La shortage of labour - not with a shortage of jobs. We ought to become a country where immigrants are welcomed. We should break away from this artificial segregation of nation from nation ......
So spoke the newly elected James Callaghan. He was leading the opposition in Parliament to the restrictive immigration policy of the 1945 Labour RALLY Government. He had some strange fellow-travellers, among them Peter Thorneycroft, later a Tory minister *I find something a little contemptible about a party which preaches iremanionansm abroad and yeu takes every step to prevent free men from coming here to work."
of the Labour Party did not last long. Fifteen years later he was one of the leaders of the right-wing campaign against immigration. Callaghan also was to introduce the most vicious legislation twenty two years later against black immigration - not immigration as such, but black immigration. RELAXATION Immediately after the war, the demand for labour in Britain was met Dy the relaxation or une stringent controls on immigration, and the introduction of Polish workers and others from Southern Europe, known as European voluntary workers. But this supply dried up. The net had to be cast wider.
In the summer of 1948 the Empire Windrush sailed from Kingston, Jamaica. On board were 400 workers looking for a job in Britain. But their arrival was not met with any planned housing provision. Half of the passengers were housed in an underground air-raid shelter in Clapham.
The major responsibility fell on the Labour councils who ran the inner city areas. It was from this base that the two trends arose that characterise Labour thinking and action over hugranon and race - regration and control.
In the 1950s the pace in the Parliamentary Labour Party was set by the advocates of control. A right-wing caucus was formed, one of whose leaders tire from his constituency party.
The movement in tne ranks provoked a response from the leadership under Gaitskell. As late as 1961, Gaitskell could comment: "The Labour Party is opposed to the restriction of immigration as every Commonwealth citizen has the right as a British subject to enter this country at will. This has been the right of the subjects of the Crown for many centuries, and the Labour Party has always maintained it should be unconditional.' This attitude had been held more or less consistently by the leadership of the Labour Party, particularly those under the influence of the Fabian wing. Imperialism had been seen by. this section as an essentially civilising process. Contempt for the cultures of those oppressed by the British imperialists expressed itself through the automatic 'concession' of British citipatible with international brotherhood, but only after the oppressed of the earth had been subjected to "civilisation' preferably of the British variety. This goes some way to explaining the principled stand taken by Gaitskell right up till his death.
The election of Harold Wilson as Labour Party leader in 1963 was followed by a mass rally held by the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Trafalgar Square. There he went out of his way to praise the struggle against the Commonwealth Immigration Act Thorneycroft's role as the conscience passed by the Tories in 1962. But none of Wilson's speeches inside or outside the House of Commons gave any credence in this curtsy in the direction of the departed.
BOB MELLISH, ex-Labour Chief Whip who has given the racist pot another stir with his enough is enough speech on the Malawi Asians The Labour Party in opposition had successfully amended the Act to require its renewal in 1963. The heat was on for the Labour leadership. And Wilson ended up telling the House: •We do not contest the need for control of Commonwealth immigration Gaitskell's policy of 'free entry" was Frank Tomney, the MP for Hamm- was dead and buried in a race between ersmiln Nortn — who is currentv under te ones and Labour to outdo cach other in proving their effectiveness in controlling black immigration. The current in the Labour Party which favoured 'control' had the bit between its teeth.
This did not immediately reflect itself in the party's formal position In fact, orders went out from Transport House that on no account was the question of immigration to be raised in the parliamentary addresses of prospective Labour candidates. This did not dissuade the 14 per cent of Labour candidates who did mention it as compared with eight per cent of Tory candidates.
Listen, for example, to the leaflet issued by David Kerr, Labour MP in Wandsworth Central: "Large scale immigration has occurred only under this Tory Government. The Tory Immigration Act has failed to control it -immigrants of all colours and races continue to arrive here.' Foreign Secretary, Patrick Gordon Walker, was dramatically defeated in Smethwick by a Tory who ran under the slogan, 'If you want a nigger for your neighbour, vote Labour".
actions such the burning of crosses.
the National Front. Petitions against black residents were also circulated.
racists with the publication of the Government's White Paper on 'Immigration from the Commonwealth' For the first time a definite limit was put on the number of Commonwealth workers entering the country. The problem" was defined as black immigrants.
