• 1 The European Social Charter (1961) Article 19 “ The right of migrant workers and their families to (...)

6In June 1970, when Edward Heath took over as Prime Minister, Britain had already put an end to mass economic immigration from the New Commonwealth, not because the country did not need migrant workers, but because their presence had aroused anxiety and resentment among vast swathes of the British population for the past two decades. However, this had meant neither the end of immigration, nor the end of the explosiveness of the issue. Indeed, the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, passed under Harold Macmillan’s Conservative government, signalled the beginning of a new phase of immigration, namely family reunification, which changed Britain’s ethnic, cultural and religious profile far more than economic immigration in the fourteen years between 1948 and 1962. Until 1962, New Commonwealth immigrants had chiefly been men, comparatively few of whom settled firmly in the UK. Fears of impending tightened immigration controls meant that family reunion gathered momentum in the one and a half decades that followed the 1962 Act, all the more so as family reunion had been guaranteed by the European Social Charter since 1961 (through Article 19, notably).¹

• 2 The National Archives, Office for National Statistics, « Non-UK Born Census Populations 1951 - 2011 (...)

7Throughout the 1960s and much of the 1970s, thousands of Indian, Pakistani or Jamaican men were therefore joined by their wives, children (and not infrequently in the case of Asians, other dependants). As a result, the numbers of New Commonwealth immigrants rose sharply. In 1971, there were for example 313,00 Indians (as against 157,000 in 1961); 171,000 Jamaicans (as against roughly 100,000 in 1961); 136,000 Pakistanis and 58,000 Kenyans (neither Pakistan nor Kenya were part of the top ten non-UK countries of birth in 1961). It is to be noted that Irish immigration remained remarkably stable throughout the period (676,000 in 1971, as against 683,000 in 1961).²

• 3 Dominic SANDBROOK, State of Emergency. The way we were : Britain 1970-1974, London, Penguin, 2011, (...)

8Even before assuming office in June 1970, Edward Heath had acquired a reputation as a moderate on immigration and what was then known as “race relations”, which was consistent with his “one nation” profile, one nation Conservatism being the dominant vision within the Tory party until Margaret Thatcher took over as leader in 1975. That reputation had been shaped by the firmness he had displayed as Conservative leader towards Enoch Powell when the then Shadow Home Secretary delivered his inflammatory “Rivers of Blood Speech” in 1968³, an episode evoked in retrospect by a somewhat self-satisfied Heath in his memoirs, published in 1998:

• 5 Andy Beckett goes so far as to suggest that both Heath and Wilson were “social democrats who believ (...)
• 6 John SOLOMOS, Race and Racism in Britain, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1993, p. 69.
• 7 SOLOMOS, op.cit., p.68
• 8 The 1964 by-election at Smethwick provided a frightening illustration of the impact of immigration (...)

9During the 1970 general election campaign, despite Heath’s moderate, centrist approach⁵, Conservatives had pledged that there would “be no further large-scale permanent immigration”⁶. This led to the introduction of the 1971 Immigration Act, which, again, specifically targeted non-white immigration, by establishing a distinction between “patrials” (those born in the UK or one of its remaining colonies or with a parent or a grandparent born in the UK, i.e. Canadians, New Zealanders or Australians, for example) and non-patrials. “Patrials” alone had the unconditional right to settle in the UK, while non-patrials (e.g. Pakistanis, Indians, Jamaicans) had to apply for work permits, granted only to those whose skills were in short supply in Britain. Non-patrials were, moreover, subject to the non-renewal of their permit.⁷ According to Dominic Sandbrook, that piece of legislation was meant to “bring up the drawbridge”, an objective that did not so much reflect the personal views of most members of the government as it was meant to soothe public opinion, as immigration remained the biggest potential election loser, seven years after the Smethwick by-election⁸ and three years after Powell’s infamous speech:

• 11 British passport holders from the Indian subcontinent (Gujaratis, frequently), whose parents or gra (...)
• 12 This was not the first such crisis, as a similar one had occurred in 1968 in Kenya. Another one was (...)
• 13 HEATH, op.cit., p. 457.
• 14 Ibid.
• 15 A right-wing, jingoistic club within the Conservative party. Created in 1961, ten years later it bo (...)
• 16 HEATH, op.cit., p. 457.

