RACE TO THE TOP

Dhiren Bhagat traces the imperial

roots of the race relations industry, and its perverted growth in modern Britain

We do not have to be at the barricades to be revolutionaries; we do not have to be grass- rootists to be radical. To apprehend the social consequences of what we ourselves are doing and set out to change it — merely to be traitors to our class — is in itself a revolution- ary act.

Institute of Race Relations/Race Today Collective, March 1974

REMEMBER the black and white comic book that created a stir last year? Ronald Butt in the Times described it as 'a book of great wickedness', Baroness Cox called it `grotesquely dishonest and blatantly in- tended to stir up racial conflict'. Predict- ably, the All London Teachers Against Racism and Fascism recommended it as 'a highly readable yet serious book', particu- larly suitable for 12-year-olds; the National Council for Educational Standards cited it as evidence of the 'political subversion of education'. In the House of Lords it was denounced as 'this monstrous document, totally one sided in its approach to a very real problem, this document which can speak of the abolition of slavery without mentioning Wilberforce, this hotchpotch of half truth and misrepresentation . . .'; the Education Secretary, Sir Keith Joseph, in a policy statement condemned 'those who . . . want to subvert our fundamental values and institutions': I give as an example a recent publication by the oddly called Institute of Race Relations. It is a cartoon book, presumably designed for the young, which, for example, depicts a British judge saying, and I quote: 'I s'pose you are innocent until proven guilty, as long as you are white that is. If you are white and wear a blue uniform, however, well, then we all know you are innocent even when proven guilty.'

Within months of its publication How Racism Came to Britain (IRR, £2.95) sold out, ran into a second impression, was translated into Dutch. Within months of its publication Britain saw some of the worst race riots ever, a policeman was killed by black youths in Tottenham, at least one commentator seemed to connect the riots with such blatant anti-police propaganda. For most people this comic book came to symbolise race relations at their looniest and most dangerous. Yet three weeks ago, when I began to look at the race relations industry in order to write this piece, there were other candidates which claimed my attention.

Take RAT, for instance. Racial Aware- ness Therapy is, quite simply, anti-racist brainwashing. Like most well-meaning progressive ideas of our time it was dreamt up in the US — on a Florida military base, in fact, in the late Sixties — and has been trying to cross the Atlantic for a while. The Scarman Report on the 1981 riots, with its emphasis on the cultural effects of racism on poor blacks, gave RAT the necessary encouragement and today at least a dozen local authorities have ethnic units and ethnic officers and — of course — RATs. I thought I might start by calling on Mrs Pledger of Muriel Street, Islington, the local government employee who was bun- dled off to a compulsory RAT course by her employers because she failed to invite some of her 'black' colleagues to a party at her residence. Better still, I thought I would attend a RAT programme and see for myself.

`Don't waste your time with RAT,' an Indian friend who knows the race relations business warned, 'it's just a few blacks trying to make money from guilty whites. One would expect the Spectator to write about it: it's too easy a target. Go to the Institute of Race Relations and try to work out this man Sivanandan who runs it. There are people in the Left — like Stuart Hall and David Edgar — who take him very seriously. Pluto have published his essays. You'll find a story there.'

I did. It is the story of the race relations industry.

There are two problems in world politics today which transcend all others. They are the struggle between Communism and liber- al' democracy, and the problem of race relations. Of the two I am prepared to argue that the problem of race relations is the more important. . . . I therefore put forward the proposition that the interested parties . . . should consider as a matter of urgency the establishment of a Commonwealth Institute of Race Relations for the scientific and objective study of matters related to race and colour. . . .

THAT was H. V. Hodson, not yet the editor of the Sunday Times, speaking at Chatham House on 4 July 1950, and was virtually the birth of race relations. The Empire was breaking up and the 'racial' Punjab massacres of 1947 had troubled a good many observers at the Royal Institute of International Studies. Could 'scientific' study help? Hodson thought it a viable project and set about trying to find some money to back the department that would inaugurate the new discipline.

In 1952 Philip Mason, the former ICS man who had won a reputation from his brilliant history The Men Who Ruled India, decided there was no way he could make a living writing history books and farming a smallholding. He arranged to visit London to see his old Balliol friend Harry Hodson. They met at the Athenaeum, where Mason was persuaded to become the director of the body to research the problems of the end of Empire. Shortly after, Dougall Malcomn, chairman of the British South Africa Company, arranged a dinner at Brooks's where he and the other guests among them Ronald Prain, chairman of Roan Antelope and the Rhodesian Selec- tion Trust, and Harry Oppenheimer guaranteed £15,000 for the next three years for the Institute.

