Last week millions of television viewers in this country saw and heard Governor Wallace of Alabama and extremist American young men brashly expound the doctrine of segregation. The Governor made great play with the assertion that the British adopted a holier than thou attitude because they were not faced with the problem of integrating coloured immigrants within their community on anything like the American scale. He brushed aside the interviewer’s objection that the British people would never tolerate anything like the policy of segregation. The Governor was probably not aware that the reporter was an Australian whose country has no race problem for the simple reason that it has kept the coloureds out.
It is neither possible nor desirable to generalise on the reaction of the viewers to Governor Wallace and his fanatical band. But there must have been many who shared their self-righteous assertion of white supremacy. This section of the British community has not made a secret of its resentment at the presence of the coloured immigrants in this country. The grounds for the resentment that are cited are well known. The coloured immigrants increase the existing pressure on housing, schools, medical services and employment opportunities. They crowd residential houses and flats making for insanitary conditions. They are noisy and even dirty. It is however only too obvious that the trouble is much deeper than that. That none of these objections stand up to scrutiny has been shown by various surveys and studies.
In fairness it must be said that the enlightened section of the community is appalled at the subtle and often not so subtle forms of discrimination against the immigrants. Mass media of communication like the BBC and quality papers are already engaged in fighting this pernicious trend. It would be an exaggeration to say that there is anything like a crisis of conscience. But there is no dearth of evidence of an awareness of the problem and this awareness is growing. The allocation of £70,000 by the Nuffield Foundation to the Institute of Race Relations for a five-year survey of all aspects of race relations in the country is symbolic of the urgency with which the problem is being approached.
Tense Area
In all there are only about 500,000 coloured immigrants in this country. This figure accounts for barely one per cent of the population. There is nothing quite like Harlem here but the immigrants tend to be concentrated in certain areas. For instance in the town of Southall, ten miles from the Hyde Park corner, about 9,000 Indians and Pakistanis account for one-sixth of the population. They have bought 500 houses and resentment grows as the house agents’ “sold” signs go up in front of more and more houses.
Here the situation is less fluid than elsewhere though the relations of the immigrants and the British population have not settled into a rigid pattern of hostility. In Southall, Mosley thugs have made a considerable nuisance of themselves. There have been cases of attack on the immigrants by Teddy boys. The immigrants complain of discrimination in places of entertainment. In at least one pub they are refused drinks though there is no notice on the wall. The presence of a large number of black children in schools is resented by white parents. Fortunately there are men and women of goodwill who are trying to tackle the problem.
To refer to these problems is not to strike an attitude of self-righteousness. Social integration of different races is difficult to achieve anywhere. British society was more or less homogeneous till the late fifties. It has, therefore, only brief experience of dealing with this problem. The problem is complicated by the tendency of the immigrants to congregate in selected towns and areas. Also they themselves do not show sufficient aptitude to make the necessary adjustment in terms of their way of life. Many of them have no intention to settle down here permanently. For instance, 40 per cent of the Indians and 69 per cent of the Pakistanis re-emigrated between 1955 and 1960.
This brings me to the Commonwealth Immigrants Act which is due to be debated in the coming session of parliament. The dilemma it poses to the British people’s conscience is their own affair. One can sympathise with the effort to limit the number of immigrants. What is wholly intolerable is the second part of the Act which deals with deportation. Under this section one can be deported for the smallest offence and some of the magistrates have used the powers granted to them only too readily. Fortunately not many Indians have suffered on this account. All the same this deportation procedure remains the most offensive aspect of the Act.
Orgies
There is naturally a great deal of relief here that the vile rumour about the private lives of prominent public men have been scotched by Lord Denning. Britain had become a subject of fun and ridicule abroad particularly on the Continent where some of the magazines carried well-spiced versions of these rumours with convenient blank spaces for names. In this atmosphere of relief and self-congratulation Lord Denning’s findings on sexual orgies that attracted so much attention during Dr. Ward’s trial have virtually gone unnoticed.
According to Lord Denning, “at some of these parties the man who serves the dinner is nearly naked except for a small square piece of lace round his waist such as a waitress might wear. He wears a black mask over his head with slits for eyeholes. I am satisfied it is followed by perverted sex orgies; that the man in the mask is a ‘slave’ who is whipped; that the guests undress and indulge in sexual intercourse one with the other, and indulge in other sexual activities of a vile revolting nature.” Dr. Ward attended these parties.
Name dropper
Once the existence of such a group became public knowledge through a statement by Marilyn Rice-Davies it provided an ideal background for floating the vilest rumours. Ward was himself a great name-dropper, a habit peculiar to all social climbers. Lord Denning has narrated an interesting incident of how he dropped names. One day when a member of Parliament was visiting him he pretended he and Captain Ivanoy were going out to dinner with Mr Ian McLeod, leader of the House of Commons, when the fact was they had gatecrashed into a party for young people of eighteen or nineteen years of age at Mr McLeod’s residence.
Still I for one remain intrigued that the disclosure that Mr Profumo had lied should have so completely shaken popular confidence in the integrity of Ministers that the people should have been willing to believe the worst about so many of them. Even at gatherings of men who are trained to be sceptical, hardly anyone showed unwillingness to lap up the rumours. In this context the distinction which is elaborately made between public and private life would appear to be a little artificial. The British are finding it hard to maintain it. The ghost of Senator McCarthy continues to be invoked by the defenders of the distinction. It silences but does not quite convince.
The Times of India, 6 October 1963