PART 2- Dr Vincent LATOUR ‘Multiculturalism & Human Rights’

The aim of this set of lectures will be to introduce you with the British approach to diversity governance since the end of WW2. As we shall see, this approach has been distinctively pro-active (i.e. favouring action), especially when compared with the approaches devised in continental Europe, say in France and Germany, where immigration policies were guided by utilitarian, economic considerations only, leaving political or civic considerations completely aside until the early 1980s, giving those countries no clear-cut integration policies for several decades. Conversely, as will be shown, the progressive but highly politicised approach that was gradually put in place across the Channel from the late 1940s onward led, to a certain extent, to some degree of disconnection between, on the one hand, the actual needs of the British economy and immigration and diversity management on the other hand.

The ‘differentialist’ approach to diversity gradually led to the emergence of ‘multiculturalist’ policies whose initial aim was entirely laudable, as they were first intended to protect individual human rights (such as the right not to be discriminated against on the basis of one’s beliefs or belonging to a given group) and legitimise the presence of non-European (mostly New Commonwealth) immigrants in the UK.

However, it will be the aim of this course to show that ‘multiculturalism’ has actually acted as a ‘double-edged sword’, leading to suspicion, fragmentation, ‘parallel lives’, an emphasis on groups rather than on individuals, and in some cases, violence. All British Prime Ministers since 2001 have highlighted the perils or indeed, the failure of multiculturalism (including David Cameron in February 2011). Whether the changes introduced for almost a decade now (such as the renewed emphasis on integration) have led to a clear-cut departure from the British approach will be discussed.

• The Imperial Legacy

Differentialism, an anthropological notion, proved a great influence on Britain’s relationship both to colonised populations during the imperial era and to New Commonwealth immigrants in the post-WW2 era.

Differentialism, anthropologists purport, means that a nation (e.g. Britain) is fundamentally different from other nations, let alone other ‘races’, making assimilation pointless and useless. However, unlike the French and the Spanish, the British focused on the mercantile motive and were hardly interested in converting ‘pagans’ to Christianity. This partly explains why they were so quick in conquering huge territories. Indeed religious officials in India e.g. did not perceive British colonisation as a threat. That respect for native cultures and faiths was illustrated by the fact that intellectuals such as Burke, a Conservative philosopher, extolled India’s age-old traditions and culture. Indirect rule, which consisted in partly delegating to native civil servants the managing of the colonies and in relying on local officials proved terribly efficient and came in sharp contrast with the so-called direct rule  system used by the French.

The main idea behind indirect rule was that the traditional local power structure was somehow incorporated into the colonial administrative structure, notably through reliance on local aristocrats and a handful of native civil servants. As a result, British presence was kept to a minimum and minimal interference occurred with local customs or beliefs. While the colonizing power was almost invisible, or at least, hardly visible, local value systems remained unchanged for the most part. The main inspiration behind indirect rule was differentialism, i.e. the anthropological notion that the British were essentially different from other nations and ‘races’ (if not superior to them, obviously), which rendered assimilation useless. Moreover, as it happened, differentialism and indirect rule served Britain’s geopolitical interests¹. Britain was of course guided by pragmatism, as attempts at westernising local customs (or contempt of those customs) had led to the Great Mutiny (1857), which had started following rumours that new cartridges used by Sepoys (native Hindu and Muslim recruits) were coated with lard (pigs being filthy animals by Muslim standards) or tallow (cows being sacred animal for Hindus). Three years after it, Section 295 of the Indian Penal Code was adopted, a law that made blasphemy a criminal offence in British India².

With the beginning of mass, post-war, non-European immigration, it became obvious that Britain’s attitude to colonial immigrants and their descent was still influenced by differentialism.

• The post-war context

Up until the end of WW2, the British population remained remarkably culturally, religiously and ethnically homogeneous, the vast majority of newcomers coming from the British isles, notably from Ireland. Until the mid 1960s Britain remained an emigration country i.e. the number of people who settled outside Britain (Canada, Australia, New Zealand and above all, the United States) exceeded the number of immigrants who settled in Britain. After the independence of India (1947), Britain turned for the first time ever to mass immigration to meet the needs of its economy. Although a distinction was established between British subjects from the UK and its colonies and Commonwealth citizens, British citizenship was granted to all Commonwealth citizens under the 1948 British Nationality Act. Despite previous restrictions, black – or at least, non-white – British subjects, were legally entitled to enter and settle in Britain with unlimited access to the resources of the recently created Welfare State.

