Discrimination Plea Fails

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31560, 23 December 1967, Page 13

Discrimination Plea Fails

(N.Z. P.A. -Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, Dec. 22. The British Government today refused to discriminate against coloured immigrants to Britain in favour of those from Australia, Canada and New Zealand. A right-wing Conservative member, Mr Patrick Wall, had urged this in the House of Commons during a debate on Commonwealth immigration. However, Mr David Ennals, Under-Secretary at the Home Office, which deals with immigrants, said the proposal would be resented.

“It would be seen throughout the world as though we had one rule for the white and one for the coloured —one rule for the ‘old’ Commonwealth and one for the ‘new’,” he said.

This was not what the country or Commonwealth wanted, he said. Openly discriminatory legislation would damage relations with individual Commonwealth countries.

Applications for extension of work permits would encounter no difficulties with the Home Office. The real difficulty was when people disregarded the controls, Mr Ennals said. Sometimes circumstances relating to individual Australians were blown up out of all proportion. The Australian High Commissioner in London was advising all Australians in Britain to abide by the control requirements, he said.

When urging a relaxation of controls, Mr Wall said Britain was exchanging her migrants to the “old” Commonwealth for immigrants from the Indian sub-continent. British migration to Australia was 90,000 a year, to Canada 63,000 and to New Zealand 16,000.

They were being replaced by Indians and Pakistanis, many of whom did not speak English, had little education, were among the lowest wageearners in their own communities and had a large number of dependants. “Is this what we really want in this country?” he asked.

Declaring that colour prejudice was not involved, Mr Wall said that when it came to successful assimilation, it was cultural, economic and educational background that counted.