Racism And Immigration In Britain - Case Study Example

Racism And Immigration In Britain Whatever the superficial or visible differences such as skin pigmentation which identify human beings as belonging to different races broadly labelled White, Black or Yellow, science only recognises one species, Homo Sapiens. However, historical, geographical and cultural differences of language, religion, dress, diet, customs and manner, among many other factors, distinguish groups, even within the larger groupings based on skin colour, into a multiplicity of ethnic identities. Human history has been one of conflict between such groups, which in the modern world are exemplified by constant warfare, or threat of war, between nation-states seeking political and economic supremacy or relative advantage. There is also a pecking order established by those nations with superior industrial and technological development over the less developed nations. Groups within the borders of nation states that differ in ethnic identity also happen to clash with each other on real or perceived discrimination and oppression by one group over another. This essay seeks to explore the causes, and explanations given, for a series of riots by one group, and violent clashes between two identifiable groups, within the United Kingdom since the late 20th century. The United Kingdom historically has been open to waves of ethnically diverse groups who, over a period of time, forged a unified identity in terms of language, custom and belief. These early waves of immigration or conquest were from regions geographically adjacent and, at least in appearance, not very dissimilar to the native population. ‘The Celts, Saxons and Vikings all came to Britain as the result of various invasions making the British the most ethnically composite of all European peoples’ (Homes 1988). However, with the expansion of the British Empire, in spite of its later dissolution, people from far flung regions very dissimilar in very many ways were allowed to enter and settle in Britain. Informed views on the reasons for this influx and its aftermath are explored in some detail as the substance of this essay, in the pages below. It is advisable to explore the beginnings of the large scale movement of people that ‘began in the 19th century with the consolidation of unified nation states with recognisable borders’ (Brown, 1995). Ruth Brown claims that such immigration was inevitable with the abolition of slavery, when forced labour en masse in the service of capitalism was no longer available. Between the year 1500 and 1800 30 million black people (slaves) were transported by Britain. Since then, ‘Capitalism has made immigration both possible and also necessary, as the system has historically depended on the labour which immigration makes available’ (op. cit.). During the Industrial Revolution, mainland Britain needed the famine-fleeing Irish to work in the railways, docks and mills. The conditions in which they worked were ‘appalling’, with no job security at all. This was the next best thing to slavery from the point of view of capital owning classes. Brown (op.cit.) claims that in the face of increasingly unionised labour, and deteriorating economic conditions, the British ruling class introduced a law controlling immigration as the Aliens Act 1905. ‘It institutionalised the idea that immigrants alone were responsible for the rapidly deteriorating conditions which most workers were suffering’ (op.cit.). The Trades Union Congress was sold on the idea, and blamed immigrants for mass unemployment. During this time, housing too became an issue with the Liberal MP Cathcart Wilson quoted as saying: ‘What is the use of spending thousands of pounds on building beautiful workmen’s dwellings if the places of our own workpeople, the backbone of the country, are to be taken over by the refuse scum of other nations?’ (Foot, 1965). This type of obviously racist comment was commonplace among all sections of the political spectrum and set the scene for later problems between the indigenous population and the immigrant workers. The first half of the 20th century began in Britain with crippling strikes by unionised labour in the docks, railways, and the coal mines. In August 1914 the Aliens Restriction Act was passed followed by the Defence of the Realm Act creating for the first time ‘a clear definition of British nationality in law and laid down strict guidelines for local police and military authorities in their treatment of ‘aliens’’ (Brown, 1995). In 1919 another Aliens Act followed, renewed every year until the 1971 Immigration Act. It was the economic depression that accounted for limiting immigrants to around 700 a year between the 1920s and the1930s. Jewish refugees fleeing Nazism in Austria and Germany were turned away or interned. However, the British economy throughout the Second World war, faced with labour shortages, relaxed the rules to accommodate more than 60,000 Irish men and women to work in Britain, as well as a smaller numbers from the Caribbean and the Indian sub-continent’ (Holmes, 