Racial justice: blowing on theflames?
The best, as Sir Karl Popper once observed, is often the enemy of the good; and the exceptionally well-intentioned new White Paper on race relations, if its proposals are ever turned into law, is most likely to be remembered as a landmark on the downward path to racial conflict in Britain, rather than — as the Home Secretary wishes — the first step towards "a comprehensive code of law . . . effective means for the victims of discrimination to obtain redress, and a powerful commission able to tackle the serious impediments that stand in the way of equal Opportunities both for Britain's racial minorities and for women." Mr Jenkins has, of course, long been associated with attempts to improve the lot of Britain's racial minorities (and it is very important always to bear in mind the great variety of this country's immigrant groups, some of whom have more in common with the indigenous population than with each other) by means of legislation. It would be churlish to suggest that the laws setting up both the Race Relations Board and the Community Relations Commission have had no good effect Whatever on relations between races: some of the educative work of the Commission especially has borne good fruit; and the conciliatory efforts of the Board have likewise often been wisely used to resolve sticky situations. In many respects, however, the Acts of 1965 and 1968 have done harm, not merely because actions taken under them have exacerbated rather than removed hostility to the immigrant population on the part of the native, but because of an ideology of race relations which, unsanctioned by either of the Acts, has steadily grown in power and influence since their enactment.
The new ideology is best summarised by the American phrase "reverse discrimination" — that is, practices designed to enable a member of a minority group to compete in training or work on more than equal terms with an individual from the majority. In paragraph 57 the White Paper formally rejects the practice of reverse discrimination. But its authors go on to say that "the Government considers that it would be wrong to adhere so blindly to the principle of formal legal equality as to Ignore the handicaps preventing many black and brown workers from obtaining equal employment opportunities". Accordingly, special facilities will he provided in certain broad categories for giving the immigrant a particular advantage, under the guise of providing him with assistance to overcome disadvantages. Now, while it would be absurd to say that the children of immigrants, for example, or newly arrived immigrants from East Africa especially, should not be given special help in, say, acquiring a command of English, such special facilities and aids should be very strictly limited and never provided in the highly generalised way that the White Paper recommends. As the American example demonstrates, reverse discrimination — and this, despite its formal disavowal, is what the White Paper is recommending — has a habit of gaining a momentum of its own, especially when — again as the White Paper recommends — minorities are assured representation on industrial tribunals and the Race Relations Commission itself far in excess of the numerical proportion of the population which they represent.
In the United States these things have followed the acquisition of this momentum. First, the minority groups respond, as ordinary, fallible human beings normally respond to an encouragement to claim Special privileges, by extending the range of their claims: since the power given them has been given because they are different, not because they are similar, they seek to extend it by emphasising that difference, and thus harm rather than further the prospects of integration. Second, so-called "liberal" members of the native population who are engaged in race relations work themselves become involved in asserting the difference and the uniqueness of the immigrant, and insist on more and more education, training and cultural development which increase not only the immigrant's sense of separateness but his willingness to cultivate it. Third, all this activity works powerfully to generate a sense of deep resentment in the native population, which frequently issues not only in violence but in a deeper and more pervasive hostility to people of different colour than would otherwise have existed. The liberalising process thus produces an effect which is the opposite of what was intended, as is commonly the case when the law is allowed to intervene in areas of human relations not susceptible to its formulations.
These dire results of good intentions are all the more likely to flow from the implementation of the recommendations in the White Paper because of, first, the exceptionally wide-ranging powers to initiate action which are to be conferred on the new Race Relations Commission and, second, because of certain other changes in the principle of the law which it is proposed to introduce. The new powers to initiate action are particularly alarming because they are based on a generalised encouragement to the Commission to undertake investigations into different areas of national life in order to discover whether discrimination exists, even if there is neither evidence nor indication that it does. Since the definitions of discrimination in the White Paper are exceptionally loose and vague there is clearly scope here both for a massive increase in the size of the race relations bureaucracy and for the abolition of even the currently very limited disciplines imposed on that bureaucracy's actions. Not only is the creation and activity of the new Commission likely further to increase the hostility of the native to the immigrant population, but the bureaucracy is almost certain to become ever more self-justifying and intrusive, into the lives of natives and immigrants alike.
Even a liberal of such impeccable credentials as Mr Ian Gilmour has expressed his unease over the proposal to abolish section 6 of the 1965 Act. This section was designed to protect an individual who discriminated on grounds of race, but did so innocently and with no malicious intent. The protection of innocence of intent is no longer to be available and, again combined with the vagueness of definition of offence in the White Paper, this proposal is likely to lead directly to the persecution of the innocent. In the process of complaint itself reverse discrimination will operate, for a complainant will receive special assistance in prosecuting his case, while the putative defendant will have no such aid. Further along this crazy spiral the authors of the White Paper express their unease at the small number of complaints of discrimination currently being laid before the Race Relations Board, and want the new Commission to enjoy powers actively to encourage complaints, without having to endure such tiresome restrictions as might compel them to study the validity and seriousness of the actions complained of with any great care.
Race relations in the United States have proceeded from the bright hopes of President Johnson's equal rights legislation to the present state of embittered hostility between black and white which has led the once trail-blazing Congress on Racial Equality to contemplate prosecution of some of the current agitators on race relations on the grounds of their encouragement to racial separateness. With the new White Paper the once-proud objective of integrating the immigrant into British society, of making him equal before the law both in his duties and in his rights, and as solidly a British citizen as his white counterpart, has been abandoned. A legalistic and bureaucratic structure is to be created which will institutionalise racial difference and — which is especially bad in what is likely to prove a long period of economic difficulty, in the course of which competition for employment will, as classically, impose a strain on relations between white and coloureds — provide ever-expanding channels for turning them into hostile activities. At the same time, the natural and beneficial growing together into one nation of different racial groups is to be discouraged for the sake of an impossibly Utopian ideology. It cannot be too often repeated that only by drawing the immigrants and their children into a strongly defended and deeply valued native society can the potential for racial violence in this country be prevented from coming to fruition; and that process can best be served by people themselves, with minimal encouragement from legislators. The strategy, as it is called, of race relations embodied in the White Paper will merely hasten as it encourages division, hostility and disruption.
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