Britain's Race Problem: Quick Rewrite of an American Tradition

The other remarkable fact about London ticket collectors, and bus drivers, is that most are black. To a visitor, this is probably the clearest and most immediate pointer to a problem which is fast assuming major proportions.

Until the Second World War, many Britishers had never seen a colored person. During the War, they found American Negro soldiers stationed all over the country, but Americans were foreigners and they left as soon as the War was over. The '50's and early '60's, however, brought an important change. Mother of an empire, Britain felt obligated to open its arms to any subject of a Commonwealth nation. Most of these nations are predominantly colored, and most of them enjoy standards of living considerably below those of Great Britain. The result was predictable. Large numbers of colored Commonwealth subject left their countries, which offered them little hope, and made the trip across an ocean or a continent to the tiny island. Today there are one million colored people living in Great Britain, a ratio of one black to fifty whites.

Unequal Distribution

An American would not consider this ratio overwhelming. But statistics don't accurately reflect the situation. First of all, the colored have not spread themselves over the whole country. They live in and around the major industrial centers. Cambridge, the beautiful university town on the river Don, where undergraduates go punting with their sweethearts on sunny afternoons, now has nearly forty-five colored inhabitants for every fifty-five whites.

This can not fail to cause a number of serious problems. One of the most immediate worries for a recent immigrant is finding a job. "No black bastards wanted here," and "No vacancy and why don't you go back to your own country," are the answers he learns to expect. Almost one half of the immigrants surveyed by the National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants (NCCI), which was set up two years ago to advise the government on the integration of Commonwealth immigrants, claimed that they had been discriminated against. Discrimination does not often assume so crass a form. Most employers would not specifically state that they hire on a discriminatory basis, but the NCCI survey found that the general attitude of employers was to hire colored staff only if the labor shortage should become too great, and then only for menial jobs.

People in very low levels of company hierarchy play a large role in the colored man's job-hunt. It is the gamekeeper, the receptionist, the personnel clerk, and the secretary, who act as a filter system and turn the immigrant applicant away.

The rationale offered for this is that "the existing staff would not like it," and, more often, that "the immigrants are underskilled, indolent and unlikely to stay with the company." But the facts do not substantiate the last claim. The NCCI found that almost half the immigrants contracted had been in their present occupation for over three years, that 70 per cent had English trade qualifications, 44 per cent had passed their General Certificate of Education (the British equivalent of a high school diploma) and only 36 per cent had no qualifications. In short, the immigrant labor force, comprised of the more adventuresome and enterprising of the Commonwealth population, is probably better trained than any random group of British or American citizens.

To prove the point, NCCI sent an Englishman, a Hungarian, and a colored immigrant, all equally well qualified, in search of a job. They applied for the same position. The Englishman was never turned down, the Hungarian was turned down thirteen times and the colored person was turned down 27 times out of 30.

It is not unusual, therefore, to find that the man collecting your bus fare not only has a high school diploma but also a college degree, or even a Ph.D. A recent issue of the British magazine, The Economist,indignantly addressed itself to the Minister of Transport, Barbara Castle: "How many colored people drive buses in London?" it asked. "And how many are employed as bus inspectors?" The answer: very many for the first question, none for the second. "This is unforgiveable," The Economist says. "Mrs. Castle, please wake up."

Unfortunately, the fact to which most Britishers are waking up to is that they do not want to work with colored people, that they do not want to eat with them, that they do not want to share toilet facilities. Above all, they do not want a colored man for their boss.

The picture is not all bleak. Some employers have sought to fight prejudice by setting an unofficial quota so the number of immigrants is kept below a particular level in any one department. After a difficult introductory period many employers have found that the hostility dise down.

Unequal Education

At the root of the problem is education. Many of the immigrants are highly educated and competent. Some are not. And that is enough to give rise to prejudice. Also, the immigrants, though competent, may have very little knowledge of the British way of life. Here Indian immigrants, with a hundred years of British rule behind them, have a very definite advantage over the West Indians and Pakistanis. (These three along with Cypriots, form the most important group of immigrants). It is in the school-room that these disadvantages are most glaring. Some Cambridge elementary school teachers find themselves trying to instruct a class where almost half the pupils may not speak English properly. This is the kind of set-back that is very hard, if not impossible, to overcome in a large class. These children may stay permanently behind.

The great influx in immigrants began in the '50's, and Britain has compulsory education up to the age of 16. So it is the next few years that will show whether the school system has succeeded in wiping out these initial disadvantages, or whether it is only maintaining them. If the schools fail to integrate the British-born children of immigrants, it will prove that British society as it is now constituted has failed to cope with, and indeed has succeeded in perpetuating, the problem.

There is every indication that the British educational system has failed. Children are streamed into classes at the age of eleven, according to their score on the British equivalent of an achievement test. Like American tests, the 11+ exam discriminates heavily against children who do not come from middle-class white backgrounds. There is no sign that British-born colored people have an easier-time of it.

