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The Republic of Ireland is the main source of immigrants at present. No one knows the exact figures, for there is no official check, but it is estimated in Dublin that perhaps fifty thousand young Irishmen and Irishwomen have entered Britain in each recent year.

This migration has raised some new economic, social, and religious problems and revived some old ones. It is also beginning to affect, although as yet very slightly, political balances in the western Midlands, for this area is short of labor and its industries gobble up willing young men from across the Irish Sea.

These industrial recruits from a rural background become part of an advanced industrial proletariat. By nature and by upbringing they are foreign to the industrial society that uses them. Their political outlook is far different from that of the loyal trade-unionists beside whom they work. They are much less liable to be impressed by appeals for union solidarity and Labor Party support. They accept the benefits of the Welfare State, but they are not of it. The economic Marxism of the orators in the constituency labor parties is beyond them; besides, have they not been warned that Marx is of the devil? The incorporation of this group into the Socialist proletariat poses a question for Labor politicians of the future.