Fighting Colour Bar In U.K.

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31346, 17 April 1967, Page 13

Fighting Colour Bar In U.K.

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter— Copy right? LONDON, April 16.

Parliament should give Britain’s Race Relations Board wider powers to stamp out discrimination against immigrants, says a report published by an independent race relations body today.

The report, drawn up by the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination, (C.A.R.D.) gave details of 43 alleged cases of discrimination, mostly against coloured immigrants in employment, housing and insurance, and by the police. It said local racial conciliation committees set up under a race relations act in

1965 were ineffective, and added that the committees, the Government and local authorities were reluctant to “face the facts” about discrimination. Mr Anthony Lester, chairman of C.A.R.D.’s legal committee, said that the Race Relations Board should have power to obtain evidence, hold hearings, and make orders for such things as monetary compensation for victims of discrimination. Indian Lecturer The introduction to the report, written by Indian-born Mr Dipal Nandy, a lecturer in English literature at a British university, spoke of the present “pervasive helpnessess of the victims of racial discrimination.” It said the Race Relations Board was “condemned by the terms of its reference under the Race Relations Act

to spend its time in negotiations with public house landlords and proprietors of private hotels while human lives are blighted and disfigured thus round us every day.” “The atmosphere of race relations must be changed,” the report said. “The only way in which it can be changed is by a declaration from the community a- a whole that it finds such behaviour unacceptable this is what legislation can do.” Mr Lester said that he hoped to see this legislation passed in Parliament in the next 18 months. He said copies of the C.A.R.D. report would be sent to the Trades Union Congress, the Confederation of British Industries, the Home Office, the Board of Trade and the Housing and Labour Ministries. The 43 cases of alleged discrimination quoted by the re-

port came from spontaneous complaints by private individuals and investigations by C.A.R.D. workers. One ease told of an Indian, with a first class degree from Calcutta University and a second class degree from Oxford University, who failed to get a job as a schoolteacher and had to work behind'the counter of a men’s wear shop.

Five other Indians complained that they were given less time to do a job than their English colleagues and therefore deprived of bonuses. Other complaints alleged brutality, abusive language and false charges by the police. In housing and insurance, C.A.R.D. testers found coloured immigrants were barred from certain accommodation and had to pay higher rents and insurance premiums than whites.