Greasy Pole: The Dark Side of Sunny Jim (2005)

The Greasy Pole column from the May 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is not entirely clear why the late Lord Callaghan should have been known as Sunny Jim because there was a lot more to him than a supposedly genial, unflappable favourite uncle. While there are people who are grateful for his care for them when they were in trouble there is also a significant number who remember him as a thug and a bully. These are the people who came to know that beneath the surface Sunny Jim concealed an iron determination and excessive venom against anyone who crossed him.

Hugh Dalton, who was the first Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1945 Labour Government, at first assessed Callaghan as “first class though with no manners and ruthless ambition”, an opinion which he modified later to “obviously a trimmer and doesn’t seem to have any deep convictions”. Roy Jenkins, another Labour Chancellor, described him as “an aggressive pike eating up the minnows, with a brooding air of menace”; Barbara Castle, who was grievously mauled by him over the proposals for trade union “reform” in In Place of Strife, saw him as a menace on dry land: “a snake in the grass”. What all these opinions, sometimes contradictory, add up to is that Callaghan was clearly well suited to a career in politics at the highest level. And so it turned out, because he held all the major governmental jobs – Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary and finally Prime Minister. This was pretty well unique, although that cannot be said about the fact that, by the standards which judge capitalist politicians, he failed in all four jobs.

Import duties

Callaghan was not unique in his politician’s readiness to reel off sound bites which he came to regret. One of these was his assurance that, after one of the more minor crises, the outlook for the British economy was set fair: “steady as she goes” was how he put it. This was intended to remind everyone that he had once been in the Navy and to comfort them with the image of a great liner being nudged into safe harbour, with captain Sunny Jim placidly in control on the bridge. What actually happened was that when, only a couple of days after the election, it became clear that British capitalism was in one of its recurring crises Callaghan’s response was typical, desperate panic. One of the wheezes he hurriedly implemented in October 1964 was a temporary 15 per cent increase on some import duties which, far from solving the trading problems of British capitalism, provoked outrage and threats of retaliation abroad. In response the British government had to promise that the surcharge was only temporary and then, a few months later, to reduce the rate to 10 per cent. How calm  and collected was Callaghan through all this? In November 1964, at a conference of ministers at Chequers, George Wigg recalled “Jim Callaghan’s lips quivered, his hands shook, he had no idea what hit him.” Prime Minister Wilson commented “I’m having to hold his hand. His nerve isn’t very good these days”.

Another wheeze, thought up by the unpredictably fertile brain of Callaghan’s advisor on tax Nicky Kaldor, was the Selective Employment Tax (SET), reputedly a measure to re-distribute labour in a structural reform which would eliminate all those nasty problems which had bedevilled the British economy for so long. The SET was a tax on employers for every employee; manufacturing industry then received a rebate plus a premium for every employee. Agriculture received a rebate of the tax while the service industries did not get anything. This complexity was imposed in a hurry such as to belie its stated purpose of permanently reshaping British industry. One minister described its introduction to the Cabinet: “… bewilderment and  consternation. Nobody could quite follow what he (Callaghan) was saying.” In any case SET was virtually abandoned as part of the measures taken in conjunction with devaluation in 1967.

Resignation

Devaluation was supposed to be yet another radical step to improve the international trading position of British capitalism; after the event Harold Wilson declared: “It will be a relief to our people…they will feel that at last we have broken free…” But the Cabinet had been arguing about it almost since the day Labour got into power. Callaghan’s attitude was uncertain but he warned: “we must not underestimate the catastrophe of devaluation. It would be a political catastrophe as well as an economic one.”

Ten days later he announced that the catastrophe had arrived; the pound was to be devalued and soon afterwards he resigned. This has been misconceived as the act of an honest politician accepting responsibility for a mistake. In fact Callaghan had wanted to give up being Chancellor for some time and in any case he was careful, and tenacious, enough not to resign from the Cabinet. What he did was to swap jobs with another member of the Cabinet, moving to the Home Office while Roy Jenkins took over as Chancellor. Directly Callaghan became Home Secretary in November 1967 he was up against the problem of a prospective large intake of immigrants from Kenya who had the right to come here because they held British passports. Immigration controls on people from the British Commonwealth were already in operation, having been introduced by the Conservative government in 1962. At that time the Labour Party strongly resisted the Act, as proclaimed by Hugh Gaitskell as far back as 1958: “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.”

