{"title":"Integrating black immigrants","authors":"S. Fielding","doi":"10.7765/9781526137791.00012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526137791.00012","url":null,"abstract":"When in 1961 the Conservatives introduced a Bill to reduce the number of black members of the Commonwealth settling in Britain, Hugh Gaitskell attacked them with impressive moral force.1 Their proposals contradicted Labour’s adherence to both the free movement of British subjects within the Commonwealth and, more importantly, its commitment to racial equality. Conventional wisdom has it that after Gaitskell’s death Labour abandoned his principled position because it alienated prejudiced white working-class voters. Hence, in 1965 Harold Wilson’s government further tightened controls and in 1968 it prevented large numbers of Kenyan Asians entering the country. While two Race Relations Acts, meant to discourage discrimination based on colour, accompanied these measures, most authorities consider them palliatives, drafted to salve Labour’s troubled conscience as ministers adhered to an essentially racist immigration policy.2 While in 1960 their party formally embraced a universal ‘brotherhood’, something the 1964–70 governments supposedly betrayed, many working-class activists nonetheless followed majority white opinion in their suspicion of black immigrants. For them, restricting black entry contradicted no principle because, so far as they were concerned, Labour’s compelling purpose was to defend the material interests of the indigenous (and implicitly white) proletariat – that is, people like themselves. Given that immigration appeared to threaten workers’ access to housing and jobs, the obvious solution seemed to be to reduce the numbers of black people entering the country, especially as (their Commonwealth status notwithstanding) they did not form part of the ‘British way of life’. As suggested in Chapter 1, this outlook was informed by a historically entrenched colour prejudice, for white immigrants far outnumbered black immigrants, but it would be simplistic to describe it as racist. Numerous surveys suggested that much white antipathy was conditional; those in the party who took its commitment to brotherhood seriously dearly hoped that this was true. Thus, a regular columnist in Socialist Commentary argued it was not immigrants’ colour that antagonised","PeriodicalId":217799,"journal":{"name":"The Labour Governments 1964–70 volume 1","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130469846","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Instilling ‘responsibility’ in the young","authors":"S. Fielding","doi":"10.7765/9781526137791.00013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526137791.00013","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":217799,"journal":{"name":"The Labour Governments 1964–70 volume 1","volume":"97 6","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114117890","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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