INTEGRATION At the same time, however, a large number of black workers were already in Britain. The task of integrating their leadership could not be sent off to Holland to study how the the Race Relations Act.
the wind out of the sails of the Tory Party and their extra-parliamentary friends by the simple measure of giving them what they wanted. But the tide would begin to rise again two years later.
the devaluation fiasco, he introduced an Immigration Bill to control the ed 1962 Act. Most of these were Kenyan Asians.
the deciding question was dropped with the introduction of a clause disallowing those who could not prove that they had a father or grandfather born in Britain. The 'grandfather clause' has a long pedigree. It was first used in the United States in the nineteenth century to deny blacks the vote.
sition to the Tories' 1971 Commonwealth Immigration Act was predictable. According to Roy Jenkins, the Bill was objectionable, and if the Government has any self-respect they will withdraw the Bill and start again."
COLOUR BAR colour bar legislation which had been wealth immigrants into partrials and non-patrials and white. All controls on the immigration of patrials were removed. Non-patrials were effectively reduced to the position of aliens.
Permission to change jobs became conditional on application to the Department of Employment. The non-patrial immigrant has no rights to settle or bring dependants. A work permit is requ specific job for a specific period.
In order to apply to stay on after the specific period or for citizenship, returned to office. But the prospective The Smethwick election campaign was accompanied by a number of racist A mong those taking part in such practices was Robert Relf, current hero of Photo: News Line Wilson gave enormous ground to the delayed any longer. Maurice Foley was 'Dutch had done it. The product was The White Paper temporarily took Almost as soon as James Callaghan was demoted to Home Secretary after entry of those British passport holders wro tor some reason oromer were nol covered by the provisions of the amendAll pretence of not making colour The response of the Labour opporacist laws The Act put the last touches to the built on since 1962. It divided Common- work permits in the hotel and catering that is to say, black this year a for entry for a Labour ABOVE and RIGHT: the battle of Winson Green, Birmingham on 15 May applicants have to prove that they are or good character. iney do, nowever, retain their vote to decide which Government will implement these When Labour was elected in February 1974 it did not repeal this 'objectionable' Act. On the contrary, it has started to polish it up and restrict immigration still further The TUC has called for the complete abolition of the quota of work permits allowed to foreign nationals The Government has already responded by cutting the annual quota of industry from 8,500 in 1975 to 6,000 in 1976 and for domestic and hospital workers from 8,000 in 1975 to 2,500 C'allaghan is now clearing the decks gration for further measures. Alex Lyon, the Minister of State at the Home Office, who had continued the tradition of protesting agamst the grosser measures taken against immigrants, was removed in the Government reshuffle. He thus paid the price for, as he put it, trying to get justice for the blacks in this country. Jim has never had much time for those who espouse this cause. A racist frenzy stirred and de minated in North London ear of two overseas students. The but the were the first to die.
Fascists have been attackin months. And they are also st Over the weekend a 600-sti Party through Blackburn-wh elections-won an hysterical r ing the pavements-with one even chanting 'I want to be a organised by the Blackburn A was greeted with abuse.
The frenzy has been fuellec ainst a homeless immigrant fa Gatwick Airport Hotel and th passport-holders expelled fron rising racist tide, Labour MPs chief whip Robert M not a racialist. But enough is Below we look at how Lab to create the current situation especially the youth-are begi back against racist policies, th Another former Cabinet member ex-Chief Whip Bob Mellish, has meanwhile opened up on the Government from the right along the old, old lines: I'm not a racialist, but ....' Mellish's London constituency was one of the two which put down motions to the 1961 Labour Conference demanding immigration controls.
CLEAN OUT Right-wingers like Mellish are sus tained by the endless chatter of the "lefts' on the need for British jobs for British workers in a new partnership with the British bosses - combined with a deafening silence on the policies which the party has initiated on immiOne of the main tasks in fighting racism is the fight to eradicate it in the mass organisations of the working class The Labour Party must be flushed clean of the racists who act as a constan source of fuel for the fascist groups, and this must be combined with a fight agams ne proglamme or ene els which opens the door wide for their colleagues with less delicate sensibilities