Immigration

This appealed to some Labour supporters as a principled stand but it quickly crumbled when it was confronted with the threat of losing votes on the issue, so that during the 1964 election Labour made it clear that they would keep the 1962 Tory Act in operation. The issue came to something of a climax in that election when Labour lost Smethwick, and with it their prospective Foreign Secretary Gordon Walker, to a Tory who ran an openly racist campaign. By the time Callaghan got to the Home Office plans were already under way to rush through legislation to overturn the historic right of British passport holders to enter this country freely. Labour’s Commonwealth Immigration Bill went even further than the 1962 Act; it was clearly an attempt to appease any racism among the voters, as it protected the right of entry of most white Commonwealth citizens while denying those rights to Kenyan Asians. This cynical piece of racist legislation was effortlessly seen through Parliament by Sunny Jim, who did not see any reason to resign over this latest example of a policy reversal.

In spite of all that had gone before, in his early days as his Prime Minister Callaghan seemed to be almost invulnerable. With amazing sleight of hand he kept his government going although it was in a minority in the House of Commons. In line with the policy of depressing working class living standards by holding wages down he saw off a strike by the firemen and persuaded the miners to accept a pay deal without a fight. There seemed no end to what he could accomplish by way of disciplining the workers in the interests of their employers – and all this, according to one aide, without trying to “break into the Guinness Book of Records for the amount of work done in twenty-four hours”. But of course this could not, did not, last. The so-called pay policy went a step too far with an attempt to impose a limit of 5 per cent on rises, which was particularly hard on the lower paid workers. Denis Healey, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, later admitted that “we in the Cabinet should have realised that our five per cent norm would be provocative as well as unattainable” – and that was how it turned out.

Road haulage and oil tanker drivers went on strike for 25 to 30 per cent increases; local authority manual workers claimed 40 per cent and the Ford Motor Company agreed a rise of 17 per cent. This was followed by the series of strikes written into history as the Winter of Discontent. Callaghan called the election of 1979 “a sea change” when in fact it was an expression of disillusionment with the Labour Party, bringing the Thatcher government to press on with policies which Callaghan and his ministers had begun.

Ivan

Capitalism in East Africa. (1922)

From the February 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1

(continued.)

Some, at least, of the natives are beginning to have other ideas. Native associations with a strong political bias already exist, and have, during the past year, been steadily attracting attention by open propaganda.

On June 24th representatives of the Kikuyu Association met the Chief Native Commissioner and his underling, the Senior Commissioner of the Kyambu District (the heart of the coffee area). Through the instrumentality of certain missionaries (obviously desirous of keeping native movements in "constitutional" lines), they laid before these officials a memorandum of grievances under ten heads, which are worth quoting in detail.

1. The Tribal Retainers were charged with conscripting young females (married and single) for labour on European plantations by coercing the chiefs, parents, or husbands, as the case might be, with fines and imprisonment. (Tribal Retainers are native police agents of the Government operating in the tribal reserves.) It was pointed out that this practice led to wholesale degradation of the girls and young women at the hands of overseers, etc., on the plantations. Specific instances were given, but, of course, the Government Officers could not be expected to know anything about them officially, although they are the logical outcome of measures such as the Labour Ordinance.
2. It was charged against the Administration that Chiefs and Headmen were arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned without the "Kiama" (native council of elders) being informed of any charge of offence against them.
3. Charges of corruption, extortion, rape, etc., were preferred against the Chief Tribal Retainer, and supported by numerous concrete instances.
4. Complaint was made that, in spite of Government's promises to issue title deeds to the natives for the land held, occupied, and cultivated by them, encroachments of a piecemeal character upon such land are continually occurring.
5. The delegation protested against the registration system. The registration certificate of each native employee must be signed by his employer before he may leave the latter's service. An employer who wishes to retain natives who may wish to leave him can simply refuse to sign their certificates.* [*note.—These Certificates bear (among other particulars) the native's thumb-print.] By leaving under such circumstances the employees render themselves open to prosecution for desertion.
6.  It was pointed out that the heavy increase in taxation, coupled with the reduction of wages, was very oppressive.
7. The Government were pointedly reminded that they promised the natives "rewards" for their services during the war. Was the policy above outlined to be considered as the reward ? 
8.  Free access to the forests (of which the natives have been deprived by law) was demanded. "We now have to buy the firewood and trees (for building) which once were ours."
9.  The arbitrary manner in which "the Europeans"—i.e., the settlers and the Government discussed and adopted measures vitally affecting native interests—was strongly condemned, and a demand was made for what is virtually political representation.
10. Finally, the delegation made it clear that they were not satisfied simply to work and pay taxes, and claimed universal education for their children at Government expense '.