First, as head of the Commonwealth, Britain could not openly restrict the entry of people of colour: openly racist restrictions would have ruined its credit.

Then, possibly more importantly, Commonwealth countries were Britain's main economic partners at the time and Britain could not afford to put an end to this partnership. Finally, after the Bretton Woods conference (July 1944), the free movement of labour had become part and parcel of the new world order, along with the free circulation of capital, goods and services. The notion of human rights was central to the geographic mobility of people, just like free trade was central to the free circulation of goods, capital and services³. The US-dominated Western camp tried as much as possible to distance itself from the authoritarian regimes under which the free circulation of people had been banned during the war (Nazi / fascist regimes) or was about to be abolished by the new Communist regimes now in the Soviet camp.

During the war, the overseas British subjects who came to help with the war effort (in the armed forces or in ammunition factories e.g.) did not encounter much hostility, although the presence of blacks from the Caribbean or Africa proved more controversial than that of Asians, for example. The 130,000 Afro-American GIs present in Britain from 1942 onward were resented (‘overpaid, oversexed, overhere’), especially those who had affairs with British women. Those affairs resulted in the birth of some 1,000 mixed-race children, the so-called ‘brown babies’, who scandalised the opinion.

That hostility was revived after the war with the much-publicised arrival at Tilbury, in Essex on 22 June 1948 of a British troopship, the SS Empire Windrush, carrying the first large group of post-war black immigrants, 492 Jamaicans (who technically were British subjects, as Jamaica remained a colony until 1962) . Following that arrival, anti-black riots broke out in Liverpool.

The hostility encountered by black immigrants from the post-war years to the 1980s has been analysed as the outcome of the survival of differentialialism into the post-colonial era. The Post-war Labour government was aware that the arrival of black immigrants could potentially lead to conflict. Therefore, the universalism of the British Nationality Act was circumvented in two different ways: immigration schemes meant to attract European workers on the one hand and semi-official agreements between Britain and some of its former colonies on the other hand.

• European Voluntary Workers (E.V.W. s) and similar schemes

The European Voluntary Workers Scheme encouraged the settlement of European workers, chiefly men, who most of the time had been war prisoners. They came from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Yugoslavia, Hungary and above all, Poland. The British State was concerned with the admission of single persons and paid for the transport and repatriation cost of those people, who usually were directly recruited in refugees or displaced persons’ camps, being unable or unwilling to return to their countries of origin, whose borders had been redrawn as a result of the war. EVWs signed a one-year contract stating that they would accept the jobs assigned to them by the Ministry of Labour. The condition was that no British labour was available. Those workers took up the menial jobs the British refused, which meant that British workers were promoted to better jobs. The permanent settlement of European Voluntary Workers seemed impossible at first: it was widely believed that they would fulfil their task and then return to their countries. However, most EVW s took another job when the scheme came to an end in 1948: most of them did settle in Britain, were joined by their wives and children, the single ones often marrying English women. Still, EVWs were not enough and alternative schemes had to be set up to meet the demands of British industry. The North Sea and Blue Danube schemes were set up. Under those schemes, 12,000 German and Austrian women were recruited for a two-year-period, and unlike EVW s, most of them returned to Germany or Austria at the end of their contract. Italians, both males and females were also recruited under various schemes.

So, recourse to white immigration was encouraged by the successive post-war Labour governments as a response to the fears of British people about too much coloured immigration. Hostility towards them did exist on a limited scale, but their integration into society was achieved after one generation. Still, prospects improved in the countries of emigration, notably in Germany or Italy and it became increasingly difficult to recruit European workers. Recourse to immigration from the colonies or ex-colonies was therefore contemplated, not willingly but reluctantly, because it appeared inevitable. It was against that background that the British government considered using the full provisions of the British Nationality Act and recruiting workers from the New Commonwealth and residual colonies. Yet Labour governments, just like their Conservative counterparts, were to try to uphold white immigration as much as possible.