1988). Britain’s post-war reconstruction needed a massive injection of labour and the restrictions were relaxed. However, a report by the Royal Commission on Population in 1949 recommended that immigration should be welcomed ‘without reserve’ but that migrants should be ‘of good stock and were not prevented by their race or religion from intermarrying with the host population and becoming merged into it’ (ibid). This was a cautionary comment following the arrival of 400 West Indians on SS Empire Windrush the previous year. However, desperate British employers ignored such blandishments and continued to recruit labour from the Caribbean and the Indian sub-continent in the 1950s. At this time, labour shortages were acute throughout Western Europe and the first post-war Conservative government in the King’s speech referred to serious shortages of labour handicapping production in a number of industries (Foot, 1965). During the 1950s and 1960s new skills were demanded for expanding industries and services, in electrical engineering, petro-chemicals, banking, insurance and public services which the indigenous labour force was trained to undertake. This left a shortage in unskilled areas of work ‘with the lowest levels of pay and the poorest working conditions, such as textile production, metal manufacture, the building trade, and the catering and health services’ (Miles, R and Phizacklea, A., 1984). Both state initiatives and private agencies looked towards countries whose economies were ‘ruined by decades of colonial domination’ where ‘poverty and unemployment drove many to emigrate’ (Brown, 1995). Had Britain not been able to draw on a pool of labour in the (New) Commonwealth, the British government might even have been forced to repeal the Aliens Act, to entice more workers to come to Britain in order to meet the continuing demand for labour in certain areas of the economy. As it turned out, the former colonial territories, their economies starved of investment and distorted by the previously insatiable demands of the leading Western nations for raw materials, ensured a continuous flow of labour out of the Caribbean and the Indian sub-continent ... even after the long boom had reached its peak. Despite the thinly disguised message from the Royal Commission of Population of 1949, which essentially tried to ‘warn off’ bosses from recruiting ‘coloured’ labour, prospective employers in 1950s had little concern for the skin colour or religion of their new employees. Whatever racist ideas they held were secondary to their need for workers to fill gaps in the labour market by doing the worst jobs. The reason why Britain’s employers so enthusiastically recruited workers from the Commonwealth was that they had nowhere else to get them from (Brown 1995). Now began the overt ‘racialisation’ of British politics, where it was vociferously denied that there was ever an open invitation to those who were now beginning to be labelled as the cause of a ‘race/immigration’ problem. Not only was the New Commonwealth emigrant a member of a former subject race, but the ‘science’ of eugenics had not been completely discredited by then, with a racial hierarchy in terms of superiority and inferiority according to measured innate intelligence was accepted as fact. It would take several decades before the post-war consensus on human rights and equal opportunities was even remotely acceptable to the British public and the state. The scientific basis for racial differences in IQ is still being expounded and debated. Until the passing of the Commonwealth immigrants Act of 1962, there existed an informal supply and demand mechanism for immigrant labour, where ‘... immigration levels dropped very quickly after any drop in the number of advertised vacancies. It was only the racism of Britain’s rulers some years later which destroyed this’ natural’ relationship between levels of labour migration and the level of demand for labour’ (op. Cit.). Enoch Powell, who most famously was against ‘coloured’ migration a few years later, actively recruited medical staff from India and the West Indies when he was Minister of Health. London Transport had an agreement with the Barbadian Immigration Liaison Service, and the British Hotel and Restaurant Association had similar agreements to entice labour to Britain’s shores. These migrants began settling in areas of low unemployment, mostly in London and others in the Midland towns like Burnley, Bradford, Oldham and Leeds. Although most of the immigrants possessed skills, they were ‘forced into semi-skilled or unskilled work – often in those areas which had been partially deserted by the indigenous workforce in favour of the higher pay and better conditions in industries associated with new technology’ (op. cit.). Now the coloured immigrants began to be ‘ghettoised’ in city centres ‘with ‘white flight’ taking off to the suburbs around these cities’ (Jayasinghe, 2009). Racial discrimination accounted for the vast majority of workers remaining in low paid jobs with little prospect of promotion. However, what professedly