Britain: Rejection in the Promised Land

BRITAIN Rejection in the Promised Land Race is not an issue that is often raised in the British Parliament, the seat of government for Britain’s 98% white population. Yet there it was last week. Tory M.P. Duncan Sandys, a former Colonial Secretary, called for “immediate legislation to curtail the influx of immigrants into Britain.” Enoch Powell, a onetime Tory Minister of Health, expressed the fear that Britain’s simmering race problem “will at the end of the century be similar in magnitude to that of the U.S.”

Though Sandys and Powell are known as right-wingers, their feelings this time drew wide national support. Immigrants from the Commonwealth—mostly Pakistanis, Indians and West Indians—are pouring into Britain in such large numbers that Britain’s white population, including the large population of Irish immigrants, is both alarmed and seething with resentment. Warned the London Daily Mail: “The horrors of the riots in Newark and Detroit may seem remote, but all the causes have already taken root here.”

The majority of Britain’s 1,000,000 Commonwealth immigrants entered the country legally. Half the members of East Africa’s 400,000-strong Asian community, for example, are entitled to British citizenship. Since Kenya has started discriminating against its Asian population, giving their jobs to Africans and boycotting their shops, Asians are fleeing to Britain at a rate nearing 3,000 a month. Immigrants from other Commonwealth countries came under the 1962 Immigrants Act, which introduced a system of work permits and restricted the annual total of worker immigrants to 8,500.

Prop for Medicine. But many others, desperate to exchange the miserable living conditions in their own countries for the relative luxury of English life, have entered illegally. Since the 1962 Act also provides free entry for the dependents of work-permit holders, false dependency claims have vastly boosted the annual inflow. Authorities believe that thousands of illegal immigrants are flown to Belgium or France and then, in a lucrative people-smuggling trade, ferried across the English Channel to deserted beaches (fare: $1,200 to $1,800). Between 1962 and 1966, the annual immigrant inflow rose from 6,580 to 32,689. Last year, boosted by illegal entries, it topped 50,000.

Unwelcome in the cradle of the British Commonwealth, where Asians and Negroes are all labeled as “colored immigrants” by a largely distrustful white population, the immigrants have turned to their own kind, formed large colored communities across England’s Midlands and in London slums. Against the background of white resentment, the colored communities are growing restive. Last week 1,000 Pakistanis demonstrated in London against what they called the government’s failure to redress the grievances of the Pakistani community. Much of their bitterness is justified. Colored doctors and nurses are a mainstay of Britain’s nationalized medicine, and bus services throughout Britain would grind to a halt without colored crews. No matter. Home Secretary James Callaghan, pressured by public opinion, told Parliament that the government will legislate against the loopholes in Britain’s immigration laws.