To the critical wage-slave of Europe the above expression of native thought may not appear very revolutionary. The evils described are essentially similar to those which he has become accustomed to regard as inseparable from the social order under which he exists; while the demands in the final clauses can hardly affect that order in a fundamental manner in Africa, seeing that they have not done so in Europe. Yet to the local master class these demands appear as drastic as did Chartism to their early Victorian prototypes, and any independent effort of the natives to realise them will be fought and, if possible, crushed.

It is here that the importance of the political struggle of the Indian bourgeoisie becomes manifest. That they will use (already are using) the discontent of the native peasantry and the ever-growing proletariat as a lever to achieve their aims is only to be expected by those possessed of historical knowledge. It is just as certain that the sympathy of the Asiatic leaders for the natives will evaporate as rapidly as their own objects are conceded, i.e., equality for capitalists irrespective of colour ! But the ghost of democracy once raised is not so easily laid. Two parties can play the demagogues game. If, as seems likely, the white settlers also adopt the weapon of popular agitation, then the natives may reap from the quarrel of their rival exploiters the concession of formal political power. By bringing them into line with other slaves this will make them more accessible to real revolutionary propaganda. It is the fear of this ultimate result of the Indian agitation that is at the back of the settlers' minds, and adds intensity to their resistance. They feel quite capable of dealing with the natives so long as the latter are isolated, but once let the natives obtain an inkling of the forces at work in the outside world and the settlers may well tremble for the safety of their privileges.

This is typical bourgeois blindness. As Marx has it :—"The progress of social disintegration will take a form more brutal or more humane, according to the degree of development of the working class itself" (Preface to "Capital." 1st Edn.). Native discontent in Africa will only take on a more violent and reckless character the more it is debarred from scientific enlightenment ; but it is hardly surprising that the intellectual paralysis of the capitalist class should extend itself to their representatives in the tropics. Only from the working class is the native likely to receive aid in developing in a full and free manner both himself and his natural heritage, and it is the writer's purpose to show that the workers have a direct interest in that development, or, to be more precise, will have, so soon as they emancipate themselves from capitalist control.

Before the rise of Capitalism in Europe the workers found almost within the bounds of their villages (or at most their counties) the means of satisfying most of their wants. To be sure they might (when in a position to do so) enjoy the luxuries produced by foreign lands; but to the workers to-day the outside world is not primarily a source of luxury. It is an indispensable necessity. Elements from every longitude and latitude enter into the environment of even the wage-slaves, and it is this fact which inspires the Socialist slogan, "The World for the Workers!"

In order to find raw material for its ever-expanding industry and even food for its increasing army of industrial labour-power, Capitalism has annihilated geographical and racial boundaries and enslaved to some degree the mass of practically every people on earth. It has turned Asia, Africa, Australia, and South America into agricultural and mining districts of North America and Europe. It has destroyed such degree of domestic industry as existed in these continents and thus made them dependent on Capitalism for finished commodities; thus providing itself with the indispensable condition of its own growth—an expanding world-market.

The workers have suffered most from every crisis through which Capitalism has passed. They are suffering most now. It is upon them, therefore, that the world-problem presses most relentlessly for solution. That solution can be found only in the abolition of capitalist ownership of the means of life and production for profit. A system in which the producers have social utility as their object, in which, therefore, every pair of hands, every brain, every available material resource is welcome, nay, necessary—only such a system, based on common ownership of the world, common rights and common duties, can solve the problem. The African problem, the Indian problem (and the Irish problem) are all aspects of the whole; they will find their solution—can find no other solution than—in the world solution. The workers of Europe and America will find in the slaves of Asia and Africa allies in the struggle against Capitalism, but being the industrial proletariat they must take the lead. Their superior historical experience and technical resources must provide the means to guide and train willing but inarticulate helpers in the task of revolutionary reconstruction. A world-wide propaganda, coupled with every possible material assistance, must supersede the political control of the master-class.

Only thus can the workers make the most of the world and their own inherited mechanical and intellectual powers. The emancipation of the working-class involves the emancipation of all mankind!

