Great Britain: Race Report

The British have always been stuffy about race, but the stuffiness has grown with the influx in recent years of some 625,000 immigrants. Whether a man is a blue-black African, a coffee-colored Jamaican, an Aryan Pakistani or even a Cypriot of Greek descent, he is considered "colored" in Britain — and almost invariably discriminated against. Two years ago Parliament passed a halfhearted race-relations act forbidding discrimination in hotels, restaurants, theaters and public transport, but the law is so impossible to enforce that no one has yet been convicted of breaking it. Moreover, it makes no attempt at all to prevent discrimination in jobs and housing, which are the real heart of the matter to the "colored" trying to live decent lives in Britain.

Last week Harold Wilson's government published a 141-page report that showed for the first time just how bad things really are for Britain's colored. According to the report, 36% of all colored immigrants claimed specific instances of job discrimination, more than half had trouble getting car insurance (and those who got it often had to pay higher rates), and real estate agents refused to show colored men unfurnished apartments anywhere.

Practically no jobs at all are open to dark-skinned skilled workers. "The men in this shop do not work with coloreds," a West Indian cabinetmaker was told. A Pakistani was refused a job as a gas pipefitter because "colored people can't work in white homes." The applicant for another job was turned away with an even simpler explanation: "No black bastards wanted."

With the Race Relations Board expected to announce similar findings this week, the Labor government is under increasing pressure to press for better antidiscrimination legislation. The chances that it can do so successfully are not good. In the past ten years, Parliament has thrown out at least ten bills to control discrimination—and the mood has not changed. Two months ago, when the government called union lead ers together to sound them out on fair employment laws, most of them boycotted the conference entirely.