Anti-racism year

Richard West

Thursday the 5th of January saw the beginning of Anti-Racism Year, or so I had read in a statement by the Greater Lon- don Council, but I was in Scotland at the time, and I could not find anything in the papers on this subject. There was an article on why there is little racial trouble in Glasgow; it rather avoided the point that few people of other races come to that city, preferring to stay in Calcutta or Kingston.

Even in London, which now is a city of much racial diversity, the GLC is not really thinking of all non-English people when it campaigns for Anti-Racism Year. As I tried to suggest last year, the race relations in- dustry no longer bothers to combat pre- judice against Jews and other minorities of the middle class like Indians and Greeks, who tend to be shopkeepers, self-employed or employers of labour, and hostile to the politics of the GLC. The leader of the GLC, Ken Livingstone, has tried to make out the Irish as victims of 'racism', British imperialism, and so on, but few Irishmen take him seriously on this matter. What most people mean by the problem of race involves the West Indians and other descen- dants of slaves transported from Africa to the Americas.

What differentiates these blacks from other minorities such as the Jews, Greeks, Asians and Irish, or indeed from Africans, is that thanks to the crulty of transplanta- tion slavery, they have been deprived of identity. The slavers forbade them the use of their own names, languages or religion. They were generally forced apart from their families. The women were made into con- cubines of the white owners. Although the Jamaicans, for instance, claim descent from

the fierce Ashanti people of what is now Ghana, few descendants of slaves in the Caribbean or the United States can really trace their ancestry. Alex Haley did, which is why he managed to achieve such a mov- ing book in Roots.

Oppenents of slavery back in the 18th century toyed with plans for helping the blacks to go back to Africa. Some of Lon- don's considerable black population went as settlers to Sierra Leone where they were joined by freed Jamaicans and some American blacks who had fled to Canada from the newly independent United States. Later some freed American slaves founded the colony of Liberia. Yet even 200 years ago, very few slaves were able to find their ancestral part of Africa. Those who came from notorious slaving regions such Yoruba-land or Angola, may have feared to return to re-enslavement.

The blacks in England during the 18th century do not appear to have been un- popular. After Lord Mansfield's ruling in 1772 that slavery was illegal, a colleague of his, Mrs Justice Powell, decreed that 'the Laws of England take no notice of a Negro'. Blacks were prized as servants and earned good money, which explains the scene in a farce, The Divorce, written by Isaac Jackman in 1781. The Negro Sambo asks the white lawyer Qui Tam how he can get divorced: Qui Tam: Divorced?

Sambo: Yes, Massa — me want to marry a pretty white woman.

Qui Tam: You do? Timothy, hand me my cane — I'll break this scoundrel's sooty noodle for him.

Sambo: Pretty white woman, Massa — and here, I have brought you my year's wages — ten guineas (gives him a purse).

Qui Tam: Here, Timothy; you may lay by the cane — So then, Sambo, you want to be in the fashionable world, I see?

Sambo: Oh yes, Massa. I should like to be a Man of Fashion of all things.

Qui Tam: Call in a week, Sambo, and I'll tell you. Timothy, show the black gentleman downstairs.

It seems that most of the blacks in England were men. They and their children married the English, and so over the years the black community died out. It did not reappear till the 1950s. when a Conservative government opened the way for immigra- tion. The descendants of people kidnapped and taken across The Atlantic from Africa were encouraged to come to a third conti- nent, Europe. Skilled artisans living and working happily in Barbados were offered more money to carry out menial, unskilled work in a cold, alien country. The British government, far from investing money in the West Indies, was eager to give these countries their independence, now that their value as colonies had expired. As a result, most of the former British West In- dies (in contrast to those still ruled by France) have sunk into conditions of bankruptcy, sloth and political despotism, as instanced most recently by Grenada.

Those West Indians who have come to this country have for the most part failed to acquire a sense of English nationality; as you can hear from a crowd at a cricket ground whenever the West Indian side is here. However, the race relations industry, by lumping the various West Indians together under the label of 'blacks', has en- couraged them to lose the separate loyalty which they once felt to their island and racial group. The English, above all the People who work in the race relations in- dustry, have no idea of the very great dif- ference between, for example, the quiet, religious Barbadians, the exuberant Trinidadians and the aggressive Jamaicans. By classing all such people together as `blacks' we are taking away their identity for a second time, if not quite so brutally as by selling them into slavery. The race rela- tions industry has compounded this wickedness by trying to impose on all West Indians a spurious 'black culture', in fact a slum Jamaican culture, of drugs and Pseudo-political movements like Rastafarianism. Hence the curious paradox that the West Indian districts of London are far more violent and unpleasant than towns such as Bridgetown or Port of Spain. The West Indians here have less of an education or chance of getting on in the world than they did when the islands were colonies.

The folly and ignorance of the kind of people who go in for 'Anti-Racism Year' are seen at their most absurd in the prac- tice of sending delinquent children, both black and white, from London to the West Indies. The borough of Islington set the fashion by sending children to Grenada, shortly before its rulers started to m'urder each other and were in turn overthrown by the US Marines and troops of some of the neighbouring islands. Less publicity was ac- corded the still more extravagant scheme by Camden and Lewisham borough councils to send 13 children in care to St Vincent, With reference to Richard West's article `Drinkers will be persecuted' in our issue of 31 December 1983, we have been asked to Point out that certain statements in it about Dr Colin Brewer were inaccurate. Dr Brewer did not start the British Pregnancy Advisory Service but became its occasional Psychiatric adviser five years after its foun- dation. He is not a 'spokesman' of any anti- alcoholism group, nor is he a member of any 'quango', His only salary is paid by the National Health Service for two days' work a week, the rest of his clinical work being private. We apologise for any embarrass- ment caused.

another one of the Windward Islands. A Daily Telegraph journalist, Con Coughlin, recounted (12 December) how these youngsters were faring at Richmond Vale Academy, near Chateaubelair:

`After glue-sniffing, mugging, petty burglaries, and stealing cars, the young Londoners have adapted their activities to meet their changed circumstances. "Mari- juana, stealing and fighting are probably the three biggest problems caused by the British pupils", said Mr Ole Mengel, 27, the Danish principal at the school. "It is very difficult to get them to take part in any of the school's legitimate activities. They stick together in a small gang and spend the day locked up in their rooms listening to their tape recorders.. most of them cannot read or write ... I don't think anyone realised just what we were taking on".'

A black 17-year-old at the school told Mr Coughlin: 'All they want us to do is go swimming, sailing and walking all the time, which gets very boring , The only thing to pass the time is to get stoned all day.' And maybe think about Anti-Racism Year.