THE COLOUR PROBLEM IN BRITAIN

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By FENNER BROCKWAY TDEALLY there should be no restriction of im- migration. Freedom of movement is included in the United Nations Declaration of Human

Rights. In one of those asides which used to scare Foreign Office civil servants, Ernest Bevin antici- pated a time when passports would be scrapped. But we are a long way from becoming citizens of the world, and even a world government will • have to treat the problem of the overpopulated and underpopulated areas of the earth. Mean- while, so long as separate sovereign States per- sist, the right to restrict incoming peoples must be accepted when conditions require limitation. These conditions are recognised to include pres- sure on the population and the state of the economy. British experience suggests that the availability of accommodation may also have to be taken into account.

The issue of race is irrelevant to these con- ditions. The case against the Commonwealth Immigrants Act is that in origin and practice it is racially discriminatory. The agitation which preceded it and triumphed in its enactment was viciously prejudiced by colour feeling. In opera- tion the Act, when it proved impossible to apply its provisions to Irish immigrants, has been almost exclusively a measure to turn away coloured persons from our shores. The public defence of the Act has been openly directed to the alleged need to avoid a mixture of races in Britain. At the election, in Smethwick and, less so, in Slough, the opposition to Mr. Gordon Walker and myself was colour-racialist. The Act is regarded as a charter for the protection of a white society.

No case can be made, immediately at least, for the limitation of immigration to Britain on the ground of the pressure of population. Except in the last few years, the number of people leaving Britain since the war has been greater than the number coming to Britain. The time may come when natural growth may overcrowd our island and unrestricted immigration would expedite this. Certainly the future must be in mind as we determine policy and legislation.

Nor can limitation be justified by an inability of the economy to bear it. Overall there is a shortage of labour. The prosperous factories of the Midlands and the South, compelled to resort to overtime work, would be unable to fulfil their orders without immigrant labour. Our railways and our hospitals would be seriously under- staffed without immigrant personnel. I some- times think that the best treatment for those Who are obsessed with colour prejudice would be to send them to hospital. They would find it difficult to resist the influence of the care and skill of Caribbean nurses and Indian doctors.

Nevertheless, the presence of coloured immi- grants has caused undoubted difficulties. They naturally concentrate on towns where work is easily available. This immediately accentuates the worst of our problems, the shortage of houses. Let me illustrate by Slough. We have over 1,200 vacancies for jobs at the employment exchange.

Workers pour into the town, and there is no accommodation for them. Overcrowding is rife. No young married couple can get a house or flat; they have to live with in-laws or in one- and two-room lodgings. When, in such circum- stances, the white residents see 6,000 'coloureds' accommodated, bitterness is inevitable.

The immigrants club together to buy a house at an extortionate price or a richer immigrant

will buy a dwelling and let rooms, sometimes only a bed. The overcrowding is appalling. A survey by the Council for Social Services* shows that the immigrants are more than twice .as many to room as the general population. The slum conditions which develop intensify anti-colour feeling, particularly among neighbours.

The racialist emotion affects only a minority, but in these conditions it grows to dangerous proportions. The most exaggerated reports spread. I don't know how many times I have had the complaint in Slough that the 'coloureds' are allotted council houses in preference to those who have been on the housing list for many years. In fact, there are fewer than ten immi- grant families among the occupants of 6,800 local authority dwellings. The idea is prevalent that because the immigrants live in these squalid conditions they accept them willingly as con- tinuing the 'primitive' environment of the terri- tories from which they have come. The Slough survey shows that 77 per cent -resent them. The immigrants are charged with uncleanliness and unhygienic habits. The survey pays a tribute to the cleanliness of their houses, despite the limited space. They are charged with spreading tuberculosis and venereal diseases. The survey states that these diseases are not racial but social in prevalence and causation. They are charged with prediliction to crime. The survey records that crime is not proportionately greater among them than the residents of Slough as a whole.

Our major concern in Britain must be to pre- vent the growth .here of an apartheid psychology. The danger lies principally in the housing shortage in the areas to which the immigrants come. They are not the cause of the shortage —we have failed to house ourselves but they have been made its scapegoats. We permit them to come to conditions which foster bad feeling against them. This is not fair to them and it incites the racial bitterness and hatred all decent- minded people seek to avoid.

The great necessities are a gigantic nation-wide crusade of house building and a redistribution of employment so that the immigrant com- munities do not concentrate in ghettoes in particular areas. Until that is done substantially, for the sake of racial goodwill I would be pre- pared to limit immigration. But it must be done with an approach which proves that our motive is not racialist. This involves three imperatives.

* COLOUR AND COMMUNITY. (Community Centre, Slough, 5s. 9d. post free.)

The first is that any immigration control shall not be imposed on the Commonwealth nations, but shall be a mutual arrangement by agreement with them. It has been stated that Common- wealth Governments declined to respond to dis- cussions before the Commonwealth Immigrants Bill was introduced. I have reason to believe that the invitation was not pressed and that most of them would now be ready to co-operate.

Second, we must demonstrate that we are de- termined to end discrimination against the coloured population already in Britain. Racial prejudice cannot be ended by legislation; it can be removed only gradually by education and by inter-racial association in favourable environ- mental conditions. Private relationships are out- side the scope of the State; one would hesitate to legislate even in the worst sphere of dis- crimination, which is the exclusion of coloured persons from private lodgings. But in public places—hotels, public houses, places of entertain- ment, dance halls, cafes—we have the duty to make illegal the practice of discrimination. I am happy to know that a Bill to this end will shortly be introduced by the Government.

The third necessity is to co-operate with the Commonwealth governments in ending in their territories the poverty which has led so many of their people to seek a livelihood in Britain. We have a great responsibility. In the colonialist period, becat& our need was raw materials and foodstuffs, we left these territories with un- balanced economies. Planned Commonwealth de- velopment would be a far preferable way to limit immigration than any Immigration Act.