British Race Bill Voting Awaited

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31662, 24 April 1968, Page 17

British Race Bill Voting Awaited

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter— Copyright)

LONDON, April 23.

Britain’s Labour Government tonight puts a bill to soothe racial tensions to Parliamentary vote, amid nation-wide controversy about the future of the country’s one million Coloured people. All eyes are on the Opposition Conservative Party, whose leaders are trying desperately to patch up gaping splits m its ranks over the issue.

While the Labour Party has presented a united front on the bill, the Conservative ranks have been thrown into disarray by the curt dismissal, by the party leader (Mr Edward Heath), of Mr Enoch Powell from the shadow cabinet because of an “inflammatory speech on the race issue last week-end.

In -a letter to Mr Heath after his dismissal, Mr Powell has kept the dispute at boiling point with a taunt that the Conservative leader is afraid to stand by his own convictions.

Mr Powell complained in his letter that Mr Heath, in fear of press or public clamour, often gave the impression of playing-down views which he held and believed to be right “1 cannot help seeing in this light the fact you took occasion to stigmatise my speech as ‘racialist’ when you must surely realise that it was nothing of the kind,” wrote Mr Powell. Mr Heath said on television last night that he had dismissed Mr Powell because the presentation of the shadow Cabinet Defence Minister’s

speech was likely to cause racial discord.

Mr Powell warned the nation in an address in Birmingham on Saturday that Britain would “run with rivers of blood” unless coloured immigration was stopped and immigrants—now one in 50 of the British population—were sent back home or to other countries. Protest Strike Support for Mr Powell’s views poured in yesterday. He received hundreds of letters backing him, and workers in one factory went on strike to protest at his dismissal. Two representatives of public opinion polls said 39 per cent of the British people wanted a total ban on immigration; and a Conservative member of Parliament, Sir Gerald Nabarro, said he estimated that 80 per cent supported Mr Powell. The Government’s bill

makes a two-pronged approach towards averting a race crisis in Britain similar to that in the United States. Emphasising conciliation, it strengthens, from three to 12 members, the Governmentappointed Race Relations Board, and provides for special courts at which coloured people can seek damages if they are discriminated against. The measure aims, particularly, at making illegal discrimination in housing, employment, education and such financial fields as insurance and loans.

Labour Ministers, worried that racial tensions could grow to the proportions of those in some United States cities, freely admit that their bill has weaknesses and will be difficult to enforce. But they believe its main value lies in declaring that racialism is wrong and in throwing the law behind voluntary efforts to eliminate it

Mr Heath’s party has decided to withhold support for the measure on the ground that it is unworkable, but the Opposition amendment states that Conservatives are categorically against discrimination. Mr Heath is said to be embroiled in a battle to gain the support not only of party Left-wingers who have demanded outright support for the bill, but of Right-wingers aligning themselves behind Mr Powell.

Political observers predict that such a delicate balancing act could land Mr Heath in fresh trouble with his apparently weak grip on the party leadership.