Birmingham’s Coloureds

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30897, 2 November 1965, Page 19

Birmingham’s Coloureds

(Special Crspdt. N.Z P A ) LONDON, Nov. 1. The Government’s professed determination to integrate Britain’s coloured immigrants is about to face its most crucial test —“in the ring of decaying, overcrowded Victorian slums around Birmingham’s city centre,” says the “Observer.” Final details of powers that will allow Birmingham Corporation to register and control the multi-occupied houses

in which most immigrants live are now being studied by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. “What critics see as the dangerous paradox is that the same sweeping powers—which do not mention immigrants and are aimed at improving and containing appalling housing conditions shared by all races—could, it is generally agreed, be used to create ghettos and keep the rest of the city white.” The “Observer” says there is nothing to stop the local authority ignoring existing overcrowding and poor facilities within immigrants' districts—and, without giving reasons, refusing to allow coloured families to move into houses outside.

From January 1, Birmingham Corporation will be able to compel existing and proposed new lodging-houses and houses containing more than one family to register. And it can deny permission if the house or its owner is unsuitable, or if it is in “a locality the amenity or character of which would be injured.” Unfit Houses Landlords of overcrowded or unfit houses can be given notice —probably 28 days—to put their surplus tenants on the street, effect improvements, or face heavy fines for being unregistered. Second offenders could face a prison sentence.

There is a right of appeal to a county court: but amendments aimed at defining the type of district where permission might be refused and compelling the corporation to give reasons for the refusal were outvoted in the committee stage of the Birmingham

Corporation Act when it passed through the House of Commons earlier this year. The “Observer” says the scheme has been attacked by two Durham University sociologists who spent two years studying housing problems at Sparkbrook, one of the city’s main immigrant areas. “However unprejudiced the corporation’s aims, they say, the act will mean racial segregation in practice, existing multi-occupied houses would not be cleared because their occupants could not be rehoused, and the only result would be to stop them moving to similar accommodation elsewhere.”

Immigrant organisations are already planning representations against the Act, the newspaper says. They believe it will mean either compulsory segregation or enforced and homeless dispersal.