COLOUR BAR Although it seems likely that the West Bromwich
busmen will stop the regular Saturday strike which has so far taken place in two successive weeks against the employment of an Indian conductor, there is news this week of trouble of the same kind in Swansea. Nurses at a mental hospital there are reported to have voted unanimously against the admission of six probationers from Barbados. In Birmingham, where the dispute over the colour question is hotly pursued, two hospitals have agreed to take the nurses. Plainly, the whole question is rapidly qualifying to be described as 'an issue,' and as we have already argued in these columns this is something which everything possible must be done to avert. Mr. Cyril Osborne's Private Member's Bill to restrict immigration into this country by various classes of British subjects from oversea never came up for discussion, and since then the matter has been allowed to lapse, no doubt largely because of the exceptional difficul- ties it presents. Not least among them is the extreme and perfectly proper reluctance of the Government to abandon the doctrine of common citizenship within the United Kingdom and the Colonial Empire; but doctrines cannot always be allowed to take precedence over facts.
Previous page
