FOSTERING APARTHEID

Roy Kerridge questions the idea that foster

children and parents must be racially matched, and attends the Jasmine Beckford inquiry as a witness

MRS BOATENG, wife of Paul, appears to be responsible for introducing 'black separ- atism' to Lambeth's social services, includ- ing the fostering and adoption depart- ments. An unholy combination of 'black Not long ago, Lambeth social services held an open day in Brixton, chiefly in order to persuade West Indian parents to foster children of their own colour. I went along, finding the office in bustling Atlan- tic Road with some difficulty. Cheerful, confident social workers stood talking amid heaps of pamphlets reading: 'Ques- tionnaire for Families Interested in Foster- ing. 1. Christian names. 2. Date of birth. 3. Race.'

A middle-aged social worker named Beryl poured me a cup of coffee and blandly repeated the party line that no one must foster or adopt a child of a different colour to themselves. 'Otherwise the child will not know its own racial identity,' she explained. Nothing angers the pedlars of black pride, white pride and racial identities more than the careless way members of the public have of marrying one another re- gardless of colour, and of unofficially looking after one another's children. The science of sociology lays great stress on watertight compartments of class and race, and it's too bad if the public insists on ignoring these! The social services are fighting to correct the public's slipshod tendency to make friends where it will. 'Identity' and 'self-image' are becoming the jargon words of the day. They have even crept into the current issue of Nation- al Front News, where Ted Budden writes on Assamese and Bengali clashes in a style and spirit familiar to many who work for the social services. 'The Assamese have massacred the invaders. Now I'm not suggesting that the (East End) British should massacre the Bengalis. I am sug- gesting that they display just a little sense of outrage at the loss of their identity', he says.

While quoting from little-known news- papers, I should not forget the Voice, a weekly aimed at West Indian readers in London. One of their reporters asked a 'spokesman for Lambeth council' for his views on a case of child injury leading to death, and was told: 'Lambeth social services will not make any comment be- cause the report is beng discussed secretly.'

This tendency of the social services to see themselves as the secret services ought to be looked into while there is still time. Some of their formerly hidden activities have been dragged reluctantly into the light at the inquiry into the death of Jasmine Beckford held at Brent Town Hall. Much of the time there has been spent discussing the case conference wherein it was decided to return Jasmine and her sister Louise to the mercies or otherwise of their mother and stepfather. Interested parties who hold views that might clash with the party line are some- times excluded from Why had the social services allowed them to foster the two girls in the first place? The Proberts had already success- fully brought up two coloured foster daughters, one of whom accompanied them to a hearing at the inquiry. Demure and well-dressed, she seemed a credit to any parent. Mr Probert is an Indian, his wife is English, and both had specified that they wanted 'black children' for long-term fostering. So over to Brent Town Hall to try to clear up these mysteries.

In one half of a sunny hall with large windows overlooking a flat rooftop, the inquiry panel sits at a long row of tables facing the counsels for Brent social ser- vices. A row of desks behind the Brent-ites is reserved for the press, and everyone else sits on chairs, on the floor, or leans against the walls. Most of the audience are mem- bers of Brent social services anxious to see that no harm comes to any of their friends. Gunn Wahlstrom, the Swedish social worker in charge of Jasmine at the time of the child's death, sits wanly in the audi- ence, burly friends on either side. She resembles an over-haughty Princess Anne most of the time, but seems to shrink or swell according to how she feels the case is going.

Louis Blom-Cooper QC is the chairman of the inquiry, a man with the grand air of a self-assured, slightly vain old clubman. He is ably assisted by a keen-eyed dark-haired barrister, Miss Baxendale. Far from domi- nating the inquiry, as I had imagined, Russell Profitt, the would-be black sec- tioneer (once tipped as panel chairman), is a model of reticence. The Probert foster parents are represented by two alternating barristers, both serious-looking young ladies of West Indian descent and of great ability. One by one, members of Brent social services and others involved in the case rise from the audience to sit in what might be called a witness box if this were a court case and not an inquiry with no disciplinary powers. Quite early in the inquiry, Carol Rogers, Brent's head of fostering and adoption (the department concerned with the Beckford children), was called up to answer questions. A middle-aged spinsterish woman, painfully slow of speech, she seemed to surprise the Proberts' counsel by her ideas on racial identity. It appeared that at first the Proberts had been considered a black family, as Mr Probert was of Indian des- cent. That may be why they had been encouraged to foster Jasmine and Louise, who came from a West Indian home. Then came a change of policy.

`Mr Probert is an Anglo-Indian and has comparatively little contact with his own family,' Miss Rogers explained. `In my view his orientation is more white than towards any other racial group.'