Eric Boden

Part 2: Labour in Panic (1969)

From the June 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1

The Conservative victory at Smethwick in the 1964 election was not unexpected. For some time before, they had been running a skilful racist campaign which won a seat on the local council for, among others, Don Finney, who had been chairman of the local branch of the Birmingham Immigration Control Association and who was the originator of many inflammatory statements about coloured immigrants. In the May preceding the general election, the Tories won control of the council

They kept up the pressure during the general election campaign, in which they effectively cashed in on — if they did not originate—the slogan “If you want a nigger neighbour, vote Labour”. The Labour candidate, Patrick Gordon Walker, suffered under this pressure which drove him to try to blame the Tories for immigration, saying in his election address that “. . . . the main flow of immigration happened to come in the thirteen years during which the Conservatives were in office.” This desperate counter-attack did not help him and Smethwick swung 10.4 per cent against the national trend to Labour.

It was this national swing which gave us the Wilson government and as soon the new Prime Minister could spare time from saving the pound sterling and attacking workers' living standards he turned his attention to immigration. Results like Smethwick had proved that something more than Labour’s change of mind on the Commonwealth Immigrants Act would have to be done to erase the memory of their original opposition to control. In February 1965 Wilson complained that the Act was being “almost fatally eroded” by evasion. It was the job of the man who was the Home Secretary—Frank Soskice, whose father was an immigrant from Russia—to announce the new measures which did not abolish or liberalise the Act attacked by Gaitskell as “shameful” but made it tighter and harsher.

Naturally most of the Tories were delighted at Labour’s conversion to their way of thinking. Geoffrey Lloyd, one of the Conservative campaigners for tighter controls, was aglow about “this very realistic approach by the government.” On March 29 the government showed that they did not mind this approval from the benches opposite; Herbert Bowden, as he then was, announced that the Ministry of Labour was urgently reviewing the whole question of work vouchers for Commonwealth immigrants.

In November 1967 Roy Jenkins, who was then winning a lot of applause as a ’liberal' Home Secretary, told the House of Commons how much more successful Labour had been in applying racist laws than the Tories. As a result of the 1965 measures, he said, the number of voucher holders coming to Britain had dropped to 5,461 in 1966 compared with 12,880 for 1965 and 14,705 for 1964. This downward trend, said Jenkins, was continuing. So there the matter seemed settled; Britain under Labour was a tight, satisfied racist state and the politicians could get on with the job of trying to run British capitalism.

The results of the next election, in March 1966, might have convinced many people that racism in Britain was firmly in check under Wilson’s control. Gordon Walker came back to Parliament; Labour regained Eton and Slough and Perry Barr. But sweetest of all to them was their victory at Smethwick where bearded, flamboyant television actor Andrew Faulds beat both the Tory Peter Griffiths and an openly Fascist candidate from the British National Party.

Delusions shattered

But any delusions about racism, and about the Labour Party’s attitude on it, were soon shattered. On December 1 1967 new immigration restrictions came into force in Kenya, which also applied to about 200,000 Asians who were living in that country but who had not taken out Kenyan citizenship. Under the Keynan independence agreement, negotiated by the Tory government, these Asians had the right to opt for British citizenship, which gave them a British passport and so the right to come freely into this country.

The man who had signed this agreement for the British government was Duncan Sandys, who had been Colonial Secretary when it was negotiated. This did not prevent Sandys raising an immediate scare about floods of Asian immigrants pouring into Britain. This scare was also worked up by prominent racists like Cyril Osborne and by one who was only just climbing onto the bandwagon but who was soon to be in the driver’s seat—Enoch Powell.

In face of this rising hysteria and prejudice the government might have remembered that they claimed to be men of principle, and stood firm. But they had learned their lesson, and although the evidence indicated that nothing like the rumoured quarter of a million Asians wanted to come to Britain from Kenya, they rushed through yet another Commonwealth Immigrants Act to deal with the situation. This new Act, apart from further tightening the controls in the 1962 Act, introduced the novel principle that holding a British passport no longer guaranteed free entry into this country.

To get round this problem, the Act provided for the application of immigration control to citizens of the United Kingdom and the colonies who, although they held British passports, had “no substantial connexion” with Britain. This vague, but ingeniously dishonest, qualification notwithstanding, the government denied that they were in a panic — and then went on to push the Bill through Parliament in a week. At any rate they could once again be consoled by the support for them from the other side. Sandys backed them and amid this approval yet another piece of racist legislation was added to the Statute Book which, just a few years before, had been clean of it.

