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SUDDENLY the question of coloured immigration into Britain has become a burning issue. Previously this social phenomenon was regarded quite complacently as an example of British tolerance and understanding of the needs of other peoples. The South Norwood Labour Party staged a calypso celebration to welcome immigrants to the Borough in 1952, and the Mayor of Lambeth organised dances in 1955 to show that local white and coloured peoples "can mix socially" without trouble.
The racial riots of Nottingham and Notting Hill during August and September last year shattered this dream-world. It became clear that black and white peoples do not mix easily after all. Since the outbreaks (and there have been minor and sporadic instances of violence more recently) the press has treated the question of immigration as of vital importance. Why should it be important? The number of coloured immigrants into Britain is insignificant compared with the population of these islands; it is less than the number of Irish immigrants each year. The question of race itself has been treated for some years as of minor significance or even avoided altogether: was not Hitler's racial "myth" demolished with his defeat in 1945? Have not the British been taught since then, through the opinion forming media of radio, television, cinema and popular press, that the world consists of one great brotherhood, and that "race" is a wicked word? Yet in August and September last year sudden violence erupted in two of our largest cities, and racial rioting (the worst examples of violence since the war) became a national topic. Why?
Why do coloured immigrants come to Britain in the first place? Why not stop at home in their "islands in the sun," where Lord Beaverbrook and other wealthy people go as often as possible to enjoy the amenities? What causes coloured people to come to wintry Britain? To understand the immigration we should find out what causes it, go to the roots of the trouble in order to find the answer to the problem.
Coloured immigration has been in progress for several years. There was a good deal of it immediately after the war when, we are told, many coloured ex-servicemen, stationed in Britain during the war, decided they preferred to live in the welfare state rather than at home. There was no welfare state at home.
After 1950 the rate of immigration began to shoot up. There must have been some reason for this rise: there was. Most of the immigrants came from the West Indies, and the West Indies were becoming a socially and industrially depressed area.
The British West Indies are almost entirely dependent on agriculture for a living. They produce mainly sugar, also some tobacco and fruit. Some islands, such as Barbados, produce sugar only. Their population is continuously increasing, and unless they get a good price for their produce their people face unemployment and destitution. In Barbados, for example, there is regular work in the cane sugar industry for four months of the year: for the rest of the year they are largely idle, and any unemployment during the working season hits them badly.
Before the war, during the great world depression, they suffered much distress because of low prices. In 1938 Jamaica saw some very bloody riots. This happened while a Conservative Government was in power in Britain, and the Labour Party, being in Opposition, attacked the Conservative Government for its heart-lessness in not helping the West Indies more.
In 1945, after a successful war, a Labour Government came to power. How did it treat the West Indies then, once it had a large working majority in Parliament, six years of power, and could therefore carry through any enlightened social changes it wished?
The answer is that Labour leaders brought poverty back to the West Indies themselves. (During the war the West Indies enjoyed a spell of relative prosperity because of the demand for their produce).
The post-war Labour Government began by offering the West Indies a glowing future. In December 1947 they proposed to give £26 5s. a ton for their sugar, bringing it close to the price they were paying the much-favoured Cuban producers (£27 a ton). At that time the Labour Government offered the West Indies security if they put part of the increased price into reserve to develop the sugar industry, plus stabilised prices to the growers. It sounded very nice.
In 1948 the Ministry of Food undertook to take all the sugar the Colonies could produce, up to 1952, and urged the maximum expansion of production. This was the period when Mr. Strachey was busy making speeches on a permanent shortage of food throughout the world, and launched expensive ventures, such as the East African groundnuts scheme, to raise production by hook or by crook. The West Indies were enjoined to turn out all the sugar they could.
But Jamaica, led by Mr. Bustamante, remembered the pre-war days of gluts and asked for guaranteed markets to take all the sugar they could produce. They could turn it out all right if they were guaranteed adequate markets. Sugar, like other agricultural crops, does not grow out of conjurors' hats: it needs about three years to expand production effectively. The West Indies asked for a guaranteed annual market of 1,800,000 tons under a 10-year contract at a reasonably remunerative guaranteed price based on local conditions. They based this demand on the expansion they estimated could be achieved, and which would justify the considerable outlay of new capital.
