[Trans India]

Published date: Sep 1976

The Right Honorable Enoch Powell, PC, MBE, has been a major catalyst in racialist ferment for a long time now. Powell, who celebrated his sixty-fourth birthday on June 16, has had an illustrious career. He received his M.A. degree from Trinity College, Cambridge. Between 1937-39, he taught Greek at the University of Sydney, New South Wales He joined the Warwickshire Regiment as a Lance Corporal in 1939, and by 1944 was a Brigadier on the General Staff. He was Party Secretary in the Ministry of Housing and Local Government bet- ween 1955-57 and subsequently Financial Secretary to the Treasury (1957-58). He capped his career with a tenure as Minister of Health between July 1960 and October 1963 (when he is supposed to have scoured the Caribbean for nurses to augment the shortage in Britain). He has published quite a few books on literature, and three books of poems.

Enoch Powell’s anti-immigrant feelings received benediction at the hands of Duncan Sandys, who had expressed fears about the migration of Kenyan Asians to Britain. Significantly, Mr. Powell had made no speech about the evils of colored immigration before the autumn of 1967. “For over ten years, from about 1954 to 1966,” he then claimed, “Commonwealth immigration was the principal and at times the only, political issue in my constituency.” In 1964 he had averred that “I have set and always will set my face like flint against making any difference between one citizen of this country and another on grounds of his origin ” He started to deliver speeches about immigration at the moment when this issue was most useful to his political career, and has refused to lend his name to schemes designed to promote integration organized by the Community Relations Council in his own constituency. This has led commentators to the conclusion that Powell’s use of the racial issue is motivated by political opportunism

Fresh in public memory is the summer of 1970, when gangs of “Skinheads”, groups of grimy, chain-gripping, drug- high English dropouts who sported crew cuts, went around on “Paki-bashing” missions. Powell had actively supported their torays. A few years ago, Powell had predicted that the Thames would be flooded with the blood of the immigrants. In late June, speaking on the so-called confidential Hawley Report (which expressed fears of a large-scale illegal immigration from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh), Powell repeated this warning, and said that a time would soon come when English cities with large chunks of immigrant population would be injected with guns and bombs, and a situation would be created where even “Belfast may seem an enviable place.” Hawley is a Whitehall official who visited the Indian sub-continent last year, and his report speaks of a “web of deceit” and the presence of a well-organized racket to smuggle immigrants into Britain. Mr. Alex Lyons, the ‘pro-Asian’ minister in Britain’s Home Office, who was sacked recently by Prime Minister Callaghan, described the Hawley report and Powell’s speeches as “hysterical myths” and “utter nonsense”

It is remarkable that Powell, who sits in the House of Commons as member of the Unionist Party of Northern Ireland, concerns himself more with the color problem than with the Catholic-Protestant civil war in his constituency. On July 8, Powell called for a massive repatriation of immigrants in the Com- mons. Tory MP David Lane promptly described this demand as “the language of Hitler and of Stalin”. Powell wasn’t done, however. On July 9, he told the Chamber of Commerce at Bromley, in Kent: “What was beyond imagination was that we would set about replacing millions of the population of this country with population obtained from Asia, Africa and the West Indies-that all politicians and parties would laud and magnify this achievement by describing the result with pride as a multiracial society”. Mr. Winston Churchill, Conservative Member for Stretford, did not wholly agree with Powell when he said “We must sympathize with people who go to bed thinking they are living in Lancashire and wake up the next day to find themselves in New Delhi or Kingston, Jamaica”. And so, the cry of 1967. “Et Tu, Enoch?” has changed today to “Enough, Enoch!.”

opinion was summarized by Mrs. Renee Short, Labor MP from Wolverhampton, who said: “I am very glad we have got this legislation through. The whole of the country will now see that the Labor Government is in the vanguard of the fight against racialism and incitement to violence on these grounds.”

These facts may lead one to believe, that the racial heap of hay has never been more alight. Things are not so bad, however, and in the context of the second-class treatment the Asians have been receiving for a long time, the authorities have had to sit up now and take effective steps to end racial disharmony. When Gurdip Singh’s parents were asked by Shiva Naipaul whether they wanted to return to India, they said: “Why should we go back to India? Millions of Indians live outside India. Going abroad is not something that Indians alone do. You ask me why we wanted to come here, why we didn’t want to return to our country of origin.” (The Chagares were expelled from Tanzania). “Well, why do people ever want to go anywhere except to make money, live a good life and give their children a good education?”