This was the atmosphere into which, a couple of months later, Enoch Powell launched his Wolverhampton speech. At that time there was nothing more the government could conveniently legislate upon and their spokesmen tried, with some embarrassment, to make some political capital out of Powell's dramatic and inflammatory words. The embarrassment came from the fact that it was in Labour's traditional strongholds — places like Stepney and Smithfield — that the support for Powell was most emphatic and most violent. It was a danger signal, and not only for the Labour Party.

Defenders of the Wilson government point to legislation like the Race Relations Act as evidence of Labour’s determination to stamp out racism. In fact, such laws are merely perfunctory gestures and do nothing to disprove the old truism that no government can legislate ideas out of existence. The law now gives, in theory, legal protection to the immigrants in parts of the fields of employment and housing. In fact, discrimination carries on almost untouched; ‘No Coloureds' no longer appears on the newsagents’ advertisement boards but all too often a West Indian or an Indian applying for accommodation finds that it has been taken. The same thing happens over employment. In some ways the laws actually stirred up racism; a popular argument, at the time of Powell’s speech, was that the anti-discrimination law made a privileged class out of coloured immigrants. And when all is said and done there is the hard, practical case of Anne Dummet, who has left her job in race relations because it is impossible in face of enormous obstacles.

Neurotic resentment

What do the Labour Party, and all the other parties of capitalism, offer as a solution? Racism cannot be separated from all the other delusions and misconceptions which are current; it cannot, in other words, be separated from the capitalist social system and all the strange, pernicious ideas which divide the working class and help to keep the system in existence. The first need, for those who want to fight racism, is to speak out loud and clear among the confusion.

Capitalism does little to unite human beings; at most times it works actively to divide them—as it is working now, for example, to divide the people of Russian and China. This often means that capitalism actually fosters nationalism and racism; during the last war British workers were encouraged to believe that the only good German was a dead one and it is only a short step from there to being told, if the interests of a ruling class demand it, that the only good Negro is a dead one.

At the same time capitalism is working a particularly pernicious trick upon the working class. As a system of privilege, it must promote the idea that acquisitiveness is a high virtue, but at the same time it cannot provide security. Thus there are millions of workers in this country, reading of the glorious exploits of their masters in the press and trying to hold at bay the ravages which industrial capitalism is wreaking on their mortgaged homes, who are desperately dependent on their jobs, their masters.

The contradiction between capitalism’s encouragement of acquisitiveness and its undermining of security has produced what can only be called a neurosis among the working class. This works in many ways. Workers who are struggling to buy a home on a mortgage often resent the existence of council houses near them, and think of council tenants as dirty and unprincipled spongers. This sort of neurotic resentment is all too easily transferred to immigrants, especially when they have a different cultural background and when they are easily distinguished by the colour of their skin.

Surge of hysteria

The result of this is that there is a vast reservoir of prejudice and fear which extreme conditions can cause to burst its banks, as happened in Germany before the war and as threatens to happen in America now. The British political parties who are pandering to these prejudices, and who think they can control the flood if it comes, are not paying enough attention to their precedents. In Germany the Nationalists also went along with racism—of the most extreme kind — thinking that if they could get a toehold on power in a coalition with the Nazis they could control the situation and eventually become its masters.

Their disillusionment came all too quickly and brutally. The Nazis rode into power on an irresistible surge of hysteria, which the crisis of German capitalism had provoked among the workers; the Nationalists were among the first to be purged. How much more would it need for the British working class to reach the same conclusions as the Germans in the 30s? And if that happened, how far would the traditional parties of capitalism be prepared to go along with it, in their efforts to cling to power? They have already shown that they are willing to compromise; where will they end up, if their attempts at appeasing racism fail?

Before we get to this there is time, and need, to assess the situation. The history of racism exposes the futility of trying to reform capitalism and how too often those who set out to reform end up worse than what they set out to reform. It shows that the only way to attack the problems of capitalism is at their root—and, as so often is the case,, this means the apathy, ignorance, and deception which are nurtured among the working class by the parties of capitalism.

Finally it emphasises that in modern capitalism the alternatives really are sanity or savagery, harmony or hatred —which means Socialism or chaos.

