VIEW FROM THE GALLERY

SALLY VINCENT,

The picture on the wall is more large than imposing. It depicts a hoard of statuesque back muscles in mid-writhe around the central figure of a rather effete young man raising a sword aloft in somewhat banal, if heroic, relation to the sweep of his thighs `Alfred', it says underneath, 'inciting the Saxons to prevent the landing of the Danes'. Perhaps they arrange this sort of thing in all the committee rooms: maybe up the corridor there's a Turner seascape cheering up the 'fourth sitting of the Rural Water Supplies and Sewerage Bill. As for Alfred, he is currently doing his best to set an example to those gallant protectors of our soil, the members of the standing committee for Mr Maudling's Immigration Bill. If his spirit pervades at all, however, it stimulates little in the way of magniloquence for the wretched facts of Clause 4, embracing as it does the shameful details of administration of control; the who, what, how and when of laying the unwelcome mat across the portals of our long-promised land.

Not surprisingly the member for Wolver- hampton South West is present, sitting like some deadly catalyst in unearthly contem- plation while the drift of his philosophy flows back and forth on the lips of others. He is still and silent as a lizard. For an eternity he holds himself bolt upright, hands clasped together on the hack of his head. Let your eyes slide away for a split second and—bingo!—he is slumped right down in his seat, arms hugging knees to bosom, but equally still, frozen in a kind of cataleptic tension.

Today the hot-seat is occupied by William Deedes (Con. Ashford) who as chairman of the Race Relations and Immigration Select Committee seeks to explore what he de- scribes as 'the heart of our business' which is the effective (but just) control of immigrant entry.

We should not, he urges, underrate the forces at work to undermine and defeat our system of control. Evil men are at work to exploit the vulnerability of honest immigrants to the extent that thousands—nay, tens of thousands of them are illegally cluttering up our nation. Not, of course, that it is we who suffer. It is the illegal immigrant who feels the pinch, victim as he must be of the various extortions and wickedness visited upon him by those who defy our laws. What we should have, says Mr Deedes, and he himself would not be afraid to propose it, is an amnesty for all illegal immigrants at present in our midst. In case nobody recognises a sprat when it's set to catch a mackerel, Mr Deedes explains his stroke. We wouldn't lose much by it. you see, and it would make it all the more humane and acceptable thereafter to clamp down on our controls.

Sidney Bidwell (Lab. Southall) might be a lot of things, a trade unionist among others, but clearly he is no mackerel. He lumbers clumsily to his feet. traps his large hands in the pockets of his jacket and sug- gests there might be. perhaps, something a lode, well, harum-scarum about the conten- tion that we are harbouring tens of thousands of illegal immigrants. But Mr Deedes is not only going to hold his ground, he is also going to be blunt. He is not far out with his tens of thousands, he insists, and if only his opponent would reckon up over the past twenty years the scales would fall from his eyes.

Only there was no illegality until 1962, so there have been just nine years to speculate about. Mr Deedes's face turns a trifle grey and Mr Bidwell's own, large and honest as it is, registers acute sadness. Thumping home his advantage he lugubriously reassures the committee that he is sure that Mr Deedes's desire to achieve harmonious development in British race relations is equal to his own. Mr Bidwell now has a flying start and is first to breast the tape to denounce the fascist and racist channels through which Mr Deedes and his Tory friends receive their information about matters of immigration. They should now be wary of the belligerent attitude growing up among people 'of Negro origin' to whom the proposed restrictions are 'totally obnoxious'. Following smartly on his heels comes Tom Torney (Lab. Bradford South) lamenting the nasty intentions of Clause Four and wishing poignantly that he could bring himself to believe the Tory assurances that any minute now a police- Man's hand is not going to descend upon his shoulder. So wistful is his hope that a schoolgirl visitor to the public bench whispers urgently to her companion, 'but he's not even black'. Nor indeed is he. He is coloured only, he says, by expressions of the hon. and right hon. members opposite, who are all involved in a plot to excuse the Tory party for its election manifesto and thus pander to less desirable elements of the population.

We'll never know who they are, because Jill Knight, all earnest dimples and smiling elbows leaps up in shrill righteousness. Is there something wrong, she cries, with carry- ing out a promise in a manifesto for which the electorate has voted? And she earns her- self a quick smile-nod-wink from the member for Wolverhampton South West, which leaves her glowing.

Mr Torney is uncrushed. Yes, Clause Four is being put on the Statute Book for the simple reason of appeasing those rather more undesirable elements within the com-

munity who have racialist tendencies. At this the member for Wolverhampton South West aims himself at . the door, '.through which he mysteriously disappears, thus depriving himself of a bask in the limelight, or more probably to shield his ears from the words of Robert Hughes (Lab. Aberdeen North) a deceptively unvarnished young man of whom he could not possibly approve.

Let us not exaggerate things, he pleads, like a kind prefect who can't quite get the fourth formers to cease their pillow fight. No one, says Mr Hughes. would quarrel with an attempt to have good people in a position to control entry to our country, but it is dangerous to exaggerate the problems that we are facing. if we build up an image that large proportions of the immigrant community are with us illegally, and if we build up a feeling that something should be done about it by employing phrases such as 'tens of thousands' we lay upon those who administer the law the task of deciding how to tackle the problem. Different chief constables, he murmers with modest and devastating logic, have varying priorities. And he would not like to say how these priorities are determined.

Mr Hughes has set up a grim chill in Committee Room Ten which even has the clerks frowning, and he's certainly worried the guts of a Government bench fellow who peeps over the top of his half-moons and blusters about 'rubbish.'

Who knows what the size of the problem really is. he protests, teetering emotionally on his toes and revealing himself as Mr Ray Mawby (Con. Totnes), we still have all these allegations, so why shouldn't we work on them? 'Even,' he adds, 'if they are not all backed up by fact?' It's a way. you see, of finding out the truth.

All Clause Four will do, Mr Mawby urgently explains, is introduce a system of administration of control for all people under suspicion of being here illegally. Opposition faces gape at him with unbelief. But he means it. He really does. 'I don't know', he says plaintively, 'why members opposite have this colour consciousness'. Anybody with half an eye has only to walk through the streets of London to see how many aliens there are about who are 'not what you would call white'.

'1 call myself pink', he continues into the shocked silence, 'because that is nearer actual fact'.

`True blue' calls a wag from the other side. who seems to be Mr Callaghan. Mr Mawby nods with delight. 'True blue, then'. he admits proudly. Which just goes to show how much nearer to the truth you can get if you really try.