Explosion of Racism

Like the gunpowder concealed in the cellar of Parliament by Guy Fawkes, an explosive issue has long lain hidden beneath the even fabric of British life. Last week it exploded into the open--and presented Britain with an ugly, gnawing and virulent problem. The problem was racial prejudice, and the man who sparked the explosion, as it turned out, was only saying what a great many Britons think: that non-whites are not welcome in 98%-white Britain. Before the week was out, race had become the most heated and con troversial subject of the year--and an issue that may well influence the next election.

The furor began when Enoch Powell, 55, a right-wing Tory M.P. from the industrial Midlands, launched an attack on an antidiscrimination bill introduced by the Labor government to protect Britain's 1,000,000 coloreds--a term that covers shades from light tan to dark black and encompasses Indians and Pakistanis as well as African and West Indian Negroes. Powell, a onetime teacher of Greek and a classics scholar, has a record for independence and strong-mindedness. Having decided in 1963 to try for the Tories' top job, he refused to serve in Alec Douglas-Home's Cabinet; he later placed a poor third in the 1965 party vote that installed Edward Heath as Opposition leader. He boils with emotion on the race question, particularly since his constituency has lately been invaded by large numbers of immigrant coloreds. He did not bother to inform the party leadership about his speech, but tipped off TV and newsmen. They soon found out why.

Foaming with Blood. "Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad," said Powell, borrowing from Euripides. Britain "must be mad as a nation, literally mad," he went on, to continue letting in colored immigrants, who have made Britons "feel like strangers in their own country." Powell warned that passing the race-relations bill would be like "throwing a match on gunpowder," demanded a virtual end to immigration and payments of cash bonuses to immigrants willing to leave. Predicting a 250% rise in the colored population within two decades, he declared: "As I look ahead, I am filled with much foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see 'the River Tiber foaming with much blood.' "

Shocked by the speech, Tory Leader Heath fired Powell as Minister of Defense in his shadow Cabinet. But the speech produced an outpouring of support for Powell's position. More than 2,000 tough Limehouse dockworkers walked off their jobs and marched on Parliament with signs that read BACK BRITAIN, NOT BLACK BRITAIN and DON'T KNOCK ENOCH. They were followed by butchers from Smithfield Market, still dressed in their bloodied smocks. At one point, the longshoremen's protest tied up London's docks.

The London Times called Powell's speech "evil" and "disgraceful," and 300 students from the London School of Economics tried to counter the pro-Powell demonstrations by marching to Powell's home in a counterdemonstration and chanting, "Black and white, unite and fight." But from the length and breadth of Britain came more than 85,000 letters to Powell himself, all but 30 or so, by his reckoning, reacting favorably to his speech. "I feel confident," said Daily Mirror Columnist George Gale, "that he expressed majority opinion in language more temperate than that of the pubs and clubs but more violent than that used in what passes for polite society." Onetime Labor Foreign Secretary George Brown got into the act by declaring in New York that he himself had suffered dis crimination as an Irishman in London and his wife as a Jew. "I don't see any difference between the racialist tensions now and what has happened before." said Brown. "The only difference is that the colored are more easily identified."

Imperial Legacy. That is not quite the only difference. Britain's race problem is a legacy of the imperial era, when colonials were grandly told that they could come and live in the mother country whenever they wished. Faced with Britain's gradual withdrawal from her colonies, finally able to scrape together the fare, and attracted by the greater opportunities for jobs and income, more and more ex-colonials have opted to go to Britain in recent years.

Though they still number only 2% of the population v. the 11% Negro population of the U.S., they have become so concentrated in such industrial centers as Birmingham, Liverpool and the suburbs of London that the black-white ratio approaches that of many big U.S. cities. Despite passage of a 1965 public-accommodations law, the immigrants find deep prejudice among working-class whites, who see them as a low-cost labor threat, and among employers and landlords. Their immigration is now controlled by a strict quota system that lets in some 10,000 a year on work permits; another 40,000 entered last year as dependents.

Labor's new race-relations bill would ban racial discrimination in all housing, in hiring by public and private employers, and in the use of the phrase "no colored" in help-wanted advertising. Since the bill involves only civil and not criminal penalties and carries a maximum fine of $1,200, it has far fewer teeth than U.S. civil rights acts. Even so, it is almost bound to be amended--as the Tories insist. In a raucous week, in which the majority of M.P.s spoke out against Powell and were in turn vilified by racist demonstrations, the bill was calmly voted into committee, where it will probably undergo such alterations as the exclusion of private homes from the housing provision. Even if the bill passes, it faces some rough going as law: a poll by the Daily Express showed that 79% of all Britons support Enoch Powell's views.

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