22 DECEMBER 1961, Page 9

IMMIGRATION

SIR,—Thcre are no half-measures with Bernard Levin when he pulls out all the stops. When he is hitting the nail on the head, as with Suez and the Nyasaland `plot,' one responds with a continuous 'Hear, hear'; when his target is mistaken, as with the Immigration Bill, one stops reading after the first paragraph.

The Bill is not simply a product of moral back- sliding on the part of the Government, as a reading of a recent article by E. R. Braithwaite and various letters to the press would make clear. In the century of the common man and universal suffrage, the Home Secretary did' not think it pcilitiC to state the over- riding objection to unlimited Commonwealth im- migration; which is that the majority of people in this country are not prepared to accept coloured immigrants as their equals, socially or economically. The greater the number of such people coming to this country, the stronger and more complete would be the colour bar set up against them.

. Would Messrs. Levin and Gaitskell like to meet the immigrants on the boats from the West Indies, Africa and Asia and assure them that they will suffer no discrimination in the matter of work, wages and housing? If not, what becomes of the idea of a multi-racial Commonwealth ?