Whatever the issues in the forthcoming general election at the national level, the outcome in Smethwick in the Midlands will be greatly influenced by the colour question. It is accepted by the Labour party that Mr Patrick Gordon-Walker, shadow foreign secretary and one of the few men on the Labour front-bench with ministerial experience, will find it difficult to defend his 3,544 majority this year. In 1945 his majority in the same constituency was over 11,000. Though the decline in his majority between 1945 and 1959 is not wholly due to the controversies resulting from the inflow of immigrants, impartial observers are agreed that the Conservatives’ attitude to the immigrants has had a major bearing on the fortunes of Mr Gordon-Walker and the local Labour party.
In all there are less than 4,000 coloured immigrants in this town – between 1,750 to 2,000 Indians, about 1,400 West Indians and 400 Pakistanis. This inflow has undoubtedly created certain problems. Overcrowding is the most acute of them. Land for housing is not easily available in the town. Indians have bought over 300 houses and this raised the prices. There are nearly 600 immigrant children of school-going age and though they do not account for more than 25 per cent of the students in a particular school, they require special attention because most of them do not come from families which speak English at home. But given goodwill these and similar other problems could be tackled to produce a tolerable level of co-existence. It is this goodwill that is lacking on the part of the local Conservatives.
Not Practical
To keep the issue in proper perspective it should be stated at the outset that the Conservative party at the national level is at least not openly biased against coloured immigrants. Its enactment of the Commonwealth Immigration Act in 1962 does not necessarily disprove this view once the need for limiting the number of immigrants is recognised. At the time of the renewal of the Act last year the Labour party also modified its earlier total opposition; only it wanted the control to be exercised by the Commonwealth Governments themselves which does not appear to be a practical proposition. Also in the Midlands itself outside Smethwick, the Conservatives have tried with a good deal of success to reconcile the local people and the immigrants.
Why it should be different in Smethwick, it is difficult to say. The fact remains that it is different. The Conservatives, for instance, demand that people removed from slum areas due for demolition be denied accommodation in newly built council flats unless they have lived for ten years in the town. They ignore the other equally valid rule requiring the council to provide alternative accommodation to persons evicted from slum properties. The ten-year rule would exclude all immigrants. Also in the face of the education officers report that the immigrant children, 75 per cent Indians, get along well both in respect of education and relations with the white children, they want them to be segregated in separate classes. If the whole atmosphere has become vitiated by racialism the Conservatives are largely responsible.
To quote from a report in The Times, shortly before the municipal elections last summer, one Conservative councillor described a predominantly Indian inhabited area as a centre of vice. An investigation committee and reporters of the local paper by no means friendly to the immigrants failed to find anything sensational meriting this description. All the same the Conservatives maintained the councillor was justified in his accusations. At the time of the municipal elections the slogan “If you want a nigger neighbour, vote Labour” was circulated. The Conservatives won three seats in these elections from the Labour party.
Main plank
If it is at all possible to single out one man as the leader of the anti-immigrant movement the Conservative parliamentary candidate seems to be the man. It was he who announced the plan to deny the immigrants accommodation in new council flats. He is the author of the plan for segregation in school. In an interview to The Times Midlands correspondent he said he would not condemn anyone who said “if you want a nigger as neighbour, vote Labour.” He added “I fully understand the feelings of the people who say it”. This main plank against Mr Gordon-Walker is to exploit the latter’s uncompromising opposition to racial discrimination on the issue of immigration.
The racalists in Smethwick find in the local paper a ready means of spreading the poison. To quote one letter to the editor as an illustration of the paper’s correspondence columns, it said: “With the advent of the pseudo-socialists’ ‘coloured friends’ the incidence of tuberculosis in the area has risen to become one of the highest in the country. Can it be denied that the foul practice of spitting in public is a contributory factor? Why waste the rate-payers’ money printing notices in five different languages? People who behave worse than animals will not in the least be deterred by them”.
It cannot be denied that the incidence of tuberculosis is higher among the immigrants than among the local population. Pakistanis are probably the worst in this respect. One investigator has estimated that the incidence is 40 times higher among the Pakistani immigrants than the white population. But clearly the British authorities themselves are to blame for not eliminating such immigrants. The United States, for instance, does not admit a tubercular person.
Another place which has been in the news in connection with the inflow of immigrants is Southall, barely 20 miles from the speakers’ corner in Hyde Park. As it happens the majority of the immigrants here also are Indians. Eight years ago there was no Indian here. In 1957 a firm of rubber manufacturers was short of labour because in conditions of full employment Englishmen were no longer available for work in the hot and steamy atmosphere of a rubber factory. The firm recruited Labour in India and since then the flow has continued as the demand for Indian workers in rubber and plastic factories has risen.
There is the other category of immigrants is not clear. Towards the end of last year the figure was 4,000. The council now puts it at 6,000. Here again the problems are the same: overcrowding of houses and a rising percentage of immigrant children in schools. It was the white parents’ demand for segregation in schools and the Education Minister’s rejection of it that first brought Southall into the headlines last year.
There is the other category of immigrants, doctors, nurses, engineers and so on who do not attract adverse publicity or obvious discrimination. The national health service just cannot be run without the immigrants. They provide roughly 40 per cent of the staff. The case of plastic and rubber factories has already been cited. Similarly at the brickworks in Bedford Pakistanis are providing the much needed replacements for the Italians who leave as soon as they complete the four-year agreement to get better jobs. More of such cases can be cited. The number of coloured immigrants is estimated roughly between half and three quarter million and barely 35,000 were out of work at the time of the highest level of unemployment in years last summer.
Exaggerated
Obvious problems of adjustment face both the immigrants and the British people. But these can be easily exaggerated if attention is focussed on places like Smethwick and Southall. In Birmingham for instance there are 70,000 coloured workers and there has been no trouble worth the name. All the same the West Indians who have unreservedly accepted western culture and the English language are more easily adjusted. Indians and Pakistanis are less anxious to give up their ways. They do not hunger for social contact with the Whites. Integration is out of the question for them. Economically they do well, earning £15 to £20 a week and saving half of it to give them enough capital in two years to pay deposit on the purchase of a house. For the lime being it looks as if they are content with just that. Only if the Conservatives were sensible the immigrant voter can be won over. Stiff capital gains tax and higher rate of taxation under Labour will not please them.
The Times of India, 14 March 1964