RACE RIOTS IN BRITAIN
The racial clashes in London and the English Midlands achieved headline treatment in the world press. Nottingham and Notting Hill were the scenes of brutal attacks on the Negro minority in Britain.
Colored immigration into Britain has assumed importance only since the Second World War. People from the West Indies, Pakistan, Ghana, and Nigeria — the bulk being from the West Indies - have emigrated to the main industrial areas in Britain: London, Nottingham, Birmingham, Coventry, Wolverhampton, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, and Newcastle. Yet even now there 190,000 of such immigrants in a population of over 50 million.
This migration since the war has been based on the prolonged boom which, until the last few years, meant a.
chronic shortage of labor in the metropolitan country. Colored workers, among others (Irish, illed jobs which British workers were leaving for less hazardous or more lucrative work. Thus employers in the bullding ndustry, the mines, the buses, and factories where a large amount of unskilled work was required, took the opportunity to use this new supply of labor power. Especially in Jamaica, where chronic unemployment affected one-third of the workers, Britain seemed a new . Mecca of hope. For one-third unemployment in Jamaica meant what six million unemployed
In the last 20 years, one and a half million Irish workers have entered Britain, to take up largely unskilled jobs; and has been an immigration of half a million from Europe — Poles, Hungarians, and so on, since Second World War. At the same time, one and a half million British workers have emigrated to Canada, Australia, Zealand, and the colonies. Two hundred thousand, more than the total of colored immigrants, left Britain in one year alone — 1957. There have been twice as many white immigrants into Britain from the Dominions as there have been colored immigrants. The fact is, of course, that whereas immigrants from such places as Australia and even Ireland have been quickly absorbed into the white population, Asians, Africans, and West Indians are conspicuous by their appearance. There are in fact only four colored to every thousand white inhabitants, concentrated mainly in the large industrial areas in England.
The roots of the problem underlying the riots lie in 300 years of colonialist propaganda, which has resulted in ignorance and prejudice against the Negro people. In addition, there has been a chronic housing shortage elsewhere, since the war, and a contraction of the market, wherein unskilled jobs are less readily available than before. Another point has been that, debarred from residence in the "better" areas, the Negro immigrants have tended to become concentrated in ghettoes in the larger cities. Only in Birmingham has the progressive policy of the Labour municipal authority ensured the widespread distribution of the colored population throughout the city.
The prejudices resultant from all these causes are so deep-rooted as even to have affected more backward layers of the trade-union movement. As a whole, however, the Labour movement has stood firm, especially as British colonial policy as for generations been "free access to the 'Mother' country.
In the first attack, in Nottingham, the assaults were by hooligans and lumpenproletarians, and all took place in one area where many colored residents are concentrated. This outburst, a "spontaneous" one, was evidently unplanned, but had been building up in a series of attacks on colored people in the previous months. The Notting Hill attack, by contrast, showed clear evidence of detailed fascist pre-planning, and is the terminal point of years of fascist activity and propaganda in the area. Notting Hill is a district partly lumpen, partly criminal, and partly Bohemian — a locality particularly susceptible, under these conditions, to fascist poison. It is noteworthy that in such areas as Brixton, Islington and Hackney, all places overwhelmingly working-class in comPosure. With efe trowt of mas itemployment, however, thet all efforts at racist incitement have situation would become far more dangerous.
Only now is the Labour movement beginning to awaken to the dangers of the situation, though the Labour Party and trade unions have waged no real campaign on the question. In the areas affected, there has been the disgraceful spectacle of Labour MPs bending to reactionary pressure. Rogers in London and Harrison of Nottingham actually came out for a disguised form of restriction of immigration.
Yet the problem of immigration and the integration of immigrants is not a new one in Britain. Two generations ago there were riots against Irish immigrants in Lancashire and other areas, arising directly from competition for unskilled jobs. At that time the trade-union movement was far weaker
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL than at present, and the danger of the living standards of those already employed being depressed by unorganized labor was correspondingly far greater. At many of the cotton mills, notices advertizing work on the factory gates carried the words: "No Irish need apply." The last remnants of this struggle linger in the muted conflict between Roman Catholics and Orangemen in Liverpool, Edinburgh, and initial outbursts, the ruling class decided on drastic measures to stop the hooligan attacks on the colored people and their property. They had allowed the immigration to proceed so far precisely because of the contradictory world situation in which they find themselves. The situation since the Second World War is entirely different from that of the past. Churchill could wage a campaign against a grant of limited rights to India on the grounds that the people were not sufficiently capable of governing themselves; now, the awakening of the Asian and African peoples, it is no longer possible to contain the movement for national independence in this way or to preserve the fiction of British and white supremacy.
Equally important is the fact that the struggle between the USSR and the Western imperialisms has as one of its main expressions the fight for the allegiance of the colonial and semi-colonial ruling classes — a factor which, among others, has contributed to the loosening of the bonds of the Negro people in the USA since the end of the war. Under these conditions, the ruling class in Britain had more to lose than to gain from such activities. Draconian sentences imposed, even on first offenders.
It would be wrong to think that there is a deeply rooted and ingrained racial prejudice. Two-thirds of those interviewed in a Gallup poll said that they had no prejudice, and of the balance most were wavering and only a small percentage admitted to prejudice all the way. This is of course not decisive. They can be swayed one way or the other by a strong lead.
In this connection, a good campaign has been waged by the Labour MPs, Brockway and Baird, for acts of parliament to prohibit all discrimination. Where flagrant discrimination has been in operation the Labour movement locally has taken the initiative in opposing it. On a national scale, the musicians' union has banned its members in dance bands from playing in dance halls which carry on a discriminatory policy, and has not hesitated to expel certain musicians who contravened this ban. Facing up to the situation, the Afro- West Indian Union, formed in Nottingham some ago, put out a phamphlet, Don't Blame the Blacks — for. Unemployment, even before the riots, in anticipation of programme which can carry forward the struggle — that. Is, the integration of the Negro workers in Britain into the trade unions and Labour Party. The bus strike in London, and other strikes, have demonstrated that in common struggle real links between white and colored workers can and will The Labour leadership, as usual, has awakened only after the issue could no longer be avoided. They have firm and uncompromising statement condemning all forms of discrimination, and have pledged the next Labour Government to legislate against every manifestation of the color bar. At the same time, the statement has not been used ar the basis for a campaign throughout the movement and in the country at large. The most disturbing symptom of these outbreaks has been the participation of youths who have been indiscriminately labelled as "Teddy boys." The crisis of capitalism and of the Labour Movement is reflected in the emptiness of existence and lack of purpose for youth. In spite of higher living standards than before the war, the lives of the young are and meaningless. The ageing Labour Party has no point of attaction with its right-wing policy. Youth
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL requires audacity and a programme "to storm heaven." If already, at a time when unemployment is still small, have been these manifestations among the youth, what may when the youth, leaving the schools, will find and many of those holding jobs will be thrown out of work? The youth can be won for socialism, but only by a bold campaign for the transformation of society, at the same
9 time explaining the interdependent rôle of the colonial areas
The warking class can be won to a programme demanding a socialist Britain economy is linked with those the newly liberated on a basis of free and equal