Notebook A Spectator's
restrictions on immigration. Neither Mr. James Harrison (Lab.) nor Lieut.-Colonel Cordeaux (Cons.)
specifically says he means on coloured people, but this is clearly the implication. Yet colour is not the real diffi- culty. I have found much less prejudice against Asiatics in London than there is against the Irish. What counts is numbers and identifiability; where there are hundreds of, say, West Indians (or Irish) in one district, tensions are automatically created. There are in fact good sociological arguments for preventing such conglomerations of immigrants, if some way could be found to do it; but this is not the same as arguing that restrictions should be put on their immigration. What is remarkable is not that there have been occasional incidents like the Nottingham riot but that the immigrants have in the main settled in so smoothly. True, more effective colour barriers exist in practice than most of us realise; and it is certainly time that the whole subject was investigated more fully in the hope of finding how to end race hatreds. But to try to end colour prejudice in Britain by impos- ing a colour bar at the ports would be a cowardly way out.
Previous page