So Jasmine and Louise were to be removed, to be returned crying to the black home where they had been so mal- treated. Once apparently 'black', the Pro- berts had inexplicably been re-classified as white, and it would be unlikely that they could ever foster black children again. The admirable counsel for the Proberts seemed somewhat unimpressed. Speaking slowly and carefully, so that Miss Rogers might understand, she posed the following ques- tions: 'Supposing you knew a white couple who had no white friends and who only associ- ated with black people. How would you define them: still as a white couple?'

'As white individuals, but with a very poor self-image,' was the reply. Apparent- ly they would be unfit to foster black children, and had small chance of getting white children either.

'Now supposing you knew a black family who for some reason had no relations in England. All their friends were white and they were steeped in white culture. Let us say that they enjoyed punk rock music. Would you classify them as not suitable to have a black child because of their self- image?'

Just as Miss Rogers began to burble disconnected phrases about 'a faulty self- image' and 'a poor sense of being black', Blom-Cooper interrupted the counsel and told her that she need not `absorb all her energies in this issue with Miss Rogers'. The burblings, I later noticed, did not appear on the official transcript of the hearing, but I remember them very well.

The head of fostering and adoption in Brent left the room to murmurs of 'what a nice lady'. `Self-images' and other false idols and images still rule the pantheon of Welfare gods.

It's an odd thing, a self-image. I must have run through quite a few in my time — a schoolboy naturalist, a teenage delin- quent, a thwarted novelist. Yet all the time I was me, my self more real than its ephemeral images. In the earliest self- image I can remember, I was a rabbit. Brent social workers appear to believe that a child of three can sit in a childen's home thinking `I'm black, I'm black.' Whereas (I can now reveal) what the child is really thinking is 'I'm a choo-choo train.' I advise Brent council to forget the self-images of others and try and see its own image in the mirror instead.

When Gabrielle Probert, the bereaved foster mother, took her place for question- ing, Mr Bond, the social services' counsel, sharply asked her why she had wanted black children and why she liked black people. He repeated the last question meaningly, as if such a preference showed a depravity unusual in Brent. It now appeared (sinister fact!) that most of Mrs Probert's friends were black.

'I don't know why I like them — I just do,' she faltered nervously before his steely-spectacled gaze. 'It must be because I love my husband and he's black.'

Throughout the case, there has been a tendency to regard Maurice Beckford, the stepfather, who killed Jasmine, as a Rasta.

This may be because Rastas often look and behave so differently from white people that they encourage the myth of a separate `black culture', the official reason for apartheid. The Proberts were repeatedly asked, to their bewilderment, if they knew the 'correct' diet and hair style that Jas- mine had required. It took Mr Beckford's employer, the sensible young owner of a scaffolding firm, to put the record straight.

'Mr Beckford a Rasta? No! He may have had long hair, but he didn't know any of the Rasta beliefs.'

Did he object violently to his children being fostered with a white family?' some- one asked.

'No he didn't mind Mrs Probert being white, but he came to work in a rage saying his children had gone to a Paki.'

Speaking for myself, the strangest part of the tribunal was my own surprise role as a witness. Following an article I wrote in

the Spectator on Gunn Wahlstrom's be- haviour in another case ('How Brent cares

for children', 27 April), I received a courteous letter from Blom-Cooper asking me to appear at Brent Town hall and give my views. A tribunal official explained that I was being called as an expert on West Indian affairs! Flattered, I accepted, and for three days I sat waiting among the social workers as Blom-Cooper and others deplored the fact that the tribunal was being held in public and that the press could get in. Sometimes it seemed as if the press were a guilty party in their eyes, and that the Proberts too stood condemned by Brent social services for having spoken to the evil minions of Fleet Street. As a matter of fact it had been a reporter who first told the shocked foster parents of Jasmine's death and who led Mrs Probert to her foster daughter's grave.

Through their inquiry, the names of those who were to be cross-examined were withheld from the public and the press.

This, Blom-Cooper explained, was a de- liberate policy, designed to protect those appearing. Sometimes the tribunal was held in private for short sessions. Feverish rumours swept the press benches. When would Gunn appear?

`Mr Roy Kerridge!'

After being shown how to work a micro- phone, I found myself gazing into the keen, probing eyes of Miss Baxendale.

Then, to my amazement, the idea sprang into my mind that I had merely been asked as a sacrificial member of the press. My article about Gunn had contained two inaccuracies about dates, and my one paragraph recapping (in muddled form) the Jasmine Beckford case was taken as the whole substance of my essay. Battered by constant questions, I made a poor showing of it, my rehearsed views on West Indians and social workers of no avail. Next day I returned, Blom-Cooper roaring my name aloud (no protection.needed here). Gunn's counsel, the steely-spectacled Bond, first of all accused me of spelling Gunn's name wrong. Despite all other reportage of the case, he insisted I should have written 'Gun'. If I were Gunn, I would stay as I was, thankful to be spared from remarks such as 'Who will fire the Gun?' I conceded this, however.