RACIAL ISSUE IN U.K. Powell’s Plea For Ban Wins Support

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31663, 26 April 1968, Page 13

RACIAL ISSUE IN U.K. Powell’s Plea For Ban Wins Support

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) LONDON, April 25. Thirty-nine British immigration officers have been asked to explain today why they backed the call by the Conservative M.P., Mr Enoch Powell, to ban coloured immigrants from Britain and send them elsewhere. The 39 men, who admit immigrants arriving by air at London Airport, yesterday joined the rising chorus of support for Mr Powell, who was dismissed from the Opposition’s Shadow Cabinet for a controversial speech on the race issue. After the immigration officers had signed a petition supporting Mr Powell, the Home Office suspended one man from duty and ordered an immediate inquiry into the incident.

The results of a public opinion poll announced last night showed that 82 per cent of 500 people questioned thought Mr Powell was right to make his speech.

But the poll, commissioned by the commercial television station, LT.N., and conducted by the Opinion Research Centre, showed that four out of 10 people thought the speech had harmed race relations.

The Leader of the Conservative Opposition (Mr Edward Heath) dismissed Mr Powell as the party’s spokesman on defence after his speech at Birmingham in which he said Britain would flow with “rivers of blood" unless there was a ban on coloured immigration. Amid the storm sparked off by the speech, the House of Commons approved in principle on Tuesday night a bill making it unlawful to discriminate in housing, jobs, education, mortgages and insurance. Token Strikes Meat workers and colliery workers have held token strikes to support Mr Powell, but the move by the immigration officers was a twist which has seriously embarrassed the Home Office. The officers are not permitted to comment on Government policy and are supposed to be unbiased, but one said yesterday: “Of course we are biased.” In their petition, the men said: “We are fed up with the corruption and deceit that goes on to get immigrants into the country. This has been going on for years.” The Home Office said last night that immigration officers were authorised only to admit immigrants. If they thought an immigrant should be refused, they had to refer to the Chief Immigration Officer or the Home Office.

The Conservative Party’s spokesman on Home Affairs (Mr Quintin Hogg) tonight criticised Mr Powell’s speech in a television interview . He was lighting a fire near gunpowder and bringing nearer a situation in which there might be blood, not in our rivers but in our streets,” Mr Hogg said. The Government’s Race Relations Bill aims to soothe tensions between the country’s 50 million whites and one million coloured people. But as it was being debated on Tuesday, 2000 dockers, yelling, “Keep Britain White,” downed tools and marched to the House of Commons. Their lightning strikes are estimated to have already cost the country £lOO,OOO. ‘Unworkable’ The Race Relations Bill was given an unopposed second reading in the House of Commons after a Conservative amendment describing it as “unworkable” had been defeated by 313 votes to 209, a Government majority of 104. While the measure was being debated, 600 demonstrators outside the House—nearly all of them dockworkers who had walked off

the wharves—waved banners and sang “Bye, Bye Black Man" to coloured passers by. Opening the debate, in which Mr Powell took no part, the Home Secretary (Mr James Callaghan) said: “Legislation cannot make us love one another, nor change our hearts. You cannot legislate prejudice out of existence. “But this bill could ensure that prejudice does not show itself overtly in cases of discrimination, which could provide a potential breeding ground for resentment or bitterness.

“No-one can shrink from the challenge of racialism. It is a live force in this country, but I believe it is not yet deeply rooted. “In matters of race, so much springs from ignorance and fear; and knowledge and understanding are the essential prerequisites, and are, therefore, the enemies of prejudice.” Heavily Charged “We are discussing a subject that is heavily charged with emotion. There is nothing easier than to fan the flames of suspicion or resentment or of fear. “This is a time for responsibility, for leadership, and, if I dare use the word, nobility “Society is most healthy and most free from tension when based upon the simple principle that every citizen within its boundaries shares equally in the same freedoms, responsibilities, opportunities and benefits.”

Mr Callaghan added that the British people’s history was a story of a struggle to achieve full citizenship within their own land. Having won these freedoms, it would be a denial of this history to exclude other groups who had come to live as equal citizens, he said.

The bill was, Mr Callaghan said, intended to outlaw racial ism in all situations in which ordinary people met—in shops, public parks, hotels, bars boarding-houses, cinemas, holiday camps, buses and trains The scope of the bill even included interviews with bank managers, property deals with estate agents, and negotiations to buy insurance policies or take out a house loan.

But it would not stop businessmen using proper com mercial judgment in assess ing such things as people’s credit-worthiness or risk element in fixing insurance premiums.

There would be growing tensions if coloured children leaving school in the next few years could not obtain jobs for which they were as well qualified as their white school friends, Mr Callaghan said. “It hardly needs me to underline the damage to our society if intelligent, highspirited young people are marked down as second-class citizens because of their colour,” he added. The Conservative spokesman on home affairs (Mr Quintin

Hogg) replied to Mr Callaghan’s speech in the same moderate terms.

Mr Hogg said he could not say in the heat of debate whether his party would agree with Mr Callaghan’s proposal, but he promised the party would consider it. Of the bill itself, Mr Hogg said: “I cannot accept that if the bishop gives the curate an egg which is only good in parts, he must eat it all in order not to offend the bishop.

“There are honourable friends who do not want egggs for breakfast at all. “I have other honourable friends—perhaps it is better not to enumerate them—who would do anything not to offend the bishop, notwithstanding the fact that the egg had got beyond the point of no return.”

Mr Hogg completed his analogy by saying: “We like eggs, but take this one away and give us another.” Outside the House, the dockers’ leader, Mr Harry Pearlman told reporters: “We are not racialists, we are true Britons concerned about our jobs.”

He was allowed inside the House to meet Mr Powell, and told the dockers afterwards: “Powell made me feel proud He told me if the Labour Government swept the colour problem under the rug he would pull it out again.”

The dockers cheered and sang “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” and the Al Jolson song, “Mammy.” They booed coloured people entering the Commons.