socialist, anti-capitalist commentators like Ruth Brown ignore mentioning are the highly skilled and English educated immigrant doctors, engineers, accountants and other similar professionals enjoying a better quality of life in Britain, Increasingly, not only were there small shopkeepers and suppliers of goods and services to the minority population, but also large scale entrepreneurs and sportsmen/women from among them, gaining a worldwide reputation. There were also artists, writers, academics and entertainers who overcame their initial negative stereotypes to enable them to achieve fame and fortune. From among those minority candidates who were successful in being elected to local authority and parliamentary office, some were even elevated to the House of Lords. But these were decidedly exceptions rather than the rule. Returning to the ‘ghettoised’ Caribbean and Asian workers, by the 1960s and 1970s most of them had lost their jobs, and those who still had jobs did ‘twice the amount of shift work ... and on average earned significantly lower wages’ (Brown 1995). By this time, ‘thrown on the scrap heap’ the coloured immigrants were no longer thinking of a ‘speedy return home’, but, instead in fear of the doors closing on future immigration after the 1962 Act, they were seeking to get down their dependants too. ‘Total New Commonwealth immigration grew from 21,500 entrants in 1959 to 58,000 in 1960. A year later this figure had more than doubled and a record 125,400 New Commonwealth immigrants entered in 1961’ (Foot, P. 1965). Describing the Commonwealth Immigrants Act (1962) as a landmark piece of legislation, Brown goes on to say: It was the first legislation to introduce state regulation of Commonwealth immigration and introduced the first ever entry restrictions on British Commonwealth citizens, by making primary immigration dependent upon the possession of a work voucher. Given that the intended targets of the Act were all black or Asian ... the 1962 Act also marks the first of a series of racially discriminatory pieces of legislation which have combined to lay the basis for the notoriously racist immigration laws for which Britain is so famous today. The 1962 Act enshrined in law for the first time the completely false, yet no less insidious notion that immigration equals black immigration, a notion upon which all successive immigration legislation has been built (Brown 1995). While in the 1950s the Tory cabinet voted against immigration controls, by the 1960s both Conservative and Labour spokesmen were vehemently campaigning against an influx of New Commonwealth immigrants. Links were made between disease, violent crime involving guns and knives, muggings, drug use and sale, and the general deterioration of Britain’s inner cities, with the rapid increase in the black population. Largely unemployed, they were disproportionately dependent on the welfare state and were labelled ‘scroungers’, their high birth rate seen as exacerbating the problem. Hitherto, the Asians concentrated in northern cities were seen as submissive, non-confrontational and law-abiding. However, all this was to change, with the advent of Islamic fundamentalism which radicalised Muslim youth who created havoc in the streets at the beginning of the new century. The ‘race relations’ industry initiated by the state, began to appear hollow and meaningless. Blacks and Asians became the scapegoat for the deteriorating economic conditions in Britain. Although the British government had almost totally assumed control of the recruitment of Commonwealth labour, it did not hasten to provide the housing and educational needs of the inner-city concentrations of migrant labour. Largely segregated schooling, although not adopted as a policy, was the inevitable consequence of the lack of foresight on the part of city planners of local authority areas where immigrant labour predominated. To combat self-segregation by the immigrant community, it is necessary to provide integrated schooling. As Jayasinghe (2009) argues school ‘desegregation or integration is necessary for social harmony. All learning occurs, and identities are formed in a cultural context. Tolerance has to be learned and this is easier to learn at an early age, if not at home, then at kindergarten and primary school’ (p.108). Increasingly, there was hardly any difference between Labour and Conservative policies on immigration, both vociferous in arguing for controls and restrictions. This was seen as the way to gain votes. Richard Crossman, a Labour stalwart at the time admitted that ‘immigration can be the greatest potential vote-loser for the Labour Party... if we are seen to be permitting a flood of immigrants to come and blight the central areas of our cities’. (quoted in Brown 1995). Fighting the 1979 general election, Margaret Thatcher claimed that ‘British people’s fears about ‘being swamped’ were legitimate’ and that these fears could be ended only ‘by holding out a clear prospect of an end to immigration’ (Miles and Phizacklea, (1984). After Thatcher’s electoral victory, groups