Sir: Hugh Dykes, MP (April 22), appears to take the
position that British people ought to accept the Race Relations Acts, which make them second class citizens in their own country, because, as a quid pro quo, fewer immigrants are being admitted. This is, as to the first part, morally extremely dubious, and as to the second part the exact opposite of the truth.
Mr Dykes's slighting reference to Mr Powell is not enough to make that gentleman and his factual statements disappear, and official figures indeed show that Commonwealth immigration is rising rather than falling. Furthermore, the Government is committed to admitting all Asian UK passport holders, who were said by the Home Secretary on February 27, 1968, to number "at least ", 1,200,000. The present position of admitting them in stages is rapidly being eroded, and it seems likely that the Strasbourg Human Rights Commission will force us to admit all at once. More UK passports are being distributed all the time to employees of High Commissions to compound the problem. It was also recently admitted by the Indian government that at least 10,000 illegal Indian immigrants a year were coming here. What the actual number is from all the Commonwealth can be imagined.
Lastly, Mr Dykes appears not to know that the Common Market means absolutely free immigration, not only for the Six, but also for the French overseas departments and any other countries which join the Market, which will include Turkey in a few years, and, according to Mr Ernst Wistrich of the European Movement, will soon include all the world. The restricted immigration of which Mr Dykes speaks therefore includes as a first step 50,000,000 Moslem Asiatics.
If we reflect that the Registrar General's figures show that almost one quarter of all births in England and Wales are to couples at least one of whom is an
immigrant (not necessarily coloured), we can see that the smug complacency of those who, like Mr Dykes, have helped create the problem but are personally far distant from it, is out of place, and what is rather needed is a last effort to save the British nation from finally disappearing in an unlimited alien flood.
David Lazaras 38 Cedar Road, London NW2