Race relations (1977)

From the May 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Quoting figures from the 1971 Census (Country of Birth Tables), the Sunday Times colour supplement recently reported that there are three million people living in Britain who were born citizens of another country. The Immigration Act passed in 1971 has severely limited male immigration, although it allows the wives and children of those already here to join them if they can satisfy British Consular representatives of their relationship and obtain an entry certificate. Accompanying the report was a large double page picture displaying one representative from each of the main countries of origin; a handsome and varied collection of the human race from all parts of the globe.

There are 29 main countries of origin with the breakdown as follows:-

(Countries from whom the number of immigrants is less than 14,000 are not listed).

A study of these figures makes nonsense of wild and inflammatory statements about the United Kingdom being swamped and taken over by coloured people and alien cultures. The largest single group comes from just across the Irish Sea, and the greatest overall proportion of immigrants have a European ancestry and share a common language. These easily mingle with the indigenous population, and it is the more noticeable who suffer the hostility and resentment of the racially biased.

Not un-naturally these people generally congregate in areas with others of similar background and language which leads to the accusation of certain cities being taken over and changed. Looking at the parts of Bradford, Leeds, Birmingham and London where there are large coloured immigrant populations, one puzzles at what there is about them that could induce anyone to uproot themselves from sunnier climes and settle in such dismal depressing environs. The answer is that people who have to sell their labour-power in order to live are forced to move about in order to find a buyer. Since Capitalism started there have been migrations of workers from their birthplaces to where the means of production are situated. From the countryside to the towns, from the under-developed parts of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland to England, from the North of England to the South; and in their tens of millions workers from the whole of the British Isles have emigrated to all parts of the world to seek the means of life.

It is because these immigrants come here to seek work that they are regarded with suspicion and hostility by many members of the working class. Every new worker entering the country appears to threaten somebody’s job. There is competition for jobs — and the buyer of labour-power prefers it that way. It helps to keep the price of labour-power low, he can pick and choose his worker more freely, and the worker is more likely to toe the line when he knows he can be easily replaced by another. Employers may have private views on nationality and race, but as capitalists they are interested only in labour-power; they recruit it as and when—and from wherever — they need. Workers were recruited in this way in the 1950s from Italy, the West Indies, and Asia.

With tensions already established the indigenous worker looks around at his problems and sees in the immigrant a scapegoat. Ignoring the fact that housing problems, unemployment, and poverty were rife before any immigrant set foot on these Islands, these faults are laid at the door of the immigrant, and those who are conspicuous, i.e. the coloured population, are the focus of hostility. The immigrant, afraid and bewildered by the hostility around him, often reacts in kind. Bitter and resentful young coloureds try to outdo their white counterparts in bigotry and malice. The frustration of both sides hardens, and we have in Britain the elements of a white-black and black-white antagonism that is being inflamed by those who wish to make political capital from ideas of “racial purity” and separation.

There is a great deal of argument and disagreement amongst anthropologists about racial, ethnic and national differences; but it requires no special knowledge or study to acknowledge the paradox of the human race. Nevertheless, the likenesses far outweigh the differences. To paraphrase Will Shakespeare . . . “Have we not eyes? Have we not hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions! Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same summer and winter. If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh?” . . . And yet, however similar, no two human beings are the same. Every person is unique! So there seems no rational reason to dislike someone who is different, because everyone is different.

The Socialist is free from racial prejudice. We take pleasure in the infinite variety of physical and cultural differences in our fellow humans and see no reason for those differences to continue to cause antagonism. Lines drawn on maps do not affect the way we regard our fellow men. We are deaf to calls from sectarian groups whether white, black, nationalist or feminist. There is a division in society but it is economic not social. On one side are those who own the means of production and distribution and thereby control the means by which we live — the capitalist class. On the other side are the vast majority, the working class, who have to sell their ability to work to those owners. This system is international, and like workers capitalists exist all over the world and come in all shapes, sizes and colours. Whether the owner is black or white, man or woman, speaks your language or not, the effect is the same. He is the master and you are the servant, he is the exploiter and you are the exploited.

It is in the interest of all workers whatever their colour, nationality, or sex to recognize the root of their problems lies in capitalism itself. The problems cannot be cured without its abolition. All workers must unite to bring to an end a system that sentences them to a lifetime of poverty, insecurity, conflict and hardship. Then, world-wide, all will work together, co-operating in producing everything that the human race requires to satisfy its needs. All mankind will live in harmony.

Alice Kerr