The African mining interests of the original sponsors were not a coincidence. `We thought of race relations really as something that didn't happen in England,' Mason recalls. Africa was the crucial area and he pretty soon began to study the racial problems of Kenya, and, later, Rhodesia. 'It's so difficult for people to see now. I talked to the Governing Body about this and they all said, "Well in England we don't have this problem. We get on very well, there's no colour feeling in England." They were all liberal, you see.' To begin with, Mason agreed with the Council. But as he kept his eyes open in England he began to see that 'this was rubbish'. 'About 1954 or 1955 I said to the Council we must extend our press cuttings to include Bri- tain. There was going to be a problem quite soon in Britain. They said, "No, no, no, no, no, we're a tolerant people." But I persisted and finally had my way.' The first publication on Britain, however, did not appear till 1958, when the riots in Notting Hill broke out.

Early in 1958, riots between the Tamils and the Sinhalese disturbed life in Ceylon for the first time. Sivanandan was a young Tamil bank manager married to a Sinhalese. Though his home in Ratnamala- na was spared, his father's home was attacked. 'The riots were for me my moment of truth.' He decided he had to leave Ceylon. Colonial practices still obtained, so the bank gave him 'home leave', and sent him to England on fur- lough. (He chuckles.) He landed in Not- ting Hill 'in the middle of the riots. It was a double baptism of fire. I said, that's it. No more banking, no more that.' He bummed around, ending up as teaboy in the library in Kingsbury.

The IRR had, in the meantime, sepa- rated itself from Chatham House and moved to 59 Jermyn Street. In the early Sixties the Institute — and its Director came to occupy a central place in the newly sprouting race relations business. Mason was a member of the Commonwealth Immigrants Advisory Council (CIAC), established under the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act so that the Home Secret- ary could be advised on the subject. Lady Reading was the chairman of the commit- tee, and was very keen that a more permanent body be established, which would inquire into aspects of race rela- tions. The National Committee for Com- monwealth Immigrants (NCCI or Nicky) was established and Mason chaired it.

In 1964 Sivanandan joined the IRR as a librarian. He had qualified as a librarian 'at the expense of the British taxpayer', as Philip Mason remarked to me. He was taken on, Mason explained, 'primarily because he was not English. . . in the conventional sense of the word.' I was the first black person to be employed by the Institute,' Savanandan said confidently, then paused. 'Well, the librarian before me also — the reason I said I was the first black person was because she was an upper-class Indian who would not think of herself as non-white. . . . Black in a sense became the colour of our politics.'

The same year a Labour government was returned after 13 years of Tory rule. Despite election promises to the contrary, it was in no position to repeal the Com- monwealth Immigration Act 1962 which halted the free entry of Commonwealth subjects. Patrick Gordon Walker had lost at Smethwick to a Tory candidate who was using the slogan, 'If you want a nigger neighbour, vote Labour.' But the new government wished to make up for this `betrayal' by expanding NCCI. Little Nicky became Big Nicky. From a budget of £6,000 a year NCCI expanded to £200,000. (In 1966 Big Nicky grew into the Race Relations Board under Mark Bonham Car- ter.) Initially, it was thought that Mason should continue as chairman but later the Archbishop of Canterbury was roped in `to bring sanctity to the Holy See of Discri- mination' (Sivanandan). Mason served as a member but 'that was the point when I began to feel I was getting out of it. . . . It was becoming very official.' It was at this time that Michael Wharton, in his Peter Simple column in the Telegraph, invented the expression 'the race relations industry'.

Mason found the new librarian, Sivanan- dan, particularly quiet. 'For two or three years he was very shy, very quiet. One hoped one was helping him restore his confidence.' Sivanandan, unknown to his colleagues at the IRR, had joined the Black Unity and Freedom Party, a Marxist-Leninist outfit in South London, `one of the most important parties of the time'. Underground he got involved in several black self-help organisations like Harambe. 'The people in the Institute didn't know because I was only a hireling, I was only a librarian. As long as I wore a tie and jacket and came to lunch at the right time they didn't notice.'

Mason, as befits a man who has written a book called The English Gentleman: The Rise and Fall of an Ideal, believed in running things the old way. 'More and more, they wanted me to run things like a republic. Simon Abbott, my assistant, once said to me, "These days a lot of places run things that way." I said, "Over my dead body".' He laughs. 'I said I'd meet the staff once a week but I don't believe in committees.'