11In August 1972 Heath’s reputed moderation was put to the test by a major crisis: the expulsion of thousands of so-called “East African Asians”¹¹ from Uganda, as a result of the implementation of Africanization policies in the former British colony. Dictator Idi Amin gave them one month to leave.¹² As Heath wrote in his memoirs: “Uganda was still part of the Commonwealth and we therefore had a moral duty to accept these unfortunate people.”¹³ 28,000 of the country’s 57,000 Asians settled in Britain in total, after a Uganda Resettlement Board (URB) was set up, as announced by Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-Home in a TV broadcast on 31 August 1972. The aim of the URB was to designate a certain number of Local Authorities (usually those with comparatively few New Commonwealth immigrants) that would then be advised by the central government in order to help Ugandan Asians settle in the country. Again, Heath had to face to opposition from Tory right-wingers. “This was led by Enoch Powell, and some sections of the media joined in the ugly chorus”¹⁴, Heath writes in his memoirs. In the following weeks, the Monday Club¹⁵ launched a “Halt Immigration Now” campaign, which culminated at the Conservative Party Conference in October 1972, Powell arguing that Britain had no moral obligations towards Ugandan Asians and that therefore they should not be accepted. Powell and his like were nevertheless defeated, thanks to the support of the Federation of Conservative Students and to the young Conservatives.¹⁶

• 17 Quoted in Catherine PUZZO’s unpublished PhD thesis, « Immigration Controls in Britain and France (1 (...)
• 18 PUZZO, op.cit., p.146.

12However, the 1971 Act contained one provision, voluntary repatriation (section 29), which did seem to be a concession to Tory right-wingers, as repatriation had been advocated three years before by Enoch Powell in his notorious speech. The 1970 Conservative manifesto, however, rejected altogether compulsory repatriation, which Powell and the Monday Club repeatedly advocated before the general election. Powell, who used the term “re-immigration” in his 1968 speech, went so far as to recommend the creation of a “Ministry of repatriation” in the early 1970s¹⁷. The Monday Club deemed that the scope of repatriation scheme set up by the government was insufficient: “ […] Repatriation provisions seem to be limited to their expenses of return. Unless that can include resettlement, the response may not be as large as it should be.”¹⁸ Voluntary repatriation did seem to be a token aspect of the 1971 Act, as admitted in 1973 by Robert Carr, the then Home Secretary (1972-1974):

• 20 Ibid. (Source: House of Commons Hansard).
• 21 Gérard FUCHS, Ils resteront : le défi de l’immigration, Paris, Syros, 1987, p. 147-148. Quoted in V (...)

13It actually is very difficult to obtain reliable data about the number of immigrants that actually used the scheme, but it does seem that its impact was minimal. In her PhD thesis, Catherine Puzzo thus writes that 62 families only benefited from the scheme between 1971 and 1973 (i.e. a total of 216 people)²⁰, to be contrasted with the 60,000 guest workers plus 34,000 dependants (60 per cent of whom were from Spain and Portugal) who benefited from a similar scheme in France between 1977 and 198.²¹

• 23 HEATH, op.cit., p. 456.
• 24 Kenneth O MORGAN, Callaghan: A Life, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997, p.308.

15On the whole, Labour and Liberal opposition to the 1971 Immigration Act was minimal (as underlined by Heath in his memoirs²³) thus illustrating a consensus between the Conservative (1970-1974) and Labour (1974-1979) governments on the need to restrict both primary and secondary immigration. Kenneth O. Morgan notes that James Callaghan was “unsentimental” about restricting immigration, an issue “to be handled in a way attuned to public opinion rather than on the basis of an abstract liberal political theory.”²⁴

• 28 Alwyn W. TURNER, Crisis? What Crisis ? Britain in the 1970s, London, Aurum, 2008, pp 205-225.

21The Conservative government however did not go so far as to strengthen the existing race relations legislation, despite its disappointingly poor record. Indeed, out of the 2,967 complaints investigated by the Race Relations Board (a watchdog set up under the 1965 Race Relations Act) between 1965 and 1972, seven only resulted in court cases: five verdicts were reached, two were lost, thus resulting in a conviction rate of 0.1 per cent.²⁸

• 29 Although Wilson was only sixty when he resigned and lived for another nineteen years, he suffered f (...)

22Imagined under Harold Wilson’s government, the third Race Relations Act was passed in 1976, under James Callaghan, who took over as Labour Prime Minister (1976-1979) after Wilson resigned, for health reasons²⁹, it emerged later. The 1976 Race Relations Act was passed a few months after the publication of a white paper on racial discrimination (September 1975), which came to the conclusion that urgent but realistic action was required and that both the central government and local authorities should set the example:

• 31 « Race Relations Act 1976 (Repealed) » <http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1976/74/section/3 consu (...)

