Sir: Allow me to con g ratulate you on your une q uivocal leadin g
article on the legal position of the Ugandan Asians (October 7) more especially the final paragraph. What is so depressing for someone of my generation is to find, if opinion polls are any guide, that it is people of my age and older who appear to be losing their imperial sense. We remember the achievements of the Indian Army and other imperial forces, including the West Africans. We remember the wartime services of skilled West Indian technicians ih the vital shiprepairing yards and elsewhere, when the late Lord Constantine was the Ministry of Labour liaison officer. The populist reaction of the Monday Club, so rightly rebuked by the Prime Minister (gentlemen should not try and ride the populist tiger, for forces are unleashed which cannot be controlled or directed by gentlemanly means), would appear to confirm the opinion polls. The old imperial panache and well-justified consciousness of our socio-political superiority have given place to craven fear that immigrants are going to master us. This is one of the greatest achievements of the Left's persistent inculcation of guilt in place of justifiable national pride. You point the way. You write of the need to 'spell Out clearly and forcefully, what that national identity is.' I suggest that it centres round the spirit of the common law. Your use of the word ' laagar ' is a warning. I suggest that whether or no the Boer War was a 'just war,' we created the difficult problems which Mr Smith, Dr Banda and Mr Vorster have to face by not exercising the right of the victor to set Africa south of the Zambezi on a common law course. Roman-Dutch law, with its usual Roman emphasis on the security of the institutions to the comparative neglect of individual rights, has been modified in Holland itself. Yet, paralysed by the same kind of guilt as is weakening our national nerve, in suicidal fashion now, we simply tried to be nice to the Boers, instead of helping them to aim higher. As long as we had considerable world-power, we had men like Smuts on our side. But, with our power slipping, the hardcore Boers, very conscious of their own national identity, as seen today in the Pretoria VoOrtrekker monument, said ' Thank you for nothing.' If the Boers can assert their identity so vigorously when In such a minority of the total population, surely we can assert ours, when we are in the overwhelming majority? George A. Short 5 Scarsdale Road, Manchester Sir: You have welched on the Common Market issue, and now you have reneged on the question of coloured immigration (October 7). Neither of these issues was ever referred to the native British; both are hammered at us by the readable daily papers, bought by me, as doubtless by many others, for their hews content, not their opinions. There is, therefore, no longer any reason why I should continue to buy The Spectator. I suggest that if you need the 15p per week, which you soon will, you search for it in your own pocket, for it is no longer coming out of mine. William Emma la Carlingford Road, Hampstead, London NW3 From Professor Earl Miner Sir: Your issue of August 12 has just come, and three cheers for it. I raise one without any desire to enter publicly into politics belonging to another country. But The Spectator cannot long go wrong in Standing by 'A plain matter of duty' ever Uganda or anything else. Another cheer must be given to Shirley Robin Letwin's understanding and humane review of Shackleton Bailey's Cicero — and of Cicero's life and times. A third cheer for Tony Palmer's dismissal of pretence and cant about California. You were getting to be such a bore over EEC, whatever the merits of entering, that I am happy to see an issue bringing such surprises. As an American subscriber with warm memories of Taper, Leslie Adrian, and Isabel Quigley, I am happy to encounter Dr Wilson, Nicholas Davenport, and lately once again Sir Denis Brogan. But the freshness and rrinciple of the issue I mentioned will always be in season. Earl Miner Department of English, Princeton, New Jersey 08540, USA Sir: At a time when the Conservative Party is tb meet in conference I think your failure to come out strongly against the Ministry's failure to stop immigration is deplorable. The confusion of this great issue with the numerically minor issue, and a quite differ ent one too, of the Ugandan Asians is so terrible as to suggest
that you simply don't understand what conservatism consists of. Could it be that subconsciously you, like the Government, wish to
dwell upon a matter whose aspects of emergency and human distress
provide an easy mask to hide behind, a soft option for discussion when the very serious con
sequences of the Government's refusal, I think the term is almost justified, to stop mass immigration as it promised to, are what should be discussed first and foremost at the conference? You make a statement, a general one I believe that applies to West Indians as well therefore, that the presence of a substantial coloured minority need not lead to any diminution of our national identity, as long as, that is, the Government "spell out clearly and forcefully what our national identity is." Has either the Labour Government or the Conservative done this? Has immigration ever been controlled? Has care ever been taken about the type of individuals let in and an insistence made that they should assimilate to such an extent that other people's lives would not be disrupted by their presence? Walk around London let alone Wolverhampton or Birmingham. As a teacher in the Borough of Brent, I can tell you that people's lives have been disrupted. The growth of violence in the Tubes, ' mugging ' of which 80 odd per cent is attributed to young West Indians, is a pretty good indication that no government has ever "spelled out what our national identity is." Against these appalling facts the failure to take up the cudgels against mass immigration and its consequences, against the Government's failure, indeed its calculated and wilful action not to live up to its election promises, looks pretty much like cowardice. Let the Ugandan Asians in; numerically and as a cultural group, they are of little consequence. The fact is that coloured immigration as a whole must be stopped, that the Government if it is to deserve the term 'Conservative' must conserve people's way of life. It must prevent them from being subjected to the severe cultural and therefore psychological stresses which have been imposed. It must put an end to growing violence in areas of high immigrant concentration like Lambeth. While such problems as these are with us, to dwell on other aspects of the problem to the exlusion of the central issue is wrong. Let us help the Ugandan Asians by all means but let us strive as conservatives to conserve our society. I do not think the Asians constitute much of a social burden, other than the 'fact that anY further dilution of our urban societies at this time is not advisable because we are engaged consciously or unconsciously in trying to absorb what we alreadY have. However as a question of
what to do I think these people
should be helped, they should be found a home after they have been
dispossessed, a place where they can live and work and bring UP their families. Whether this IS
India or England is of little import to them compared to the great necessity of finding a place DOW'
As Kierkegaard said principle is inhuman. You try to help people not to act on principle. The people to be helped are both the British and the Ugandan Asians and you try to do the best for both. If the latter, or the people left at Aden when we pulled out, or the Biharis in Bangladesh could not find room anywhere else and were threatened by certain murder, then I would say take them in, prevent such a horrible thing. But think well on this: mass immigration has not been pushed along to provide a refuge for people in great distress. For many it has been a goal in itself.
Robert Tate London
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