Ugandan Asians
Sir: Congratulations on your article of August 12 — 'A plain matter of duty '. For once I agreed with every word you said. Richard Reid 30 Love Lane, Pinner, Middlesex Sir: Probably far more of your readers were astonished by your article on Uganda's Asians (August 12) than shared your astonishment at not instantly admitting 40,000 of them into this country. Let us consider some facts. For a number of reasons, economic betterment amongst them, Asians emigrated to Africa and have remained there for a number of generations. The countries which they have made their homes, having become independent, are responding to a basic inuitive urge to have their land controlled, owned and populated by those who share their race, instinctive attitudes and beliefs. All over the world ex-colonial countries have been doing the same thing unnoticed by the media. And from all these countries expatriates have been returning to their homelands.
The British Empire contracted very quickly, Had it been slower the laws, agreements and understandings that formed part of its structure would have eroded away gently and questions of citizenship would have become lost in time. But since this did not happen and we are living in the real world past promises have to be revised to meet present conditions. The UK is the second most populated country in the world with many more people per square mile than the sub-continent of India. It is a Western country with a white population, its conventions and style of life conditioned by Christian ethics. Many European nations are having second thoughts on allowing nationals of neighbouring states to enter their countries in any number and, Switzerland amongst them, have taken action to impose limitations. Ghanaians and Nigerians have forced each other's nationals to move back to their homelands. In all of these cases, in Europe and in Africa, the differences which divided the various life styles were small. But there is a vast divide between the Asian and those who have come to form the basic population of this country over the last thousand years. The various coloured races who have come to this country are so conscious of these differences and so anxious to preserve them, and rightly so, that they have set up enclaves in our midst to allow them to retain their own life-style rather than submerge themselves in our way of life which is totally alien to them.
We can no longer disregard the statistical assessment that within the lifetime of our grandchildren half of the population of the UK will be colotrred. In the entire world there are no more than a handful of voices, nearly all of them in this country, which have been raised to applaud the destruction of a nation's heritage and way of life through the importation of alien peoples. Many thousands from this country died in World War II to prevent the destruction of a culture and life style which they wish
ed to retain in preference to the ideas of another way of living.
International governmental undertakings have validity in the circumstances in which they are made. They are not eternal through time. We have no responsibility for the Ugandan Asians or for Asians anywhere. The UK is not their home and should not be made so. If those countries to which they emigrated will no longer have them the Asians in Uganda must return to those countries from which they came on the Indian sub-continent to become again part of their own heritage, surrounded by their own culture and not be either encounaged or allowed to set up encampments in the United Kingdom.
Anthony Baird 24 Backwards Lane, Lindfield, nr Haywards Heath, Sussex
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