The Labour Government's reply was that it could not go beyond the year 1952, and that it intended to work for a new International Sugar Agreement; international trade and "export or die" being its articles of faith.
Early in November 1949 the West Indies sent over a delegation to try to reach some agreement with the Labour Government. But by now the latter had made it clear what it would do from 1952 onwards: no more than 640,000 tons a year, when the West Indies were prepared to produce nearly three times as much, 1.800.000 tons a year if they had the market. The Labour Government’s policy appears to have been to encourage the maximum output of sugar up to 1952, with much outlay of capital necessary for this expansion; then, once the capital was sunk in the industry, to cut down production after 1952 to a figure one-third of the West Indian potential production.
Mr. Strachey of course followed the same policy of blundering waste in his nuts scheme in East Africa. The British taxpayer footed the bill. But the West Indian people could not afford such a great outlay in the first place, and could not invest in their sugar industry without adequate guaranteed markets. Discussion ended in January 1950, without agreement.
Meanwhile, West Indian leaders at home were saying forcefully what the Labour policy would produce. Mr. Bustamante, the Jamaican leader, said (Daily Mail, 23.1.50):
"The British Government's policy towards the West Indies is stupid, and possibly dangerous. I am not threatening—I understand Sir Stafford Cripps told our delegation he did not like such a word—but trouble will come from the people themselves without any urging when they find conditions impossible.
"Rather than be destroyed by His Majesty's Government under His Majesty's flag, we prefer our independence, and we are prepared to fight for it ... if London won't listen to our suggestions ... a lot will happen."
Prophetic words! A lot has happened. A lot of coloured immigrants have come to Britain since 1950; instead of violence in Kingston, Jamaica, as in 1938, a flood of refugees from a ruined Jamaica have come to Britain, resulting in violence in Notting Hill, London, twenty years later).
Mr. Kirkwood, chairman of the Jamaica Sugar Association, said:
"Our farmers and cane-workers have had a raw deal. The methods used in London were like cut-price haggling in a bargain basement."
So much for the opinion of a Labour Government held by some of the most "under-privileged people of the world," on whose behalf the Labour Party constantly assures us it is working.
But the Labour Government was still hypnotised by the fetisli of international trade. In June 1950 its spokesmen informed the West Indians they were not entitled to the same protected price arrangements as were, for example, British farmers who produced sugar beet.
Mr. Dugdale of the Colonial Office, and Mr. Webb, Minister of Food, refused to guarantee either markets or prices to West Indian sugar producers. They went still further, and stated that the Labour Government could not "insulate sugar producers in the Commonwealth wholly from the movements of world prices." They explained they were working for an international sugar agreement, and they stated that if Britain were to take part in an international agreement, the United Kingdom must set aside a share in its home market for the sugar producers of the world.
It had altered its views considerably from the days when Mr. Strachey made speeches deploring permanent world shortages of food. Now possibilities were arising of playing off one primary producer of sugar against another. That is virtually what the Labour Government told the West Indians in 1950, and that is why the latter were refused the adequate guaranteed markets which they required to keep their people in jobs, even if they were able to show they could produce enough sugar for Britain to go off rationing in a relatively short time.
The following year saw the reason why the Labour Government insisted on this policy. On 10.8.51 it signed its now notorious "Black Pact" with Cuba. It refused an adequate guaranteed market to the West Indians, but it guaranteed one to Cuba. It agreed to take 1,500,000 tons of sugar from that country over the three years 1951/53 and to allow the importation of Cuban cigars into Britain to the value of $500,000 during each of the years 1952 and 1953.
In return, Cuba agreed to reduce import duties on British goods down to the preferential level which the United States of America then enjoyed in the Cuban market. In return for the ruin of the West Indies British goods gained a footing in the Cuban market. But what on earth possessed the Labour Government to assume that this was a market of any real significance? Had Cuba ever featured among Britain's major customers? Britain, further more, gained no real advantage from the Cuban market. Under the terms of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trading, signed after the war, this reduction of Import duties bad to be api.hr.i also to the other 30 countries which signed the G.A.T.T. agreement. Britain was not allowed to enjoy this advantage alone, but had to compete against the United States, with its shorter sea-routes and mass production methods. Cuba was not a significant market for British goods before the "Black Pact," and has not been one since. Yet the Labour Government did not hesitate to ruin the West Indies in pursuit of this daydream.
