Coming of Age : 1976 and the Road to Anti-Racism

Southall has always been a town at the forefront of the fight against laws like immigration
acts – from 1962 when the first Act passed and the IWA had a very big meeting. It was addressed
by Fenner Brockway, George Pargiter, then the MP for this area, as well as members
of the Pakistani community and Claudia jones who was in those days a great name
within the black population. (3)
The Labour government was elected in 1964 and in August 1965 it published a White Paper
where the employment vouchers were reduced to 8,500 per year and much more restrictive,
so again the IWA with CARD and others fought against it. 1968 another [immigration]
act [largely directed at Asians from Kenya under threat of expulsion] was passed, controlling
those citizens and British passport holders who had acquired that status overseas.
Against the 1971 Act [affectively ending all primary immigration], again Southall was active.
Southall was always active against such discriminatory immigration laws and also was campaigning
to strengthen the 1965 Race Relations Act and exposing its weaknesses.
We also had to fight at the local level too. When families started coming in the 1960s, the
local authority was not ready to cope and then there were racially prejudiced organisations,
and even fascist organisations like the British National Party, that started agitating that
teachers were too involved in having to teach English to Asian children for whom it was a
second language. They threatened the council that they would withdraw their white children
from school, particularly from the junior School at Beaconsfield Road. And then Edward
Boyle, minister of education, with Tories in power, he came down to Southall and with
the council evolved a sort of formula that in any class or any school in Southall there should
not be more than 33 per cent immigrant children. And those 33 per cent were even taken
into a separate reception class, segregated as it were. And this is how a discriminatory
attitude started. The surplus number of immigrant children were bussed away from Southall
to schools as far as six miles from the catchment area. This caused controversy within the
community – some Asian parents thought it might be for the long-term good of the children
and others asked why they did not build new schools if there were not enough places in
existing schools. It was around 1968 that people realised that bussing was racially discriminatory.
Why did Asian parents not have the same rights under the education acts as white
to choose the school for their children? Bussing started in 1965 and not stopped until a very
extensive campaign was launched in the 1970s in Southall, going house to house, explaining
how disastrous the policy was. In the 1974 local elections, bussing was one of the major
issues in Southall and the case was taken to the Race Relations Board [in 1975] and heard
by the High Court and then the local authority had to accept the ruling to phase out bussing
over three years, which they have now. So for that they had to build three new schools in
Southall. The community campaigned for years to win that battle.
HP: Can you tell me a bit more about the campaigns against immigration laws? What kind of
alliances did the IWA make?
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