•Underhand agreements

It is now established that by 1952, Labour and Conservative governments alike had developed illegal and unconstitutional strategies to limit black CW immigration. Indeed, the successive British governments had made informal agreements with New Commonwealth countries, notably India & Pakistan, so as to restrict the number of passports. The Indian Supreme Court eventually declared this practice unconstitutional in the early 60s. Therefore, prospects of unrestricted Indian immigration prompted the government to contemplate tighter immigration restrictions. Simultaneously, some of the British worried about the impact of black immigration on housing, the Welfare State or even on employment, at a time when the British economy was booming and its demands were huge.

New Commonwealth immigration started taking off in 1955. Between 1961 and 1966, tt increased at an annual rate of around 10 per cent. In 1966, it was estimated that there were 853,000 New Commonwealth immigrants in Britain, i.e. 32.7 per cent of the overall number of immigrants and 1.6% per cent of the population. Hostility towards them remained unchanged or indeed, increased, especially un the urban and industrial centres where the vast majority of them lived, as shown in the anti-black riots that broke out in Nottingham and Notting Hill (London) in 1958. Racial discrimination was both widespread and legal: ‘No blacks’ or ‘No coloureds’ signs could be found outside many shops, hotels etc. The riots were the logical outcome of a decade of public agitation and hostility to Commonwealth immigration. The riots took the shape of attacks by white working class people on black immigrants. However, large sections of the press and some Conservative MPs presented them as the symbols of the danger of unrestricted immigration. It has emerged since then that the Eden⁴ Government (Conservative) had come close to a ban on immigration as early as 1955. In any case, the riots certainly constituted a watershed in the evolution towards stricter immigration controls. When they took place, there was a mobilisation of opinion, both in and out of Parliament in favour of further restrictions. So logically enough, the riots were used by pro-immigration control lobbies or political leaders, including some Labour MPs. The Commonwealth Immigrants Bill was announced in October 1961 by Macmillan's Conservative government. This is how Richard Austen Butler, the then Conservative Home Secretary justified the impending immigration restrictions at his party’ annual conference : «Si l’immigration dépasse la capacité d’absorption [de ce pays], il n’est pas exclu qu’un jour ou l’autre nous soyons confrontés à des poches de difficultés dans certains endroits, tant du point de vue social que de celui de l’emploi »⁵.

Putting an early end to mass immigration: The Commonwealth Immigrants Act (1962)

The British therefore virtually stopped mass immigration from the former Empire as early as 1962, through the Commonwealth Immigrants Act. This occurred at a time when unskilled labour was still in short supply, especially in the industry. Putting an end to mass immigration simply would have been unthinkable in other leading European industrialised nations, such as France and actually that question was to be raised there only twelve years later, at the end of the Trente Glorieuses. In Britain, the decision to put an end to immigration was taken basically for political reasons, owing to the persistent hostility towards non-white immigrants. That shift highlighted an increasingly politicised and racialised approach to immigration. In the early-mid 1960s and possibly earlier, the British concern was not just immigration per se, but what had become known as ‘race relations’.

The 1962 Act imposed strict restrictions on all Commonwealth passport holders. The aim of the restrictions was to prevent the entry of unskilled people. Work vouchers issued by the Ministry of Labour were necessary. Priority was given to skilled workers, or to immigrants who had a skill that was in short supply.

However, the restrictions did not apply to certain categories of applicants:

1. Those born in Britain and dependants (i.e. their families)

2. Those who held British passports issued by the British government and dependants.

Actually, the Act was meant to tackle the specific issue of black immigration. Indeed, potentially, it enabled thousands of white Commonwealth citizens (Australians, Canadians, and New Zealanders) to settle freely in the UK, simply because they were far more likely to have parents born in Britain than Indians, Pakistanis or Caribbeans. The hypocrisy of the Act was recognised later by the then Home Secretary, William Deedes:

The Act's real purpose was to restrict the influx of coloured immigrants. We were reluctant to say as much openly. So the restrictions were applied to coloured and white citizens in all Commonwealth countries, though everybody recognised that immigration from Canada, Australia and New Zealand formed no part of the problem.

