The Press TUESDAY, APRIL 23, 1968. Conservatives Disavow Racialism

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31661, 23 April 1968, Page 14

The Press TUESDAY, APRIL 23, 1968. Conservatives Disavow Racialism

By dismissing Mr Enoch Powell from his shadow Cabinet, Mr Heath has done what he can to minimise the political damage that will be caused by Mr Powell’s speech on the Race Relations Bill. The former Minister of Defence, whose views on Britain’s coloured immigrants have previously embarrassed his party, went too far in his speech on “ immigration “madness” in Birmingham last week. The racial problems presented by Mr Powell’s own constituency, Wolverhampton, would have tried the patience of more tolerant men than he. A sample census in April, 1966, showed that 5 per cent of Wolverhampton’s population of 262,000 came from Commonwealth countries. In January, 1967, 10 per cent of the school children were coloured. At the beginning of this year, 23 schools contained more than 30 per cent of coloured pupils, while about a third of the city’s schools had no coloureds on their rolls at all. Segregation, obviously, could be achieved simply by refusing admittance in certain neighbourhoods. The problems of housing and classroom accommodation have been aggravated by the natural wish of families split by immigration to be reunited. Last year, of 1400 children arriving from India, 1100 were of primary school age. Mr Powell rejected out of hand the principle of Integration, and urged the cessation—indeed, the reversal—of coloured immigration.

Mr Powell’s Birmingham speech on the Government’s Race Relations Bill broke sharply away from the Conservative Party’s policy. Although the Conservatives had opposed the bill, their opposition was not based on racial grounds but on complaints of its ineffectiveness to prevent racial discrimination. Mr Powell’s attitude towards immigrants is frankly discriminatory: his party leader regards his statement as “unacceptable . . . incompatible with the “ responsibility of a member of the shadow “Cabinet”. The immediate outcry against Mr Powell from the press, from liberal voices within and outside his party, and from the migrants themselves has pointed the way to the Conservative’s handling of the matter when the debate on the bill opens in the House of Commons today. The Conservative Party must not only show its disapproval of Mr Powell’s racialism: it must help to make the new legislation effective for its purpose.