Ivan

50 Years Ago: Labour’s New Race Law (2018)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Attacks on wages and the trade unions, defence of profits and unemployment, bringing back health charges and now, again, a colour bar law. Thus, one by one, Labour abandons its old principles, partly under pressure from capitalism, but partly also from a desire to stay in office. While economics has been responsible for the failure of Labour’s futile attempts to make capitalism work in the interests of all, politics is behind this, their second, capitulation to colour prejudice. For, as they themselves pointed out in 1962, if anything economics demands free immigration: there is a relative labour shortage in Britain which could delay expansion. (….)

On February 22 Home Secretary Callaghan announced Labour’s Bill to stop the Kenya Asians. These unfortunate people were holders of British passports so the Bill had to provide for the extension of the immigration colour bar from Commonwealth to British citizens. (….)

Extending the colour bar to British citizens abroad needed careful drafting to avoid keeping out “white” as well as “coloured” people. In the end Labour found a solution that only those whose father or father’s father were born in Britain would from now on have free entry into Britain. One lawyer, writing in New Society (29 February) commented:

  “Each lawyer will recognise the finger print of the formula that has been evolved: it is designed to draw a racial distinction by finding a dividing line which approximates to the racial division yet is capable of expression in words which make no specific reference to race.”

The Socialist Party, basing its principles on the fact that workers the world over have a common interest, is opposed to all racialism and to all nationalism. We are opposed to all legislation to prevent the free movement of workers, whether in search of jobs or fleeing from oppression. We denounce the Labour Party’s new race law as a shameful sell-out to colour prejudice. Let them never dare speak of the brotherhood of man again!

(Socialist Standard, April 1968)

Labour's New Race Law (1968)

From the April 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Attacks on wages and the trade unions, defence of profits and unemployment, bringing back health charges and now, again, a colour bar law. Thus, one by one, Labour abandons its old principles, partly under pressure from capitalism, but partly also from a desire to stay in office. While economics has been responsible for the failure of Labour’s futile attempts to make capitalism work in the interests of all, politics is behind this, their second, capitulation to colour prejudice. For, as they themselves pointed out in 1962, if anything economics demands free immigration: there is a relative labour shortage in Britain which could delay expansion.

This shortage has existed since the beginning of the last world war. First the demand for workers was met by the immigration of persons displaced by the war in Europe and then by people from the old empire and the colonies, from the West Indies, from India and Pakistan, from Cyprus and from West Africa. Figures show that this migration was mainly a matter of supply and demand: when the economy was expanding more came; when the economy was stagnating the rate of entry slowed up and many returned home (and many British-born workers left for Canada and Australia). In the meantime demagogues, such as former Fascist leader Mosley, exploited the frictions that arose between workers thrown together in the terrible housing conditions capitalism created in parts of the expanding Midlands and South East. Mosley stood in the 1959 election as a “send-them-back” candidate in North Kensington, where the previous year there had been the Notting Hill race riot.

In 1961 the Tory government decided to act. They introduced a Bill whose purpose was to keep out “coloured’’ immigrants. The Labour Party, then led by Hugh Gaitskell. opposed this measure in and out of Parliament. One of their leaflets headed Immigration, the Facts began:

  By restraining the right of Commonwealth citizens to come to Britain, the Conservative Government has given way to the pressure of colour prejudice.
   The Labour Party is determined to oppose any form of colour prejudice.

The leaflet went on to point out:

     The fear of some people that millions of immigrants will come to these shores is quite unfounded, for as the number of unfilled jobs falls, so the number of immigrants falls. And we need more workers if our economy is ever to expand.

and ended: LABOUR SAYS FIGHT RACIAL PREJUDICE !!!

Gaitskell died, six months after the Commonwealth Immigrants Act came into force, in January 1963. Gradually, with the prospect of power after thirteen long years in the wilderness, Labour’s enthusiasm for fighting racial prejudice weakened. The results of the 1964 election, in which Labour scraped home by a mere four seats, confirmed their fears that opposition to immigration control was a vote-loser. Racialist Peter Griffiths, despite a national swing against the Tories, had defeated Patrick Gordon Walker in Smethwick, a traditional Labour seat in the outskirts of Birmingham. Deprived of power for so long Labour was determined not to lose it by sticking to a mere principle. The policy of “fight racial prejudice”, they decided, should be replaced by one of “pander to racial prejudice”. Accordingly, in August 1965 Labour announced that it would strengthen the colour bar Commonwealth Immigrants Act. Their Home Secretary Soskice, himself the son of a Russian immigrant, went about talking vaguely of “illegal” immigrants thereby encouraging prejudice.