Mason managed to control his staff. His successor, Hugh Tinker, a professor of Indian history from the School of Oriental and African Studies, was not so fortunate. `When the trouble began Tinker treated the whole thing as if it were a debating society. It was a government body but he was not an administration man.' Sivanandan, who was a head of department by now, began manipulating Tinker. Two 'issues' were found on which the staff opposed the Governing Council. Tinker, foolishly perhaps, went along with the — increasingly black and brown staff. (`He felt a strong sympathy with the sense of wrong that eats at the heart of many black people, and he wanted to do something about it. He told me he wanted a cause,' says Mason.) Chris Mullard, the left-wing professor of ethnic studies at Amsterdam, has recently published an account of the battle at the IRR which led to the takeover in 1972 by Sivanandan, Race, Power and Resistance (Routledge and Kegan Paul, £19.95); un- fortunately it is far too ideological and does not capture the `fun' of the whole thing. A two-hour conversation with Sivanandan gives one a clearer picture of what went on. I ask: Did Tinker support you ideological- ly?' What ideology? Nobody knew what ideology there was. It was black but it was also white. I was liberal, we were playing democracy.' He laughs. Was there total confusion then? 'No, we knew what we were talking about. That's the great thing about democracy. . . . The practitioners know what they are talking about. You think when Thatcher says democracy she doesn't know what she is talking about? She means democracy for the white and not for the black. She means democracy for the rich and not for the poor. In this case we were the Thatchers . . . ha ha ha. . .

ONE reason why England has been sing- ularly free of revolution is that the Estab- lishment has a way of accommodating the bright have-nots, neutralising potential dis- sent. At one time it used to be done through the Church; nearer our time, until the advent of Mrs Shirley Williams, grammar schools served that function; Oxford and Cambridge have always done so. Race relations committees are in precisely that tradition, yet they attract unfavourable attention. The Left complains because it hates to see good men being bought, the Right complains because it hates to see good money being wasted.

The point about committees is that they are supposed to numb those who sit on them. In 1965, however, a man called Michael de Freitas — a.k.a. Abdul Malik, a.k.a. Michael X — came to London from the Caribbean and formed the Racial Action Adjustment Society (RAAS). No committee ever contained him. For one, it was a purely cynical exercise to shake some money out of Whitey: raas in patois is a corruption of the English word 'arse', the RAAS lads were known in the community as de raas clath boys. (A raas clath is a tampon.) But what distinguished RAAS was not the cyn'cism with which it was run: it was its aggro ive militancy, a militancy designed not ju to frighten Whitey but to impress him int paying. And the money did come pouring in: from pop stars, from fashionable people. Richard West recalls a journalist coming away 'transformed' by a chance encounter. She kept blubbering about his power and potency. Eventually, West asked what Michael X had said to her. `Oh, he just said: "Fuck off, Whitey." ' It sounds odd, but a little force gets you a long way with liberals. Michael X under- stood this perfectly. It is no coincidence Sivanandan is an admirer of Michael X. In an essay called 'From Resistance to Rebel- lion' (A Different Hunger, Pluto Press, £3.95), Sivanandan defends his hero from the standard charges posterity has laid against him, criminality and thuggery. 'The line between politics and crime, after all, is a thin one, in a capitalist society.'

Sivanandan is not Michael X but he is playing the RAAS game and he knows the value of talking tough. 'If you look behind my desk,' he said to me, 'you will find an iron stick.'

`Have you ever needed to use that stick?'

He smiles cunningly. 'I won't answer that.' Somehow I do not think he has ever used it, but he wants me to believe that he has. Then he laughs loudly, cynically. `Write: "I'm a mild-mannered man not given to violence." ' He is really pleased with his joke. He is cunning and tough.

Playing tough with softies, pretending you're a liberal then suddenly pulling a left hook, is a game of which Sivanandan has much experience. The takeover of the Institute — the 'palace revolution' as he likes to call it — was achieved just that way. 'We were playing on a liberal basis. We fought on the basis of journalistic freedom. Then academic freedom. We had no interest in these liberal arguments. We were exploiting them. You need to be a peasant like me to be able to do these things.'

The end came swiftly. One day during a meeting of the Council Sivanandan gave the call and the staff occupied the cham- `Bias from the judiciary . . .' from 'How Racism came to Britain' (Institute of Race Relations, f2.95).

ber. (`Plush carpets, superb furniture . . 30 or 40 of us, just came into the board- room. . . . It became so crowded, I re- member there was a fat girl called Barbara Omar seated on the table in front of Lord, Boyle. When Boyle tried to address the Chair he had to get around her buttocks. There was a Nigerian girl Obokoye with a shrill voice who kept shouting: How dare you talk this way? They were never used to seeing black women sitting on tables. The manners threw them into dismay. They said, "Where are your manners?" I said, "To hell with your manners." At that point they panicked and said: "Right. You want democracy. All right we'll put it to the membership." We said, "OK, an extraor- dinary general meeting will decide whether Sandy Kirby is to go or stay, whether Race Today is to be shut down.'

