Open%20borders%20The%20case%20against%20immigration%20controls%20-%20Teresa%20Hayter

46 Open Borders
powerful speech condemning the bill as cruel and brutal anti-colour
legislation. Paul Foot quotes part of his speech as follows:
The rate of immigrants is closely related, and in my view will always be related, to the
rate of economic absorption. There has been over the years an almost precise
correlation between the movement in the numbers of unfilled vacancies, that is to
say employers wanting labour, and the immigration figures. As the number of unfilled
vacancies goes down, the immigration figures go down, and as the number of unfilled
vacancies rises, the immigration figures go up. It is in my opinion an utter and
complete myth that there is the slightest danger or prospect of millions and millions
of brown and black people coming into this country. Anyone who is trying to put that
across is only trying to frighten people into believing it.
Gaitskell and others pointed out that people in British colonies looked on
themselves as British, and on Britain as the ‘mother country’. Barbara Castle
ended her speech against the bill (quoted by Foot) by saying:
I do not care whether or not fighting this Commonwealth Immigration Bill will lose
me my seat, for I am sure that the Bill will lose this country the Commonwealth.
Labour’s opposition on the first reading of the bill was total. It introduced
successful amendments softening the bill. But its unconditional support for
free entry wavered in the course of the debates. By the third reading, from
which Gaitskell was absent, Denis Healey was admitting that controls might
at some future date be necessary; subsequently he repudiated a statement
by John Strachey that Labour would repeal the act. From then onwards,
Labour’s principled opposition to controls on Commonwealth immigration
was in decline.
As Ian Spencer in British Immigration Policy since 1939 documents in great
detail from recently disclosed Cabinet and other internal documents, the
reality was that, behind the public statements, most of the politicians, and in
particular the Tory leadership, wanted to keep black people out. Their
problem was that at the same time they wanted to ensure that white Commonwealth
citizens, Irish workers and others of desirable ‘stock’, badly
needed for the functioning of British industry and the public services and for
other more sentimental reasons, were not excluded. The delay in introducing
controls was caused by the difficulty of doing so without giving the
appearance of discrimination. As Lord Swinton of the Commonwealth
Relations Office (quoted by Spencer) wrote in 1954 in response to Lord
Salisbury’s arguments for immigration controls:
If we legislate on immigration, though we can draft it in non-discriminatory terms, we
cannot conceal the obvious fact that the object is to keep out coloured people. ...
There is, in fact, a continuous stream of persons from the old Dominions to the
United Kingdom who come here, with no clear plans, in order to try their luck; and it
would be a great pity to interfere with this freedom of movement. ...
[A large coloured community] is certainly no part of the concept of England or
Britain to which people of British stock throughout the Commonwealth are attached.
(Italics added)