Sir: I have yet to hear or read of anyone
brave enough to place the blame for our present `colour problem' squarely where it belongs— on the Race Relations. Bill and therefore on those of our legislators who promoted this 'polish and anachronistic piece of legislation.
I know of no other country (with the pos- sible exception of America with its Civil Rights Bill) which has found it necessary to endeavour to compel its people to accept something which properly belongs in the .sphere of private choice. The very existence of a Race Relations Bill can only exacerbate a situation which might well, in the course of time, find its own cure. The very fact that such a Bill exists can only be called a gross insult to a democratic people. That is, assuming that we can still so describe ourselves.
As Mr Raven correctly points out (3 January) the great majority of coloured people in the United Kingdom have come here on their own accord. They chose to do so clearly, because -conditions in their own countries are so much -inferior to those prevalent here.
lf, then, they are not satisfied with conditions here or find themselves hard done by in the matter of housing or employment, the choice is still theirs—to stay or go. But if we ourselves —or the collection of wrongheaded clowns which passes for the Government of this coun-
try—insist on impressing on the coloureds, by means of the Race Relations Bill, that they are indeed suffering disabilities in housing and em- ployment, can we then wonder if a number of them now demand as of right more than we, as a nation and a people, are prepared to con- cede?
We offer a way of life: take it and conform . to whatever it may offer the individual—or go. But nmone, in my view, is going to be compelled by the Race Relations Bill or any other Act of Parliament to accept or even cherish anything to which he—for reasons good or bad—may object.
Martyn Snow 105 Coleherne Court, London SW5
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