

The villagers have taken only a couple of years to realise what it took the rest of our island race several decades to come to terms with, but it is nonetheless a poignant and resonant lesson. And that is that they are here because we were there; we started it, we owed them, and they were infinitely patient with us when they had every right to be angry. Britain imagined itself the adult, the stern but fair paterfamilias of its empire — but it was the immigrants who came here in the 30 years after the War who helped to bring us up, bring us out, bring us home. Whether nursing us or keeping their shops open for our convenience, they kept on giving to the cold mother country. And finally they taught us fair play — brought the lesson home so soundly that the National Front just faded away.

But now the BNP is on the rise and shows no sign of stopping. And the interesting thing is that this time it’s not about colour. It’s not about Usha and Lucas and the vicar’s mixed-race daughter. It’s about people as white as we are. It’s about Chaba.

Chaba appeared at the farm belonging to Ruth and David Archer about three years ago. He was Hungarian, in his late teens. He was one of those characters, like Luke the Junkie, who was a sort of litmus test of Good and Evil. If you were nice, you liked him; if you were horrid, you resented him.

The only people who didn’t like Chaba were a couple of white working-class boys who apparently resented the attention he received from the local girls.

But of course there was another reason altogether why these boys might not have approved of this paragon of virtue. Since The Archers developed a social conscience some time in the Eighties, the plight of the rural poor and the lack of jobs and housing for the children of farm labourers has been a recurrent theme. The Grundys were finally allowed to step beyond the realms of farce some years back when they lost their humble homestead and were moved to a tower block, Meadow Rise — which almost destroyed them with its soullessness. The youngest son’s subsequent life of crime is shown to be a direct result of his failure to find a modest job in farming on one of the many estates of his affluent neighbours.

And then, out of nowhere, on a farm owned by a couple who have paid much moaning lip service to how awful the plight of the rural poor in general and that of the Grundys in particular is, Chaba turns up. All the way from Hungary. To learn how to be a farm worker. Don’t they have farms in Hungary, then? And if there was a job going on Home Farm, didn’t it occur to the socially conscious young Archers to offer it to the despairing, unemployed son of their friends and neighbours?

The Chaba Effect, if you will, is what has bid the BNP rise from the ashes of the National Front. And this time it’s serious — because they have a point.

And that point isn’t the loser voodoo of skin colour. That point is that bringing in tens of thousands of people from Eastern Europe does no one good but the bosses. It robs the countries they leave of the young and strong and it robs the countries they go to of any chance that the working class can take back even a little of the pride and power they had before Thatcher, because what sort of bargaining chip is the withdrawal of labour if there are thousands of eager Eastern Europeans willing to work for peanuts?

I AM OPPOSED TO WHITE IMMIGRATION TO THIS COUNTRY. I love saying that! People hear the word “immigration” and they start to go “Racist!” And then they hear the word white. Then I step in and hit them with the fact that about two thirds of all black and Asian Britons are opposed to mass white immigration, too. Are they racists? Hardly! Just people at the sharp end who know how little there is to go around already when it comes to housing, health, schools.

White liberals here are appalled by the way many wealthy Americans overwork and underpay their Latin American servants. But how is it different from this country having a pool of eager, exploitable Eastern Europeans? The excuse is always that there are certain jobs that the indigenous working class “won’t” do, at the “lower end of hospitality and catering”, as one minister described the jobs those plucky Hungarians are bound for. But there is a simple reason why they won’t do them; because the work is hard and the wages disgustingly low.

And this is the surreal situation many “socialists” have talked themselves into; being in favour of the mass immigration of a foreign servant underclass rather than supporting the efforts of the native working class — black, brown and white alike — to use a shortage of labour in order to push pitifully low wages up.

Put a Jamaican or an Indian next door to me and I’ll lend them cups of sugar till the cows come home. But put next door to me a Hungarian, who is by his very presence keeping down the worker’s wage, and I’ll be piqued. Because we weren’t there, and they shouldn’t be here. That may be nasty, and it may be unfraternal — but it certainly isn’t racist. DON’T TRUST

WHITEY! was an old Black Power slogan — and when it comes to mass immigration, those are my sentiments exactly.

julie.burchill@thetimes.co.uk