like the Monday Club with its ‘Immigration and Repatriation Policy Committee consistently put forward serious proposals during the early 1980s for the forced repatriation of 100,000 New Commonwealth immigrants each year from Britain’ (Brown, 1995). Journals like the Salisbury Review argued for forced repatriation and endorsed claims that immigrants were linked to ‘vastly disproportionate amounts of violent crime’ (ibid.p 113). There was no recognition that unemployment and degrading living conditions in ghettos were causes which had not been addressed. The high rate of unemployment among the less skilled was believed to be due to a higher degree of mechanisation which ‘increased the rate of exploitation of individual workers but which tended to reduce in the long term the number of workers actually employed (ibid). Immigration controls aimed at the New Commonwealth influx did not appease the racists in British society. Instead, it institutionalised racism, and organisations like the National Front and the British National Party continued to grow in strength and numbers. Now the stage was being set for the riots and confrontations which occurred in Brixton, Bradford and Broadwater Farm, among several others, during the last two decades of the 20th century. But before going on to deal with specific instances of ‘racial unrest’ as above, it is worth noting further evidence of the openly racist nature of government initiatives to curb the entry of specific groups like the Kenyan and Malawi Asians who held British passports. In 1968, the Labour government passed legislation which abolished the right of British passport holders to enter Britain unless they had a close historical connection with Britain, for example, parents or grandparents born in Britain. This obviously was meant to include whites but not Asians. The Labour government formed after the 1974 general election imposed a restriction on entry to the UK of women by marriage, by requiring gynaecological tests to be carried out to ascertain the virginity of brides, as a prerequisite ‘qualification’ to enter Britain. An openly racist and bizarre development, how this measure reduced the unwanted further influx of Asians has not been documented. It only helped to create additional tensions between Asians and the indigenous community. It is argued that immigration controls are a ‘powerful weapon with which the ruling class in modern capitalist society attempts to divide workers by stoking up racism within national boundaries’ (Brown 1995) Thus the history of immigration controls in Britain is also the history of concerted attempts, by Tory politicians and the tabloid press, to fan the flames of racism within British society. Every new set of immigration controls from the 1905 Aliens Act ...has always been accompanied by claims that immigrant workers in Britain are to blame for unemployment, poor housing, and street crime – for all the problems which workers experience in capitalist society on a daily basis. Instead of workers blaming government policies or capitalism itself for the inability of the system to meet even their most basic needs, successive Tory governments and their friends in the gutter press use the question of immigration, and the calls for tighter controls, in an attempt to divert discontent away from the real source of the problems and towards migrants instead (op. cit.). Having set the scene giving an exhaustive account of the reasons for a charged atmosphere of animosity towards the New Commonwealth immigrant it is now not difficult to imagine why racial disturbances occurred during the last quarter of the 20th century in Britain. The first was the Brixton riot that took place on 11 April 1981. Brixton in south London is an area where 24 percent of the inhabitants are of Afro-Caribbean origin. It is an area of deep social and economic problems with a high rate of unemployment, high crime, poor housing, and a general lack of local amenities. It is reported that 279 injuries were sustained by the police, 45 injuries to members of the public, with over a 100 vehicles burned, including 56 police vehicles and about 150 buildings damaged with 30 of them burnt down. 82 arrests were made. Around 5000 people were said to have been involved in the riot. Police in Brixton had been seen as intimidating, with mental and physical abuse of crime suspects the norm. Metropolitan Police began Operation Swamp 81 at the beginning of April aimed at reducing street crime using what was called ‘sus law’, that later, Lord Scarman, the head of the government appointed public inquiry into the riot, described and criticised as the ‘disproportionate use of stop and search powers by the police targeted against black people’. The local community was not consulted, when within the first five days of the ‘operation’ almost 1000 people were stopped and searched. On the evening of the 10th at about 5.15 pm, a black youth who had been stabbed, was reportedly being helped by police in Atlantic Road. As the police were taking the youth to a waiting car in Railton Road, a crowd of