RACE ISSUE IN U.K. Heath Sacks Tory Shadow Minister

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31661, 23 April 1968, Page 15

RACE ISSUE IN U.K. Heath Sacks Tory Shadow Minister

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

LONDON, April 22.

The British Conservative Party leader (Mr Edward Heath) has sacked the party’s chief defence spokesman (Mr Enoch Powell) for his bombshell “Britain must be mad” speech on coloured immigration.

Mr Powell, the Opposition Shadow Minister of Defence, was dismissed brusquely by Mr Heath last night in a move aimed at repairing frayed unity within the Conservative s ranks on the sensitive issue of race relations.

In a top-level reshuffle of Parliamentary spokesmen, Mr Heath made the deputy party leader (Mr Reginald Maudling) successor to Mr Powell, and the former Prime Minister, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, the Shadow Foreign Minister, took over the Commonwealth Affairs portfolio.

Mr Heath, in a firm personal stand to combat rebellion in the party, issued a dramatic statement accusing Mr Powell of making a speech “racialist in tone and liable to exacerbate racial tensions.”

Political observers say the dismissal of Mr Powell, who demanded rigid curbs on migration, and “go-home” cash grants to those already here, is bound to expose a deep split in the Conservative Party on the racial issue. Mr Powell, deeply-religious Right-winger, a former professor of Greek and a respected poet, declined to comment on his dismissal. His wife said he would be writing to Mr Heath later. The sacking was a dramatic prelude to a bitter Parliamentary fight beginning tomorrow, when the Labour Government defends its new Race Relations Bill, aimed at curbing colour prejudice in housing and employment Action Threat Yesterday a 10,000-strong West Indian organisation in Britain announced that it was asking the Government to prosecute Mr Powell for racial incitement. This was only one of the reactions to Mr Powell’s Birmingham speech, in which

he criticised Britain for its “madness” in allowing more immigrants to join those already here, adding: “It is like watching a nation busily engaged in building its own funeral pyre.” The request for Mr Powell to be taken to court under the Race Relations Act came from the West Indian Standing Conference, an organisation of coloured immigrants in Britain whose secretary (Mr J. Crawford) said: “We have been fully considering Mr Powell’s speech and have come to the conclusion that

he should be prosecuted for racial incitement under Section 6 of the 1965 Race Relations Act. A letter to this effect is being sent today to the Attorney-General.” Mr Crawford alleged that Mr Powell’s speech, and other statements during the last few days, were “part of a care-fully-drawn-up plan designed to reach a climax just before Parliament discusses race relations on Tuesday.” He added: “We can only, at this late stage, warn both major political parties and the white community at large that if they fail to agree to

a powerful, positive and practical Race Relations Act, Britain will inevitably pay a heavy price at the expense of the white community in particular.”

Sir Learie Constantine, the former West Indies cricketer and a leading advocate of race integration, described Mr Powell as “a perfect example of the quotation he used in his own speech last night—‘those the gods wish to destroy they first make mad’.”

Mr Paul Rose, a Labour member of Parliament, said Mr Powell had damaged race relations in Britain as much as the killing of Dr Martin Luther King had done in the United States.

Lady Gaitskell, widow of the former Labour Party leader, Sir Hugh Gaitskell, described Mr Powell’s speech as “a direct incitement to racial hatred and, ultimately, to racial violence.” A former member of Parliament, Mr Humphrey Berkeley, who resigned from the Conservative Party last week because of its decision to oppose the Race Relations Bill, said: “It was the most disgraceful public utterance since the days of Sir Oswald Mosley, and he should be dismissed from the Shadow Cabinet.”

But there was support for Mr Powell from a fellow Conservative member of Parliament, Sir Gerald Nabarro, who said Mr Powell was merely proclaiming what a majority of Conservatives believed. They were, he said, not racialists but realists and economists. Mr Powell himself remained uncompromising last night Within minutes of Mr Heath’s announcement, he said on television that he had chosen his words “very carefully indeed.” He added: “I don’t wish to be misunderstood and I believe there is no room for misunderstanding.” He had, he maintained, followed the Conservative line to the letter.