COLOURED BRITISH CITIZENS
Sm,—Many of your readers must have listened sympathetically to last week's broadcast talk by Mr. Learie Constantine, the eminent cricketer (now an official of the Ministry of Labour) on his life-struggle in that part of the Empire in which he was born and his experiences as a resident in this country. He tactfully did not allude to the fact that he and his family had just been asked to leave a London hotel, but that fact has been a good deal commented upon in the daily press. The following appeared in the Daily Telegraph, September 3rd.:
It " Mr. Harold Walduck, managing director of the Imperial Hotel, Russell Square, London, said yesterday : " ' After certain suggestion had been made to me by other guests I suggested to Mr. Constantine that he would be more comfortable in one of our smaller hotels. Mr. Constantine readily agreed. There is no suggestion that he was turned out.
There is not a colour ban. We prefer to cater for white people.' "
It may well be that Mr. Constantine " readily agreed." We would most of us " readily agree " to take our families away from the company of fellow-guests who showed that they resented our presence and who were supported in this by the manager of the house? But what a shocking thing it is that, in the very capital of the Empire, British citizens should be thus insulted. And the hotel in question, in this particular instance, is the Imperial!
Almost next door to your Spectator office is that admirable Club for London University students of all races—Student Movement House. Its Warden, Miss Mary Trevelyan, in her book, From the Ends of the Earth, has called attention to the intense pain that is often caused to her members by the callous exhibition of race prejudice:
" I realised that many of them were afraid of something, and I wondered what it was that they feared. There were a great many answers: loneliness, home-sickness, poverty, fear of the future, were among the most common. The coloured man and girl had their own particular fear, of the daily insults and slights from white people, or of walking into some hotel or restaurant and being turned out again. Underneath their good manners and charm many of these African, West Indian, and Indian students had been deeply hurt."
Can any definite steps be taken towards putting an end to the atro- ciously bad manners of some of the less thinking of our countrymen? I venture to put forward one small suggestion andt should be much interested if any of your readers (particularly those who are Members of Parliament) would give us their opinion. Would it be feasible to introduce a Bill amending the Innkeepers' Act in the sense that it shall be an offence to refuse refreshment or accommodation to any person on racial grounds? Or is such a provision already implicit in the Act (I rather think it is) and only waiting for a test case or two to bring it
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