Photo by Allan Cash Picture Library
The arrival of more than 10,000 West Indian immigrants a year by the mid 1950s had stirred racial tension in the UK. The New Statesman’s assistant editor, Norman MacKenzie, argued it was the country’s moral obligation to be welcoming and compassionate.
By dormitory boat to Genoa, third class to Calais; now as the train pulls into Victoria Station, life begins again for 400 West Indians. The small group of welfare officers from the London County Council and Colonial Office are swamped. “Where is our baggage?” “How do I get to Brixton, to Birmingham?” “My friends are not here. Where can I find a room?” Tired and hungry, most of them with only a few pounds to launch themselves in Britain, the newcomers drift away. Tomorrow the search for work and a home will start.
Last year, 10,000 West Indians came to Britain, and even more are arriving this year. Somehow they have raised about £100 for passage money, risking everything because there is hope here and none at home. These people are not the failures or the workless; few of the 50,000 Jamaicans who have never had a job can find the money to travel to Britain. These are young workers who have had practical training or secondary education, and at least half of them are skilled tradesmen.
West Indians have always emigrated in large numbers to find work. In the age of full employment and the welfare state, the stream has turned towards Britain. The first big group arrived in June 1948, when the Empire Windrush landed 492 West Indians [Editor’s note: 802 passengers on the Windrush put their last country of residence as somewhere in the Caribbean].
Attention has been focused on West Indian immigrants by the discreditable behaviour of many newspapers, which have published sensational stories and exaggerated the extent of the immigration. An editorial insisted that “too many of them will be doomed to poverty relieved only by the public purse”. It did not at the same time add that the number of West Indians drawing assistance is below the national average, and that most of those who apply for it only need help to tide them over until they draw their first wages. It succeeded in creating the impression that a horde of feckless moochers was descending on Britain. It is small wonder that a readers’ ballot showed 97.6 per cent against unrestricted entry and 81.3 per cent in favour of stopping entry altogether.
Too often Britain’s “colour problem” is discussed as if it were simply a matter of the immigrant “behaving himself” according to stereotypes. But, as the sociologist Michael Banton rightly insists, the “principal obstacle” to assimilation is the “unwillingness of the other group [white British people] to accept them”. The problem has to be set against the West Indian background of poverty and frustration, for which Britain is just as responsible as if the slums of Kingston were on the Clyde or Tyne.
The plain fact is that after generations of British rule, the Caribbean islands cannot support their present population. In both islands, unemployment is chronic. Half of all the houses in Jamaica are dwellings with one room 10 x 15 feet, with an average of 3.8 occupants. The hospitals are appallingly overcrowded, and the mental hospital accommodates more patients than all the general hospitals combined.
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Able young West Indians prefer to take their chance in Britain than to stay at home, now that the doors are almost closed to entry into the US. There is really no answer to the West Indian who asked me: “If you say we cannot come here, and if you will not help us to find work at home, must we rot in silence?” We cannot escape our responsibility just because the Caribbean is far away, and its people are not white.
[See also: From the archive: Women’s hidden discontent]
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