Right

By SIR CYRIL OSBORNE, MP

IMMIGRATION has been swept under the carpet and for the next twelve months all three parties are pretending its tragic problems do not exist. What fools we are.

Here is the gravest problem facing our country, and with a guilty conscience the leaders of all parties arc playing the coward and refusing to meet the challenge. The Tory leaders arc dis- quieted that their Act was after all so moderate and so late. Had they imposed greater restric- tions years earlier, there would have been no problem in England now. They were far too frightened of the Labour fanatics and of alleged Commonwealth opinion.

The Liberals are publicly pledged to repeal the Act and their most garrulous member said, 'I still loathe this Act . . . the sooner we can scrub this Act off the statute book the better.' Fine words— but no vote against came from the Liberals when the Act was renewed.

But Labour is the most guilty party. They were beside themselves wilh rage. They were insanely self-righteous that this miserable shabby shame- ful Bill' (Gaitskelh should ever get on the statute

sboolc, Gordon Walker said, 'We bitterly oppose the Bill. It is so ill conceived that it will not achieve its own misbegotten purpose.' Why did he not resign when it was-renewed in its entirety?

Now their gentle fair-minded Home Secretary, Sir Frank Soskice, says 'the Government [Labour] are firmly convinced that an effective control is indispensable. That we accept and have always accepted.' Really, Sir Frank, you must reread your Foreign Secretary's speeches, but I grate- fully accept your final judgment: 'we must have an effective control whatever else we have.'

Already there are at least 800,000 coloured immigrants in this country. Labour in office now says only 1,600 to 2,000 per month will be accepted. Mr. Ray Gunter, Minister of Labour, admitted that 290,000 applications for C vouchers (largely unskilled workers in search of a job) were in from Pakistan and India alone. But despite the hysterics of Labour in opposition, he said, 'we have not issued any C vouchers for a very long time.' A Tory Minister of Labour would Snot have got a hearing to make such a statement, let alone Gunter's final conclusion, 'I believe that in the best interest of the Common- wealth countries and their citizens as well as our- selves it would be as well to continue this Act.'

Mr. Michael Foot said the Act in his opinion was `a detestable thing which I should like to sec removed altogether from the statute book.' But even he failed to vote against when it was renewed. He merely repeated the old claim that people from the Commonwealth should be able to come to this country without any impediment whatsoever. Strange that Michael should be sup- porting the old Gaitskell policy! I have a letter from the Secretary of the Parliamentary Labour Party which says, `Mr. Gaitskell has asked me ... to say ... the Labour Party is opposed to the restriction of immigration as every Common- wealth citizen has the right as a British citizen to enter this country at will.' It is a pity Mr. Wil- son has not notified Michael that he has changed the Gaitskell and Labour Party policy with- out Mr. Foot's knowledge or consent. 'I wonder if Patrick Gordon Walker really knows?

Now that every sane person agrees control to be inevitable, what more should we do? Before answering let us look squarely at the facts. Britain is the most densely populated part of the Com- monwealth, places like Hong Kong excepted. The density per square mile is: UK 573, India 344, Pakistan 257, Ghana 53, Kenya 33, Nigeria 112, Jamaica 367, Canada 5, Australia 3 and New Zealand 23. This is the last place where there is room for surplus population.

All this is made worse by the world population explosion, most of it in Asia—much in the Commonwealth. It is expected to increase from the present 3,000 million to 6,000 million by the end of the century. It is no act of God nor a temporary freak of nature. It will get worse. Take India's case, for example. She has about 9 million' totally unemployed and 18 million chronically under-employed. Her income per capita is one-sixteenth ours. She has 270 million living on 30. a ,day and despite all this her population is expected to increase by another 100 million in the next ten years. Obviously they cannot all come here. If India's infant mortality rates were as low and her expectancy of life as high as ours, with the killer diseases like malaria, cholera and smallpox ended, her population increase would be fantastic.

Or look at the comparable incomes per capita. In the UK we have £409, Jamaica £157. Ceylon £40, Nigeria £28, India £24 and Pakistan £19. Naturally they want to come here and share our affluence. International socialism or equal sham

arc not; possible, for our workers would not accept the abject poverty this would entail.

Our increasing affluence has been built on their deepening poverty. The terms of trade have changed so much in our favour since 1953 that the rich white nations are paying the poor coloured peoples about $14,000 million per annum less for the raw-materials we extract from their countries to give us a standard of living ten to twenty times higher than they themselves `enjoy.' This is a monstrous international injustice. But it will not be put right merely by.our allow- ing a handful (to them) of their surplus popula- tion to come here.

The problem of immigration is not one of colour, but of poverty and numbers. We can absorb neither their numbers nor their poverty. That is why--and not because of their skins— restriction and control are inevitable.

I plead for a five-year ban on all fresh im- migration so as to allow time for local authorities to deal with the koblems of overcrowding and schooling in the twilight areas. I would exempt the children and grandchildren of people born in Britain. I would also control far more strictly the entry of families allegedly joining immigrants already here. I would stop the widespread eva- sions which Labour's Home Secretary admits exist. I would further make deportation compul- sory for immigrants found guilty of serious crime even if they have lived here for fifteen years.

I agree that anyone who deliberately stirs up hatred on grounds of race, religion or colour should be punished severely. On the other hand, the .English people have a perfect right to pro- tect their own way of life in their own country. According to some Labour speakers it would seem the only people without rights in England are the English people themselves. Race, poverty, colour and population are the problems that threaten to tear mankind apart. No one in any part of the world, no matter how noble his intentions, has yet found an answer to these growing and baffling problems. We cannot cure the racial tensions of the whole world merely by importing a small proportion of them into our own country.

It is the frightening increase in their numbers, their abject poverty and the physical impossibility of all their surplus unemployed, half-starved and often illiterate population being admitted to these already overcrowded islands that make far stricter control inevitable. Of course it looks like a colour bar, but that is unavoidable because the vast majority who want to come are coloured.

I have no sympathy with the Fascists who want to turn this perplexing problem into a battle cry. But those who so vehemently denounce the slogan 'Keep Britain White' should answer the 'And that's what I intend to do . . . unless, of course, you have any objection?'

question, do they want- to turn it black? If un- limited immigration were allowed, we should ultimately become a chocolate-coloured, Afro- Asian mixed society. That I do not want. Nor, I believe, do the vast majority of the working families of this country against whom the human tragedies of immigration press hardest.