These warning signals-are -not being ignored. The present Minister of Education, Patrick Gordon Walker, came to his post as an expert on remedial reading. Walker has even devised a phonetic spelling system which would make the language much easier for the foreigner. In Cambridge there are a number of schools experimenting with various new approaches to the task of bringing immigrant children up to par.

"Virtually Impossible"

The third vital area in which immigrants have the most to complain about is housing. Only 11 per cent of the "for rent" advertising does not specifically exclude colored people, and two thirds of those exclude them in practice. "It is virtually impossible to get a furnished flat for a Pakistani or West Indian," one real estate agent admitted. Real estate agents themselves often give fewer addresses to colored customers. Also it is much more difficult for an immigrant to obtain a mortgage, and rates are almost invariably higher. The last alternative, public housing projects (council houses) take a much larger percentage of whites than they do nonwhites holding similar jobs. And the NCCI claims to have evidence that where immigrants have been evidence that where immigrants have been housed, they are given the worst accommodation. According to officials, this was done to allay hostile reactions on the part of white residents.

Britain has no open housing law. Indeed, as the problem itself, all existing legislation is recent, and the government is still in the process of ironing out the folds. So far there is only one civil rights law on the books--the Race Relations Act of 1965. It does not cover employment, nor the even more explosive issue of open housing. The distinctive feature of this law as opposed to its American equivalents is that it refers any complaints which fall within its jurisdiction to local "Conciliation Committees"--which try to bring about some agreement between the two parties without having recourse to the courts.

Working Example

This procedure is designed to promote mutual understanding in a community rather than automatically pitting one side against the other. It worked for one visiting Harvard student. A Negro, he arrived in London with an English friend, and began to look for a place to stay the night. Exhausted from his trip, he stayed in the car while his friend went to find a hotel room. He finally found a room in a small West London hotel, but when the American entered the hotel, he was told he could not stay because he was colored. The English friend complained, and then lodged a complaint with the Greater London Conciliation Committee. They in turn called up the proprietress, who apologized for what it turned out was her son's decision. Mother and son both agreed to apologize to the American, and signed an assurance against discriminating in the future.

But the Race Relations Act has very limited effectiveness. Seventy per cent of the complaints brought to the attention of the local Committees prove to be outside their power. Most often it is a matter of discrimination in housing or employment, the two areas in which discrimination most seriously affects the lives of colored people.

Both Labor and Conservative parties have, over the last few years, become sensitive to the race problem and to the need for legislative action. And so far, both parties have strained to keep the issue out of the political arena. The truce has been productive. The '65 Race Relations bill was passed with little difficulty, and it was also possible to set up a number of committees to deal with various aspects of the issue.

There has not always been a truce between the parties. The Conservatives' Immigration Control Act of 1962 sparked a vitriolic debate in all Commonwealth nations. It was the first measure designed to curb the influx of colored immigrants from the Commonwealth countries into Britain, and the Labor party vehemently accused the Tories of racism, putting petty self-interest over and above the special bond between mother country and Commonwealth, and maliciously slamming the ceiling on any Commonwealth subject who wanted to better his economic situation by emigrating.

180 Degree Turn

Faced with the problems of integrating what is now one million foreigners (two per cent of the population) into a social structure already in a state of transition, the Labor party has swung around a full 180 degrees on its former position. Experts predict that by the end of the century there will be 3 million non-white British citizens (or over four per cent of the population). This figure does not allow for any additional immigration, but takes into account the important fact that almost all the immigrant population is of child-bearing age.

The confrontation between the two parties has had its nastier moments, reminiscent of the American dilemma in both tone and substance. In 1964 the Conservative candidate for Parliament in Smethwick, an ugly industrial town with a growing colored population, ran his campaign against Laborite Gordon Walker on the slogan, "If you want a nigger neighbor, vote Labor. "The Conservative won.

With these frightening statistics in mind, either party has only to look at the United States to persuade itself of the need for action. The Labor government is quietly feeling its way to yet another bill restricting immigration--helping individuals evade the present one has become a very lucrative and flourishing business.

Hornets' Nest

But the big problem and the most controversial one remains what is to be done for the non-white subjects currently living in Britain. The issue now is open housing, and it is not certain whether the Labor Party can count on Conservative support to pass a bill which will undoubtedly stir up a hornets' nest of emotions. Unlike in this country, there is hope in Britain that the problem can be mastered. "We have great advantages (over America)," the Race Relations Board stated in their yearly report. "Our colored population has arrived here far more recently and patterns of behaviour both among immigrants and among the indigenous population, are more flexible; we are more law abiding and the structure of our constitution gives the central government far greater control over local politics. We have therefore the opportunity to avoid many of the difficulties with which the United States is struggling."

Britain has found that it is not profitable to point a finger at us; instead she is showing herself willing to learn from our mistakes. She has awakened, but out of her slumber have risen passions and fears which may not be easy to allay. There is a hope, because the British are waking up to this danger too