Labour resistance to the Commonwealth Immigrants Bill was limited to a nucleus of left-wing MPs, the rest of the party having tacitly converted to immigration restrictions.

The passing of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act however failed to depoliticise the issue, which continued to spark off contention, the Conservatives accusing Labourites, who went back to office in 1964, of being ‘soft’ on immigration. The 1964 by-election at Smethwick provided a good example of the radicalisation of the race debate and of the surrounding anti-black hysteria. The slogan of the Conservative candidate was: "If you want a nigger for a neighbour vote Liberal or Labour." Smethwick was a working class, Labour-voting constituency, but the Tory candidate, whose entire campaign had revolved around the immigration and race issue, won the election.

After the Smethwick election, Harold Wilson, the new Labour Prime Minister, realised that immigration had become ‘the biggest potential election loser’ and that the issue could no longer be overlooked. Harold Wilson met the then opposition leader, Conservative leader Edward Heath and signed an informal non-aggression treaty with him, in order to try and de-politicise the issue.

The perceived explosive potential of race relations led various Labour governments in the 1960s and 1970s to combine immigration restrictions with a specific ‘race relations legislation’ meant to offer those already on British soil protection against the then widespread (and legal) racial discrimination, as New Commonwealth immigrants continued to be the targets of white working class animosity. That strategy came to be known as the ‘dual interventionist strategy’, as both pillars of the new policy bore testimony to the intervention of the state. The whole strategy was perhaps best summed up by Labour frontbencher Roy Hattersley in 1965 : 'Integration without control is impossible, but control without integration is indefensible.' ⁱ In other words, the growing number of non-white residents in Britain was either potentially or actually the source of social problems / conflicts and therefore, it was necessary for the state to introduce measures to promote the integration of immigrants into the wider society and its fundamental institutions.

Integration was then clearly distinguished both from French-style and even American-style assimilation, the expression of cultural differences becoming to a certain extent tolerated in the name of British democratic values, as shown in the definition provided by the then Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins in 1966:

“Integration is perhaps a rather a loose word and I do not regard it as meaning the loss, by immigrants, of their own natural characteristics and culture. I do not think we need in this country a ‘melting pot’, which will turn everyone out in a common mould, as one of a series of carbon copies of someone’s misplaced vision of a stereotyped Englishman […] I define integration, therefore, not as a flattening process of uniformity, but cultural diversity, coupled with equality of opportunity, in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance[…] If we are to maintain any sort of world reputation for civilised living and social cohesion, we must get far nearer to its achievement than is the case today”.

Towards Race Relations Legislation (1965, 1968 & 1976 RRA)

For the government, the underlying problem was the question of the future of race relations at a time when race riots were developing across the Atlantic (e.g. Watts riot, L.A., 1964).

Two problems were usually seen as needing urgent attention:

- the negative response of the white majority population to the competition of black workers in the housing and labour markets, which, it was feared, could lead to conflict in certain localities such as the London, Birmingham and Wolverhampton areas.

- the frustration of black workers who felt excluded from equal participation in British society by the development of a colour bar in the labour and housing markets.

Fears of a potential evolution along American lines – a fear that had existed since the Notting Hill and Nottingham Riots, in 1958 – prompted the successive Wilson governments to take action: the 1965 Race Relations Act 1965 was therefore passed. Significantly, the Act came into force on 8 December 1965, i.e. two and a half months after Executive Order 11246 first enforced Affirmative Action in the US.

Liberal differentialism Vs Colonial differentialism

Race Relations legislation has been interpreted as being in keeping with the differentialist tradition or indeed, indirect rule in existence since the imperial era. Both Race Relations legislation and official recognition of cultural differences may be interpreted as a liberal and democratic interpretation of differentialism (‘liberal differentialism, in the words of French historian and demographer Emmanuel Todd⁶). For the government, the idea was not, obviously, to consider immigrant communities as inferior, but as fundamentally different, which meant that any attempt at assimilation was pointless. In Britain, two forms of differentialism overlapped, as the liberal form of it promoted by the government co-existed with the colonial version of it epitomised by Tory frontbencher Enoch Powell, whose notorious anti-immigration ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech (1968) gained him considerable public support, including among the working classes⁷. The speech was a strong indictment of New Commonwealth immigration and of anti-discriminatory legislation.