Two years later the blunder was repeated. A Conservative Government was now in power, and signed its own "Black Pact" with Cuba in April 1953. It agreed to take 1,000,000 tons of sugar, to be paid for with precious dollars (which Britain could ill afford) whereas the West Indies could have supplied all this sugar for sterling.
Between them, the Labour and Conservative governments contrived to cancel out the advantages they claimed they were reaping from their bull-in-a-china-shop trading policy. Dollars which the first "Black Pact" painfully won for Britain by competing against 30 other countries in the minor Cuban market were promptly sent back to Cuba, under the second "Black Pact", to pay for the second lot of sugar: the old parties often claim "progress" when in fact they are standing exactly still.
Lord Lyle's comment (he was head of the big sugar combine) was to say that
"Because of this blunder Britain's larder is now stuffed with around 1,750,000 tons of sugar. That is 1,000,000 tons more than is needed to keep the nation sweet." (Daily Express, 14.1.54)
So much for the efforts of both parties in government to keep Cuba "sweet" by wasteful bulk purchase. It is also a curious example of a Conservative Government conserving the disastrous bulk-purchase method of a Labour Government while winning an election on the slogan of "free enterprise", to which Lord Lyle himself contributed much by his "Mr. Cube" publicity.
What has happened to all the sugar which Lord Lyle claimed was "stuffed" into Britain's larder? Did it get as far as the British consumer, who by then had developed a pronounced taste for sweet things after years of warfare and Labour austerity in sugar rationing?
Much of it never reached the dining tables here. On 31.3.58 the Daily Express reported:
"An estimated 1,000,000 tons of Cuban sugar, worth nearly £80,000,000 in the shops, is stacked on disused airfields in East Anglia. It has been there for five years. There is no sign that it will be moved. Much of the sugar was bought from Cuba under the 'Black Pact' of 1951."
What is the position today? Mr. Bustamante's warning of 1950 has indeed been borne out. Trouble has come, as he said it would, from the West Indian people themselves; not in the form of riots, which they learnt in 1938 could be suppressed by troops and police, but through the more subtle if spontaneous method of migration (which in any case is one of their traditions) to live upon the country which has ruined them.
This migration has caused trouble in Britain in a variety of ways. Firstly, over-crowding in the "black belts" of our big cities, with its attendant evils of taking houses which should be inhabited by the British who built them, and the ever-present danger to health.
Secondly, the danger to jobs, which is increasing today as a large pool of up to a quarter of a million coloured men and women is available to the more unscrupulous employer who will always lead the way in cutting wages in order to compete against his more honest rival. A large number of firms today employ coloured labour at lower wages than a white man would accept. This trend is certain to go on. Other firms are dismissing coloured workers when redundancies occur; yet this simply throws more coloured unemployed workers into competition with white workers for the jobs which remain.
Thirdly, the clash between black and white when both are herded together in crowded houses and streets, with dissimilar habits, leading inevitably to racial tension and violence.
There are about a quarter of a million coloured immigrants in Britain. Last July Miss Hornsby-Smith, Assistant Secretary for Home Affairs, gave the figure of 190,000. Mr. Cyril Osborne, M.P., put it at 210,000 in November; the Daily Telegraph said it was 250,000 at the same time. Mr. Osborne indeed claimed We shall have up to 6 million coloured inhabitants of this country HI 20 years' time if the present trend continues, He predicted! "we will have Nottingham and Notting Hill over and over again"—a future of continual race-rioting, it seems.
On 23.10.58 the Daily Telegraph published a report on the situation in the West Indies and the likelihood of the coloured immigration to Britain continuing, which clearly showed the extent of the breakdown. The newspaper's representative, who travelled a round journey of 12,000 miles, made it clear that Britain has yet to feel the full impact of coloured immigration.
He pointed to four main causes:
(1) "The historical fact that West Indians . . . have ever been a migratory people to countries of greater prosperity";
(2) "The enormous birthrate . . . which will exert continually increasing population pressure";
(3) "The certainty that the anticipated rate of economic and industrial development will hardly touch the unemployment and poverty of the mass of the people."
