HOUSE OF LORDS
Temporal, spiritual and racial
HUGH REAY
Lord Walston is Chairman of the Institute of Race Relations. He wears a daily carnation in his buttonhole, or used to wear one when he was Mr Wilson's first Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, was once a Liberal, and farms on a grand scale in Cambridgeshire and the West Indies. Unlike his more prominent and more aggressive colleague, Lord Longford, he has not felt the need to formulate a statement that explains to the general public how the apparent contradictions of his image are reconciled. His speeches usually include something above the average in intelligence or realism, although in my opinion this can't usually be said of the total speech. In the debate last week on the Immigration Bill, there was a passage in his speech which stuck out in its analytic integrity from the rest of the debate.
"No school-leaver, or very few of them, even in times of full employment, gets exactly the job that he feels is right for him or the one for which he is best fitted.. In days like these, with relatively high unemployment, the chances of getting the right job are even less. These school-leavers, When they do not get what they feel to be the right job, will not blame it upon themselves because they are not capable of doing a better job; they will not blame the Government for policies which may have led to high unemployment; but they will put the blame on the fact that they are black and the bosses are white — and What better recruits could one have for Black Power and violence in the years ahead?"
What this stuck out from could be illustrated from any number of other speeches, but it can also be illustrated from the rest Of Lord Walston's speech. As he argued it, the most important danger of the Bill was its effect on race relations, which have been for the last eighteen months under the strain imposed on them successively by the South African cricket tour,,the general election, and the South African issue. In other words, it is not any provision of the Bill which is its worst feature, but the facts that it is a Bill on the subject. Any event which publicizes the distinction between immigrants and the rest of the population is dangerous; any event Stich as a general election, which subjects our society to what in ordinary circumstances would be quite tolerable conditions of strain, is dangerous, Other speakers go even further 1.11 their implorations for quiet. For some, Including Lord Soper, disturbance is threatened by the simple fact that Mr Enoch Powell ultimately supported the Bill, a fact of which the majority of the _Population are almost certainly unaware. ihe subject indeed has become impregnated with menace towards any who speak about its real aspects; they risk the charge that there never was a problem until they began to talk about it.
Consequently Lord Shepherd, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Wade, as well as Lord Walston, made it plain that those who work in community relations dislike the Bill. It is clear why. The fact is that immigrant groups are not integrating into our society; they are remaining intact as groups. Therefore the work of community relations is to keep smooth the points of contact between them and the rest of society. But such activity is to deal with the symptoms of the problem, and in the interest of alleviating the symptoms, all discussion of the real problems must be inhibited.
The Bishops over the years, as part of the yearning of the Anglican Church to rediscover a contact with the public, have increasingly suppqrted the liberal opposition to any Bill that involves, or appears by moral association to involve, stricter control of Commonwealth immigration. No fewer than six of them, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, whose attitudes on this subject still attract publicity, voted against the Bill on second reading, despite the constitutional tradition of not opposing the second reading of a Bill in the House of Lords. However, there was one exception. The Bishop of Winchester, despite numerous reservations, supported the Bill. This resulted in a tense and interesting scene. Towards the end of the debate, when the House was filling for the last hours before the division, he was saying that to suggest that the Bill was likely to encourage harassment by the police did "serious injustice to our splendid police force." Lord Byers, captain of the Liberals, somewhat violently, and .on his third attempt, interrupted him: "My Lords, before the right reverend Prelate finishes his speech, may I ask him what sense of security an immigrant who has to work for an employer for one year is likely to have?" It is rare sport to see a bishop morally blackmailed and the poor fellow, conscious no doubt of the distance he had already travelled from the body of his colleagues, retreated. "May I just say," he replied "that it is my hope there will be an amendment along those lines." Lord Byers snorted.
Lord Hunt tried to compare the occasion of this debate with the debate on the Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1968, when we revoked our promises of uncontrolled admission to the Kenyan Asians. But that moment in 1968 was historic, because we were forced to face for the first time the conflict which was bound to arrive at some time in some context, between the fantastic promises that derived from our dream of the past, on which we had built our Commonwealth policy, and the harsh constraints of our modern interests. On this occasion, we are just marking time.
There was a lot of emotion beneath, and occasionally breaking, the surface of the debate. For the most part, conscious of the uncertain directions it could take them, speakers carefully disciplined their aggressions, and both Lord Windlesham and Lord Shepherd, in opening the debate, handled the occasion with skill. But there was one particularly graceful example of tolerance. The recently ennobled Lord Harvey of Prestbury had just made a somewhat provocative, indeed obstinate, maiden speech, in which he had exposed contradictions in the Labour approach to the issue with particular reference to Mrs Castle. Lord Brockway had to follow him. He began his speech: "My Lords, I think it is perhaps appropriate to the spirit of this House that I should be called upon to pay some tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Harvey of Prestbury, on his maiden speech. In another place we were constantly in conflict and I have no doubt that we shall be constantly in conflict in this House. But it is appropriate that I should pay that tribute, because the spirit of this House is tolerance towards views to which we are opposed. Everyone who has listened to the speech of the noble Lord will have been impressed by his strength, by his directness, and by the clarity of his expression, and if this was a non-controversial maiden speech, may I say to the noble Lord how we shall look forward to the controversial speeches which he delivers in further debates."
The aged democrat, as uncompromising as ever in his views on the subject, was giving a lesson in parnmentary politics.
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