The 1965 RRA merely stated the principle of ending discrimination against black immigrants and their descendants on the ground of race and to bring about integration measures in housing, education, employment and social services. Although fairly limited in its scope, the Act was important in establishing the concern of the state with racial discrimination and as an affirmation of the broad objective of using legislative action to achieve ‘good race relations’. It set up the Race Relations Board, a regulatory agency that had responsibility for enforcing the RRA, as mainstream government departments did not tackle the issue.

The 1965 Act paved the way for more coercive legislation. First, the 1968 Race Relations Act, which was introduced simultaneously with new immigration restrictions, namely the 1968 Commonwealth Immigrants Act. It created a new body, the Community Relations Commission and strengthened the powers of the Race Relations Board in dealing with complaints of discrimination. From 1965 to 1975, successive governments, both Labour and Conservative, left the issue of tackling racial discrimination to these bodies as there was very little direction or support given by central government itself. The 1968 Act was dismissed as ineffective because of its emphasis on individual forms of discrimination and because of the lack of funding for implementing the law fully.

Race relations legislation aside, state interventionism in the field of integration was also palpable in the Local Government Act (1966) and the Urban Programme (1968), which were to relieve deprived inner-city areas (where most New Commonwealth immigrants were concentrated) through central government funding.

The anti-discriminatory legislation really became more coercive with the third Race Relations Act, passed in 1976. The Act came a few months after the publication of a white paper⁸ on Racial Discrimination published in September 1975. The white paper recognised the comparative failure of past policies to achieve fundamental changes, the need for stronger legislation and ‘the need for a coherent and co-ordinated policy over a large field of influence involving many Government departments, local authorities, the existing statutory bodies concerned with the subject, and indeed, many individuals in positions of responsibility and influence’.⁹

The 1976 Race Relations Act was a strengthening and extension of existing anti-discriminatory policy. Its main initiative was the creation of a new body, the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), which was to provide a stronger basis for a legal strategy against discrimination, notably in the field of employment. The role of the CRE (a charity with a semi-public status) was essentially to offer individuals guidance and assistance, as cases of discrimination in the field of employment could now be handled directly by industrial tribunals. The Act introduced two new notions: indirect discrimination on the one hand and positive discrimination on the other.

The indirect discrimination concept, partly based on the American experience, meant a treatment which may be described as equal in a formal sense but discriminatory in its effect on one particular racial group. The idea was ‘to circumvent the problems of proof of intentional discrimination […] and to provide a basis for intervening against the present effects of past and other types of institutional discrimination’.¹⁰

Positive discrimination was introduced, as local authorities (the local level of government in Britain) were encouraged to ‘to make appropriate arrangements with a view to securing that their various functions are carried out with due regard to the need:

(a) to eliminate unlawful racial discrimination ; and

(b) to promote equality of opportunity, and good relations, between persons of different racial groups.

However, both concepts did not become immediately fully operational.

At the end of the 1970s, it was obvious that despite the setting up of an elaborate legislative framework, on

- On the one hand, immigrants or immigrant-descended populations remained relegated to the margins of British society. Despite the existence of an ad hoc legislation, to the vast majority of the British, they remained as black as their parents. They continued to be excluded from the better jobs and to be confined to poor housing in decayed inner city areas despite Race Relations legislation. They suffered far more from the economic crisis than their white counterparts. In Britain, between 1971 and 1981, the unemployment rate increased by 300 per cent in general and by over 500 per cent for the ethnic minorities.

- On the other hand, with the recession, hostility towards them intensified, giving rise to political exploitation, as shown in the rise of the National Front, a far-right party with a racist agenda or in the xenophobic declarations of Margaret Thatcher in the run up to the 1979 general election¹¹.