The Commonwealth Immigrants Act, 1962, reduced immigration substantially by establishing a voucher system to control entry. In August 1965, the Labor Government, then in power published a White Paper on Immigration which reduced the number of vouchers by more than half, and proposed measures to assist integration into what was called “already a multi-racial society.” The Commonwealth Immigrants Act, 1968, took away the unconditional right of British passport holders to enter the Mother Country. The 1971 Act set all those entering on a par with aliens – rightless, vulnerable and highly exploitable.

A Race Relations Board was set up by the Government in February 1966. On the immigrants’ side, the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination (CARD) was set up In December 1964 after a visit to London by Dr Martin Luther King Jr. It was extremely successful as a pressure group agitating for legislation against discrimination. But CARD has seemingly lost its sense of direction in the 1970’s, and nothing much is heard of it today. Roy Jenkins, who was instrumental as Home Secretary in getting the Race Relations Acts of 1965 and 1968 passed, spoke of integration “not as a flattening process of assimilation but as equal opportunity accompanied by cultural diversity, in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance.” This, however, is more a political definition than a practical policy. Jenkins’ optimism seems outdated in the light of the 1976 unrest.

Immigration will, analyzed objectively always be a problem all developed nations face. “Flights” of talent and manpower from underdeveloped countries to economically affluent ones is inevitable in the context of lack of sufficient opportunities for putting that talent to lucrative use in the countries of origin. As A. Sivananda says: “Britain took (India’s) wealth and left us with a labor force that could not be put to work without money, without capital. Britain had the capital we had the labor – it was a basic economic law that they should seek each other.”

And so racism continues to invade, silently, the psyches of the British. What is racism exactly. a partly from being a dirty six-letter word? Sir Arthur Keith main. trained that racial prejudice serves an evolutionary function: by keeping particular populations separate it enables them to evolve faster Some people dislike the word ‘racism’. Racial units are best called ethnic groups, they say, and the relations which the man in street calls ‘racial’ would be better labelled ‘ethnic’ Whatever the rhetoric on the topic, the British population will probably continue to include a substantial number of people who believe that their biological nature imposes narrow constraints upon plans to bring together minorities that they believe. to be racially distinct. In most societies inequalities between strata have not only existed in fact but have also been accepted as normal and legitimate:

The rich man in his castle,

The poor man at his gate,

God made them high or lowly and ordered their estate.

Magazines and newspapers in India have been carrying a series of articles on the recent racial flareups in Southall and around. If some of the writers sound aggrieved and annoyed at the plight of the Asians in Britain it may be excused as a natural brotherly reaction. The Blacks and the Browns are no doubt being baited in Britain, just as the Romans displayed racial prejudice towards the Celts in the days when Britain was a colony!

So racist leaders like Enoch Powell, and Robert Mellish, ex-chief whip of the Labor Party, and Martin Webster, leader of the National Front, have emerged as the Malthouses of modern Britain: unrage by saying “One down, one million to go” after Gurdip Singh Chagga’s death. On the other hand, fuel was added to the National Front’s fire when the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Donald Coggan, said in his diocesan news-letter: “There must be a clearly defined limit (on immigration). The forces of law and order must be supported in their resistance to illegal immigration.” Later, in an obvious attempt to calm a wave of angry reactions from immigrant leaders, Dr Coggan clarified his statement, saying he did not mean he was going back on his “commitment to reunite immigrant families ”

The Asians have reacted to all this oratory with emotions ranging from injured innocence to brash belligerence. They have also constituted vigilance patrols in Immigrant localities. An uneasy truce hangs over Southall now, giving rise to the conjecture that every nation needs some kind of “hot spot” or the other to keep its furnaces stoked: after Soweto, Dublin, and Beirut, Southall seems to be the newest (and colorful) addition.

The picture is not so dark now. The National Front and National, Party may scream hatred through their journals, Spearhead and Britain First, but the majority of Britons are eminently able to rationalize and to see the immigrant question in the proper perspective. Powellise notwithstanding there is no reason why brown and white people should not co-exist. There is no reason why people should regard a dark brown skin as less respectable than a pale pink one. Chaudhuri and Chagga may go down as martyrs in the cause of the Asian emigre to Britain, but in the final reckoning the Asians will have to make do in Britain, Powell or no Powell. They may never get to colonize Britain, but in these days when Rule Britannica is a weak adage, and the pound is slipping alarmingly, on international markets, the immigrant question may perhaps be one of topical expediency, a welcome change from the shuddering’s of a short fallen economy.