The EGM was held at St James's Picca- dilly on 18 April 1972. The Black Unity and Freedom Party were handing out leaflets. It was a massive meeting. The press, everybody was there. The staff won, but not fairly; 488 per cent of the mem- bership voted for us. I'll tell you the reason. . . Sivanandan grows conspirato- rial. He is under the impression that I am doing this article solely for an Indian paper — he does not know I will be writing it for the Spectator as well. If he had know that, he would not have told the full story. 'I think I can go on record now. The mem- bership had to be okayed by the council. But for the first time we had staff repre- sentation on the Council.' He is trium- phant now. 'What we did was for many months without their knowledge,' his voice drops for the last three words, then he mutters, 'This is for the Indian audience only — what we did was to recruit black members by paying their membership out of our own salaries.' He looks around, fearful lest his past should catch up with him, ruin the elation. 'We paid out of our own salaries — because most of our black friends — brothers and sisters — didn't have the money.' Nor, one suspects, the inclination. But I am not in the mood for a quibble. In his boastfulness he has admit- ted on record — for the first time — that the takeover was fraudulent. My little Aiwa tape machine looks pleased.

The Council resigned when they heard the verdict. 'It was all in the papers the next day. . . . By this time the thing had become international. There were people writing from the United States, from France, from Holland.' Sivanandan looks as pleased as my Aiwa machine.

When the Council resigned the IRR lost all its money. It moved from Jermyn Street to a leaking warehouse on Pentonville Road. Sivanandan became director and most of the staff lost their jobs. But all was not lost. The World Council of Churches gave the IRR a large grant, more recently the Gulbenkian Foundation, the Trans- national Institute in Amsterdam and the GLC have helped out: under Ken Living- stone's regime the GLC paid out £300,000 to the IRR, £120,000 of it as a capital grant towards buying their present premises on Leeke Street.

THE sad thing about Sivanandan and his Institution is not that he makes a living out of race. If that was all he did he would be harmless. After all, the immigrants have genuine grievances, real problems. If he made a little noise about their problems and in turn got some money for drawing the authorities' attention, everyone would be better off. But Sivanandan is into something else.

Philip Mason, in his second volume of memoirs, A Thread of Silk (Michael Rus- sell, £9.95), calls it Panonandaism — the views of Frantz Fanon interpreted by our librarian Sivanandan. In reply to the white cruelty and contempt which he had en- countered in Algeria, Frantz Fanon had expressed in his writings a reaction no less violent and unreasoning, a blind hatred of everything white, a rejection of Western culture, a glorification of violence as good in itself.' Later in the same chapter Mason tells of the occasion when 'Siva, whose temper was hot, who admired violence,' had to be restrained from throttling the telephonist.

I think Mason does Fanon an injustice. Reading Black Skin, White Masks (reis- sued in 1986 by Pluto Press, £4.95) and comparing his work with Sivanandan's one is immediately aware of Fanon's subtlety. The penultimate chapter of the book con- tains a section called 'The Negro and Hegel' which discusses Hegel's idea that `self consciousness exists . . only by being acknowledged or recognised.'

There is not an open conflict between white and black. One day the White Master, without conflict, recognised the Negro slave.

But the former slave wants to make himself recognised. . . .

He who is reluctant to recognise me opposes me. . . .

One day a good white master who had influence said to his friends, 'Let's be nice to the niggers. . .

The other masters argued, for after all it was not an easy thing, but then they decided to promote the machine animal men to the supreme rank of men.

Slavery shall no longer exist on French soil. . . .

But the Negro knows nothing of the cost of freedom, for he has not fought for it. From time to time he has fought for Liberty and Justice, but these were always white liberty and justice. . . .

When it does happen that the Negro looks fiercely at the white man, the white man tells him: 'Brother there is no difference between us.' And yet the Negro knows there is a difference. He wants it. He wants the white man to turn on him and shout: 'Damn nigger.' Then he would have that unique chance — to 'show them' . .

But most often there is nothing — nothing but indifference, or a paternalistic curiosity.

The former slave needs a challenge to his humanity, he wants a conflict, a riot... .

Now compare this generalised statement of the case with Sivanandan's specific complaints: (I am not making these up as I go along, I have them all on tape, scattered throughout the interview. I have added nothing. Even the emphasis is there.'

You ask me why is it that the Director of the Institute of Race Relations didn't know that I the librarian was a troublemaker. . . . Because he thought I was a nice coolie boy. Who would behave himself and say yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir. And I did. For four years. . . . They didn't even look. They're high-class people. They wouldn't look at little me. . . . They (Mason and others) were so cocky. This is what I mean about paternal- ism. Paternalism forgets you are a human being. Paternalism says: well, I am responsi- ble for you like I am responsible for a dog. . . .

This is race relations at its deadliest. Can it be that the passage from Fanon explains the takeover of the IRR, or even the hatred in the comic book? It was Sivanan- dan who gave me all the photocopies of the angry response to the book. He looked completely victorious. 'Look, look, they even mentioned us in the House of Lords!'