THE young man was angry. The real trouble, he said, was the downfall of the unemployed young, white, Dutch male. There aren't in fact many of them, and the liberal, middle-class audience among whom he sat at this conference on the rise of the far right was minded to jeer. He burst out: "None of you lives in a ghetto." It was the most telling thing said that evening.

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Walk west from Rotterdam's Kruisplein and you'll see why. In two kilometres of down-market shopping street, one face in two or three is white. Cross the canal into Spangen, a district that still voted 39% for Labour in the March local elections when, city-wide, that long-dominant party was routed by an almost ad hoc group called Liveable Rotterdam (LR), led by Pim Fortuyn. A primary school is coming out. Hardly one of the children is white. "You see what we're on about?" says an LR man.

Fortuyn is dead, murdered just before the Dutch general election in May. The totally ad hoc national "party" he had put together for the election is in utter disarray. Its vote, 17% in May, is now almost invisible to pollsters. The three-party cabinet that it joined, as the number two force, collapsed last month. After the new election, on January 22nd, its partners, the Christian Democrats and Liberals, may well form a government on their own. But Fortuynism is not dead: these two parties have taken it aboard; so, if less so, has Labour, the big loser in May. The campaign will be about "security" (ie, crime), immigration and integration—for many voters, all one issue.

An ugly campaign it may be. But at last the old parties have noticed what Fortuyn did: that immigration and its effect on the fabric of society are real issues that do not go away just because the elite chooses not to mention them. Fortuyn, in fact, was not on about race, but culture, specifically that of the Muslim Turks and Moroccans who (with people from the Dutch Antilles, Surinamese and some West Africans) make up 6% of the population. But race is visible, and in Rotterdam the figure is 30%, not 6%.

Facing up to reality, at last

If the newcomers' integration, or lack of it, into Dutch society that Fortuyn talked of were the only problem, it would be hard enough. But just as visible is crime. Any Dutch voter will tell you about it; many associate it with immigrants; and they are not wholly wrong, as even newcomers' defenders admit. Of 250-odd people jailed last year for street crimes in central Rotterdam, 80% were from ethnic minorities.

Minority is a catch-all term. The Turks have a better reputation than others. One LR councillor would like all illegal entrants packed off home, but would turn a "blind eye to those who work." For example? Turks, he says, generally do so, but too many Moroccans live off drugs. "Turks are more modern, more educated, more adaptable than Moroccans. They're the next group that will integrate," says a reporter in Rotterdam.

Indeed, the big crime worry there now is about neither Moroccans nor Turks but the (non-Muslim) Antilleans. Nor is fear of crime a one-party or one-skin-colour affair. Rotterdam's town-hall weekly newsletter recently asked four councillors what changes they would most like to see. Three put security first. Two were LR; one was a Labour man—and, ethnically, a Turk.

What is to be done? The outgoing government, with a Fortuynist minister, Hilbrand Nawijn, in charge of immigration and integration, set out, with some success, to close the doors, especially against asylum-seekers. But Mr Nawijn also studied ways to stop, notably, Moroccans bringing in new wives or husbands from their villages. He even took a look at depriving some Moroccan, but Dutch-citizen, criminals of their citizenship, so they could be deported; unconstitutional, he was told.

As to integration, new arrivals were already required to take courses in language and citizenship—1,000 hours, within a year. On top, Mr Nawijn proposed to charge euro6,000 ($5,940), half refundable if the newcomer completes the course.

In Rotterdam, run by a "cabinet" that includes three from LR, two Liberals and two Christian Democrats, the big priority is security. But integration is number two. One aim is by 2006 to get 50% of "