Powell's £300m Plan

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32011, 11 June 1969, Page 15

Powell's £300m Plan

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) WOLVERHAMPTON, June 10. The British Rightwing Conservative M.P., Mr Enoch Powell, has proposed a £3oom scheme to repatriate between 600,000 and 700,000 coloured Commonwealth immigrants over the next 10 years.

Mr Powell, who represents a constituency in the thicklyintegrated industrial Midlands city of Wolverhampton, has been at the centre of the controversy over race relations in Britain since April last year, when he first advocated repatriation on a large scale. Last night, Mr Powell said that repatriation on such a scale was still desired and still practicable.

_ He suggested that each family should be given £2OOO for passage to and resettlement in their own countries.

“Assuming that 600,000 to 700,000 immigrants are involved, this would cost £260m,” Mr Powell said. “Raise this to £3oom to include all the costs of administration, and it would still represent only the cost of 18 months aid to un-der-developed countries, at the present rate.” Repatriation was still de-

sired and practicable, Mr Powell said, because the heads of immigrant families were still citizens of their home countries with the right to return, and because the immigrants here were still, in large numbers, integral members of the communities from whence they came. “Let another decade or so lapse, and this will no longer be so,” he went on. “The tragedy of a growing minority, alien here yet homeless elsewhere, will have been fastened upon them, and us, for ever.”

Mr Frank Cousins, chairman of the Community Relations Commission, described

Mr Powell’s speech as “irresponsible and totally negative.

“He ignores the tremendous contribution to our national well-being the immigrants have made, and are making, and he does not make a single positive suggestion,” Mr Cousins said.

“Mr Powell’s speech can only undermine the positive work which we and others are doing to encourage people of different races and culture to live and work harmoniously.” The chairman of Britain’s Race Relations Board (Mr Mark Bonham Carter) said: “Mr Powell is appalled by the prospect that large areas of some of our cities might be ‘occupied’ by coloured peoples. It is an appalling prospect, because it would mean that we had created a segregated society.” Mr Sohan Jolly, president of the Sikh organisation, Sharomani Akali Dal, said: “I condemn Mr Powell’s flarnmatory speech on behalf of the whole Sikh community, and on behalf of the Asian and West Indian communities. “It is harmful not only to the immigrants but to the nation as a whole. We have had the best relations with the British. He will be the only person responsible for all this hatred.”