Compared with the present Labour leaders Gaitskell almost seems a man of principle. Indeed, Roy Hattersley, now a junior Minister, has criticised Gaitskell’s stand against the Tory immigration Act. In a series of essays called The Left published in 1966, Hattersley made this cynical statement referring to Labour’s about turn on this issue:

    In some fields rationalism has taken over where even under Gaitskell emotion reigned.

So even Gaitskell was not pragmatic — or opportunist — enough!

It is true that in 1965 Labour did bring in an Act outlawing racial discrimination in certain public places. But any effect this might have had was nullified by the government’s capitulation over the immigration colour bar. If the government can discriminate, many argued, why can’t pubs and hotels too? The Act also contained a dangerous innovation: section six made the mere expression of racialist views a crime, and thus represented an attack on freedom of speech and the press in Britain. The Socialist Party, although opposed to racialist views, stands for full and free discussion of all social problems and is quite opposed to any and all restrictions on such discussion. The Labour government, however, in an effort to get the best of both worlds, has pursued the stupid and dangerous policy of trying to suppress the very views it has encouraged by pandering to — besides of course maintaining capitalism, the system that gives rise to working class problems and to racialism as a mistaken reaction to them.

When the Tory Conference met in Brighton last year Sir Cyril Osborne, wrote to the Daily Telegraph (18 October):

    Some African States are driving out their Asian immigrants. They number over half a million. They are entitled to settle in Britain. Today they are clamouring to come, and the British Overseas Airways Corporation is offering cheap air fares.

He went on to allege that the surplus population of India also wanted to come here and commented:

  We cannot assimilate them. They have their own language, religion, literature and culture, which they mean to preserve. They remain an alien race in our midst.

This is the kind of prejudice the Labour government has given into and, who knows, perhaps shares. Osborne of course is no great intellect. He is only popular amongst certain Tory activists since, as a narrow-minded provincial company director, he typifies them and their prejudices. But at least it has always been clear where he stood. Long ago he declared himself against a “coffee-coloured, multiracial society" in Britain. Osborne, however, was not alone in stoking up racial prejudice among the Tories. The same day in a speech in Deal shadow defence spokesman Enoch Powell called for stricter immigration controls to keep out “coloured” people and particularly for new legislation to stop any Asians coming in from Kenya. Over the years Powell has been building up his image as a man of principle, as a frank and fearless defender of capitalism without controls. He has risked unpopularity by insisting that the law of supply and demand be allowed to work unhindered. Now he stands exposed as a hypocrite. He is all for controls to stop the free movement from country to country of workers seeking jobs. For Powell, as an MP for colour conscious Wolverhampton, himself runs the risk of becoming a victim of the law of supply and demand: if he came out in favour of the free movement of labour he might not be re-elected! Another former Tory minister, Duncan Sandys, has also been running his own one-man racialist campaign. Despite the fact that he was a member of the Tory government which, in granting Kenya independence, gave the Kenya Asians the right to come here. Sandys joined with Powell in demanding action to “keep-them-out”.

This campaign put the Labour government, already unpopular enough for its attacks on living standards, in an awkward position. Should it run the risk of again being blamed for “letting-them-in”, or should it try to outmanoeuvre the Tories? By now, after more than three years of governing capitalism, Labour was used to breaking promises and abandoning principles so the choice was easy. On February 22 Home Secretary Callaghan announced Labour’s Bill to stop the Kenya Asians. These unfortunate people were holders of British passports so the Bill had to provide for the extension of the immigration colour bar from Commonwealth to British citizens. Sandys was delighted:

   The Government have now themselves introduced a Bill similar to mine and I am giving them my full support . . . (Spectator, 1 March 1968)

Extending the colour bar to British citizens abroad needed careful drafting to avoid keeping out “white” as well as “coloured” people. In the end Labour found a solution that only those whose father or father’s father were born in Britain would from now on have free entry into Britain. One lawyer, writing in New Society (29 February) commented:

     Each lawyer will recognise the finger print of the formula that has been evolved: it is designed to draw a racial distinction by finding a dividing line which approximates to the racial division yet is capable of expression in words which make no specific reference to race.

The Socialist Party, basing its principles on the fact that workers the world over have a common interest, is opposed to all racialism and to all nationalism. We are opposed to all legislation to prevent the free movement of workers, whether in search of jobs or fleeing from oppression. We denounce the Labour Party’s new race law as a shameful sell-out lo colour prejudice. Let them never dare speak of the brotherhood of man again!

Adam Buick