Respectable dishonour
Shiva Naipaul
During the Commons debate on Immigration which took place on Monday, Mr Enoch Powell looked alarmingly portentous—but remained silent. He had the aloofness of an established Test cricketer watching a county match of no great importance. And, indeed, this was a distinctly low-key affair. The attendance was poor : the Labour benches were sparsely populated ; and the Tories, though more numerous, were certainly not over-running the Chamber. Mr Whitelaw opened the proceedings.
He said that the British People (they were to play roughly the same role in the debate as Banquo's ghost does in Macbeth) wanted to know if there was an 'end' to the immigrants entitled to come here. They desired 'finality and certainty'. He himself did not believe all the rumours that were circulating concerning the number of illegal immigrants coming into this country. All the same, he was worldly-wise enough to realise that there was 'no smoke without fire'.
Public confidence, the Home Secretary agreed, depended upon the removal of uncertainty about numbers. No one was more alive than he to the feelings of the 'preponderant, indigenous majority.' This was a densely populated island and he quite understood that people were sensitive about those immigrants who had to be supported at public expense. At this point a Tory wondered aloud about the growth in the 'male fiance sector'. The second generation of immigrants was showing no sign of breaking away from the tradition of arranged marriages which implied an endless importation of brides (and grooms) from the Indian sub-continent.
The Labour Member for Southall disagreed. He was confident that the tradition of arranged marriages would eventually break down. Members had no idea what went on behind and under bushes in Southall Park. 'You can't stop natural selection.' But Mr Robert Taylor was far from convinced that natural selection would win the day. He referred to the case of one of his constituents who had three daughters for whom marriages had been arranged. How could people want their daughters to marry people they had never seen ? The answer was that such people did not want their children to have Westernised spouses. He had been flabbergasted by this attitude—he simply had no idea what the expression 'westernised' meant. So far as he could tell it proved that these immigrants were guilty of out-and-out racialism. They were rejecting (and here he looked terribly aggrieved) 'our customs'. Mr Winston Churchill wished to pay tribute to the British People who had shown a remarkable toleration for people of 'alien race, religion and culture'. Alas, it was dangerous to trespass too far on that tolerance. Some unfortunate people had had the impression that they were—sayliving in Lancashire. Imagine then their chagrin on waking up one morning to find that they were not living in Lancashire at all but in New Delhi—or Culcutta—or Kingston, Jamaica. He himself yielded to no one in upholding the rights of immigrants; but even West Indians were starting to get worried. To prove his point he cited the West Indian who came to his advice bureau. The man said he had had to take his daughter away from her primary school because her chances of receiving a 'proper English education' were being steadily eroded. 'And that man was as black as your coat, Mr Deputy Speaker!' Laughter rippled through the Chamber. Mr Hugh Jenkins invoked the memory of his grandmother. Satan, she used to say, will find work for idle hands. The present antagonism to immigrants was not 'racial'. It arose out of the frustration and bitterness bred by unemployment. Immigrants must be treated fairly but they must not be treated with what he called privilege.
It was Mr Hordern who first mentioned his 'postbag'--a sure sign of trouble. The British People were simply not prepared to tolerate any more four-star immigrants. He had received thousands of letters from his constituents who did not at all like the idea of aliens benefiting from Social Security. Mr Hatton disliked this attitude. The immigrants did valuable jobs, performing the 'most menial tasks'. Some of the immigrants in his constituency performed the highly useful service of scrubbing the floors of Manchester University.
Ivor Stanbrook was fed up with complacency and platitudes. He was not going to beat about the bush: the problem was coloured immigration and how to end it. There were hundreds of thousands of people all over the world entitled to British passports. A deluge, a flood, was in the offing. The British People felt strongly about this: a preference for one's own race was part of human nature. He was particularly outraged by immigrant women importing their husbands from abroad. 'That a wife should provide a home is contrary to human nature.' Even in India (he said) this fact was recognised. The Tories moaned in ecstatic affirmation.
The wild men were now in control. John Stokes declared that the British People never envisaged a 'takeover by aliens'. The new mosques, the new restaurants, symbolised the rape of the English race. All the same the aliens who were here must be treated with Christian charity. 'The English are gentle and tolerant.' But that gentleness and tolerance was being strained. If the situation did not change there would be 'an explosion of wrath such as the nation has never known.' Metaphors began to fly thick and fast. Nicholas Winterton averred that without Enoch Powell resentment would have burst forth 'like a volcano'. 'It is a total impossibility to integrate an Asian Muslim with an Anglo-Saxon.' The British People are endangering the whole basis of their civilisation. When Michael Alison began to mutter about the 'unseen cohort below the horizon' I went for a drink.
This was my first acquaintance with the House of Commons. The mild sadness of the occasion had nothing to do with the rights and wrongs of the immigration issue—over that, everyone has behaved badly, both immigrant and 'host'. It arose from the respectability now accorded to dishonour.
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