A Spectator's Notebook
STILL another fact-finding inquiry is being launched this week, of more lasting im- portance, I think, than some I could mention. Launched with a Nuffield grant of £70,000, the Institute of Race Relations will conduct a five- year survey of Britain's own colour situation— not only among the immigrants, but on their effect on the host community. The director of the survey is E. J. B. Rose, formerly literary editor of the Observer and for ten years Director of the International Press Institute. Jim Rose is generally regarded by those who know him as a Good Thing. At the moment, incidentally, Britain's population is 1 per cent coloured, which doesn't seem too much to absorb. The important thing about this survey is that in any situation loaded with myth and emotion, we must have the facts. Fact doesn't automatically destroy myth (just look at the resolute survival of the Hangman's Rope, Doctrine); but fact is the first essential weapon in the long struggle for sanity.
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