(4) "The firm . . . determination of even the most enlightened leaders to 'pack off' surplus population, preferably the least skilled, at all costs."
Any suggestion that recent racial trouble in Britain would slow down the rate of immigration, or even reverse it, was ruled out by the report. The Daily Telegraph editorial for the same day went as far as to say:
"The possibility of broken bones in Notting Hill will seem a small risk to take to avoid destitution and unemployment in Jamaica and Trinidad."
What that destitution means can be gathered from the report, which stated:
"Barbados, barely the size of the Isle of Wight, with a population of 230,000 and a density of nearly 1,500 people to the square mile, has one great problem. This is how to give regular work to the 22,000 men and women who, for only about four months of the year, are engaged in the harvesting and milling of the island's only crop, sugar cane. During the rest of the year, May to December, these people live . . . 'off the smell of an oily rag'". The report continued:
"Why do West Indians leave the cheerful, gregarious surroundings . . .? They leave because they want those things which radio, films and books tell them are available if they can work overseas."
Their governments want them to leave. The Daily Telegraph report made it clear, not only that their policy was to 'pack off' their surplus population, preferably the unskilled, but also that:
"There is no question of 'screening' any convicted person applying for a passport. Secondly, they were not in favour of the medical examination of emigrants."
Looking at it from their point of view, it is quite understandable for West Indian governments to adopt this attitude. If they have to get rid of surplus population, why keep the crooks, the unskilled, and the medically unfit at home, and export their best people to another country?
When that other country is also the country which has refused them their traditional guaranteed market, on which they depended to employ their people at home; the country to which they have been stoutly loyal in the past, and which repaid them by giving the guaranteed market to Cuba; when this has been the policy of politicians who talked largely of looking after the underdogs of the world; then it can be understood that West Indian leaders will be the last in the world to hold back their unemployed from an even bigger migration to Britain in the future.
British government policy is entirely responsible for this misery and unemployment. It has ruined the West Indies since the war; now the British people suffer a great coloured immigration which clashes inevitably with worsening unemployment here.
Sir Oswald Mosley has the distinction of being the only political leader to warn for the past ten years that this clash was inevitable because of the policies the old parties followed.
He has advanced a solution which deals with the coloured question. It is:
(a) Send the coloured immigrants home, with their passage paid by the people who brought them here;
(b) Send them home to good jobs in their own countries. Which can be secured by giving them the guaranteed market "1 Britain for which they have always asked. Give them this market, not for the 10 years they originally suggested, but on a permanent basis;
(c) Give Britain at the same time the same rights as the British Dominions, which have long exercised the right to choose which immigrants shall be allowed through their ports. The right of entry for students coming here to learn would always be respected; they could come here for a definite period, after which time they would go back to their own countries.
Under this policy, the minority of crooks among them would be expelled because of their habits. The majority of decent people among them would be sent home to good jobs among their own families.
How would those good jobs be given them? The answer lies in Mosley's policy of the Wage-Price Mechanism, which in the hands of European Government would fix wages in all industries and prices in monopoly industries, and, in particular, farming.
The West Indian sugar farmer would be treated in the same way as the British home farmer. He would be offered high prices for his produce, but he would have to pay his workers high wages. Britain would take all the sugar he could produce, not for a few years but throughout his lifetime and that of his sons. In fact the whole of Europe would become his market: European Government would greatly raise the purchasing power of 300 million Europeans, creating a vast demand which would absorb all the sugar the West Indies could possibly produce.
The Wage-Price Mechanism is not only designed to raise systematically the internal standard of life of the Europeans. It also offers unparalleled means of drawing together the great white countries of the former British Empire. The West Indies and other friendly purchasers, whose goods did not conflict with European Marketing, could come in on the same basis if they chose: if they refused, where would they get such attractive terms?
At once a great market would be created for Australian wool and Australian and Canadian wheat, New Zealand butter and West Indian sugar, a market continually expanding as European Government raised the living standards of the Europeans. Thus the "over-production" of Australian wheat and the under-consumption of West Indian sugar would vanish, as would semi-starvation among the whole of the Southern European peoples.
Robert Row
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