onlookers attacked the police believing the youth was being targeted. More police arrived and the youth taken to hospital. About 200 black and white youth continued to attack the police. The number of police foot patrols was increased on the night of the 10th and Operation Swamp 81 continued until the following day. By then the crowd had increased and began pelting police cars with bricks. Shops were looted in Railton Road, Mayall Road, Leeson Road, Acre Lane and Brixton Road. The rioting was continued on the following day by young men armed with bottles and bricks. Ordinary black and white members of the pubic tried to mediate between the youth and the police, but failed. Over 1000 police officers were despatched to the area, increasing the total to over 2500. By the early hours of Sunday morning the riot had fizzled out. Between 3rd and 11th July 1981 there were more pockets of racial and social discord in several other locations like Handsworth, Southall, Toxteth, Moss Side, and in Leeds, Leicester, Southampton, Halifax, Bedford, Gloucester, Coventry, Bristol and Edinburgh. Lord Scarman concluded his report on the Brixton riot with the observation that ‘complex political, social and economic factors created a disposition towards violent protest’ (quoted in 1981 Brixton riot – Wikipedia). However, the 1999 Macpherson Report on the failed investigation of the murder of a black youth, Stephen Lawrence (19 years after the first Brixton riot) found that Scarman recommendations had been ignored and the police force was ‘institutionally racist’. On 13 April, two days after the Brixton riots, Margaret Thatcher, the then prime minister, rejected the notion that unemployment and racism had anything to do with the disturbances. She dismissed the observation made by the Lambeth Council leader that the police presence ‘amounted to an army of occupation’; and the stage set for further riots across the country. In Brixton alone there were two further riots in 1985 and 1995. The 1985 Brixton riot occurred on 28th September. It was sparked by the police shooting of the mother of a black youth suspected of a firearms offence named Dorothy Groce. Police lost control of the area for 48 hours during which several shops were looted, at least one building burned and dozens of cars destroyed. One photo-journalist died as a result of head injuries. One week later on 6th October a riot occurred in the Broadwater Farm area of Tottenham, North London. A black youth was arrested for driving a vehicle with an allegedly suspicious tax disc. While his home was being searched by police there was a fracas and the youth’s mother Cynthia Jarrett died of a heart attack. At a demonstration at the Tottenham police station, young men attacked the police with bricks and petrol bombs. There were also shots fired at the police and two officers injured. Later when the London Fire Brigade was called to Tangmere House to attend to a fire, among the police officers present was PC Keith Blakelock, who as he stumbled and fell was hacked to death by a mob carrying machetes, knives and other weapons. Police arrested and interrogated about 400 people. Three black men were arrested and convicted of PC Blakelock’s murder. They were acquitted by an appeal court three years later for insufficient evidence. The Brixton riot of 1995 began on December 13 when a black youth, Wayne Douglas died in police custody. Police sealed off a 3 km area around Brixton. The riot lasted 5 hours. Twenty-two people were arrested and charged with public order offences, theft, and criminal damage. Three police offers were hurt. Commentators saw the violence as a rebellion against years of racist injustice in an impoverished area devastated by continued racial tension and neglect. However, there had been an effort to gentrify and ‘yuppify’ the area by selling off council houses and a £33 million City Challenge development aimed to benefit big business and not local stallholders. Meanwhile, more useful projects for the area like, unemployment centres, adventure playgrounds, and libraries were being closed down. While most of the racial disturbances in the last two decades of the 20th century occurred in predominantly black areas, there was a spate of riots in 2001 which occurred in locations predominantly populated by Asians. These riots coincided with the rise of fascist organisations like the British National Party, and the National Front increasingly successful at local elections. (More recently, of course, they were successful at the European parliamentary elections). Violence erupted on the streets of Bradford as hundreds of Asian youths clashed with white extremists and police. A protest march by Asians against the National Front resulted in two people stabbed to death and three seriously injured. Bradford police were pelted with bricks, bottles and petrol bombs. At least 17 people were arrested. As Mohamed Khalid, a Leeds criminal law solicitor claims: ‘Asian communities have been forced into segregation from the white communities, with poor housing, poor education, poor policing, and the list goes on and on’ (quoted in Write Words – The Bradford Riots. Who is to Blame? 2003) . At the Bradford Centenary Square, the Anti-Nazi League had organised a meeting where more then 500 people, mostly young Asian men had gathered. In a nearby pub, National Front (NF) supporters, wearing bomber jackets and sunglasses began shouting racial abuse. Asian youth responded and a fight started and spilled into surrounding streets. A group of white men, ‘skinheads’, chanted ‘Pakis’, and in the ensuing melee police lost control. Tabloid newspapers had claimed that Asian thugs had created no go areas for whites (Sun) and that the Asian-on-White violence had increased tenfold (Mirror) and one lectured Asian elders to tell the young to stop the violence (Daily Mail). Oldham’s Evening Chronicle reported that the police had been authorised to use plastic baton rounds, never been used before in mainland Britain. How did Asian youth, largely invisible in the mainstream of society ‘once seen as passive and largely ignored, become the most volatile, destructive and misunderstood kids of 2001?’ (op. cit.). These were the children of Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigrants ‘speaking in a northern slang, dressed in high street sport gear’, ...’unwilling to stand by while organised racist groups invaded their streets (while) the impotent police officers failed to provide protection’ (op. cit.). Fifty percent of young Asians are routinely unemployed. Arun Kundnani of the Institute of Race Relations describe them as ‘people that have been systematically cut off, shunned, dispossessed and left to rot’ (op. cit.). The demographic profile of Asians shows that ‘as the UK’s population continues to age, Asian youth is the fastest growing population group in the country’. The 1991 census show that 19% of whites were younger than 15, compared with 22% Afro-Caribbeans, 43% Pakistanis and 47% Bengalis. A closer look at the rioting youth reveal that the majority are of the Muslim faith, and that the BNP have built up ‘their bases in the northern cities (exploiting) white fears by targeting disorganised Asian communities’ (op. cit.) In West Oldham the BNP won 16.4 percent of the vote at the general election. Nick Griffin, the BNP leader when speaking to Jeremy Paxman stated that the problem was not ‘an Asian problem, but a Muslim problem’. After the events of 9/11 in the USA and 7/7 over here, is it any wonder that Islamophobia is taking root? Multiculturalism has been under siege for quite some time and it is difficult to how the trend could be reversed. An Anti-Nazi League organiser, Julie Waterson claims that ‘the riot in Bradford was caused by a leading member of Combat 18 throwing the first punch, while hurling racist abuse at a group of Asians. Combat 18 contains the most violent of Britain’s Nazis as members’ (op. cit). She questions the ‘role of the police in allowing leading Nazis to openly walk the streets of Bradford ... taunting anti-racists and creating tension. The Nazis made a mockery of the government ban to stop them marching when the police refused to act against them’ (op. cit). Conclusion This essay has sought to cover in historical detail immigration policies of the British government as the background to the arrival of New Commonwealth immigrant workers to Britain, who appear to have been at the centre of racial unrest and riots in Britain’s inner cities in recent times. The conclusion is inevitable that both Labour and conservative governments had failed to take adequate measures to prevent such occurrences. Britain’s governing classes cannot be absolved from total responsibility merely because the country was at the mercy of global economic forces and exigencies it could not foresee due to the vagaries of the capitalist system. Their response to the problems of immigrant workers has been one of racist blindness or intolerance. They had not learned the lessons of the Brixton, Bradford or Broadwater Farm disturbances outlined here. It is hoped that that future governments would take it upon themselves to address the issue of alienation felt by a large number of visible ethnic groupings from the mainstream of British society. *** References: Brown, Ruth (1995) ‘Racism and immigration in Britain’ International Socialism Journal Issue 68, Autumn 1995. Foot, P. (1965) Immigration and Race in British Politics. Penguin Homes, C. (1988) John Bull’s Island: Immigration and British Society1871-1971, McMillan Miles, R. and Phizacklea, A. (1984) White Man’s Country, Pluto Press Brixton Riot (1981) Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Brixton_riot Retrieved 07/12/2009 Brixton Riot (1985) Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Brixton_riot Retrieved 07/12/2009 Brixton Riot (1995) Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_Brixton_riot Retrieved 07/12/2009 Broadwater Farm Riot (1985) Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia/wiki/Broadwater_Farm_riot The Bradford Riots. Who is to Blame? www.writewords.org.uk/archive/print.asp?article_Id=200 Retrieved 07/12/2009 Read More