23The 1976 Act introduced a new notion, indirect discrimination (i.e. a treatment which may be described as equal in a formal sense may be discriminatory in its effect on one particular racial group) and made provisions for positive discrimination: local authorities were encouraged to “to make appropriate arrangements” (a) “to eliminate unlawful racial discrimination” and (b) “to promote equality of opportunity, and good relations, between persons of different racial groups”.³¹ New Commonwealth immigrants and their descendants, who formed the bulk of Britain’s non-white population, were now theoretically placed under the full protection of law, which was long overdue. Indeed, it appears that in the 1970s Britain, Asian or Afro-Caribbean immigrants were still characterised, by and large, by social relegation, or indeed, invisibility. As explained in 1999 by Jack Howard-Drake, Assistant Secretary at the Home Office under Wilson’s and Heath’s Premierships, New Commonwealth immigrants were employable provided they were not in touch with the public, a situation that prevailed in many private sector firms until the mid 1970s, at least:

• 33 BECKETT, op.cit., p.444.
• 34 BECKETT, op.cit., p.445.

24In addition, the 1976 Race Relations Act created a new body, the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), which replaced the old Race Relations Board. Although the scope of the Act was in theory far greater than that of the previous two ones and tackled for the first time the issue of racial segregation, it was criticised on the ground of its comparative inefficiency. In Andy Beckett’s study, Ambavalaner Sivanandan, a leading figure at the Institute of Race Relations (a think-tank created in 1958) is quoted saying: “The 1976 Race Relations Act had no teeth. Never mind no teeth, it had no gums.”³³ By the end of 1978, only twenty-nine cases of racial discrimination had been investigated by the CRE, with merely one concluded,³⁴ a record reminiscent of that of the previous watchdog, the Race Relations Board.

• 35 William MACPHERSON, Report of an Inquiry by Sir William Macpherson of Cluny Presented to Parliament (...)
• 36 TURNER, op.cit., p. 215.
• 37 “Notting Hill Carnival ends in riot”, BBC News, 30 August 1976, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi (...)

25Racial prejudice remained widespread. This was especially true in the judicial system, two decades before the notion of “institutional racism” was documented by the Stephen Lawrence inquiry.³⁵ In 1970, there were only 10 non-white policemen in London. The campaign launched by Robert Mark (Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police from 1972 to 1977) to recruit black recruits in the Met failed to improve the situation, with 70 non-white officers in 1976 (out of a workforce of 22,000),³⁶ the year of the Notting Hill Carnival riots,³⁷ which took the shape of serious street clashes, thus prefiguring the inner city riots of the 1980s.

• 38 TURNER, op.cit., pp. 216-217.
• 39 TURNER, op.cit., p. 217.
• 40 TURNER, op.cit., pp. 217-18.

26The other components of the judicial system were also overwhelmingly white and testified to the existence of a clear racial bias. This was obvious in courts and prisons. In 1978, John Kinglsey Read, a one-time member of the Conservative Party who then joined the National Front, was tried at the Old Bailey for incitement to racial hatred for declaring, after the murder of a Sikh man in Southall: “One down, a million to go”. Judge Neil MacKinnon ruled that it undeniably was an insult to a dead man but that it did not constitute an insult in itself. MacKinnon multiplied controversial statements throughout the trial, suggesting for example that “nigger” was not a term of abuse or that “the black man wanted to follow the white man to Britain” [because of] the affection engendered” by the British imperial legacy.³⁸ Kingsley Read was acquitted by the all-white jury. Following the trial, Turner writes, twenty non-white barristers refused to work with Judge McKinnon, while 133 MPs signed a motion for him to be fired, despite the strict tradition of the separation of powers.³⁹ It should be underlined however that the although Kingsley Read trial had taken place two years after the passing of the 1976 Race Relations Act, the verdict came just a few days before the new Act came into force, which means that Kingsley Read was actually tried under the 1965 and 1968 Acts. In addition, Turner writes that racial prejudice was at its worst in jails, with many prison officers sympathetic to the National Front, including chaplains, as was the case, notoriously, at Brixton prison.⁴⁰

• 41 TURNER, op.cit., pp. 220.

27Outside the judicial system, racial tensions were on the rise, with 36 racially motivated murders between 1976 and 1981, the majority of which took place in East London and the Midlands. The rise of violent racism and the comparative electoral successes of the National Front (until 1979) prompted the creation of the Anti-Nazi League (ANL), launched in 1976 following a press conference held in the House of Commons under the aegis of Labour MP Neil Kinnock. The driving force behind, however, was the Socialist Workers’ Party, whose influence could also be felt in Rock Against Racism, a series of accompanying concerts involving punk, reggae or new wave bands.⁴¹

• 42 < https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jo_pdf.do?id=JORFTEXT000000864827 > consulted 20 September 2016.

29Moreover, the anti-discriminatory legislation that existed in the 1970s was well ahead of its time and made Britain a truly unique country in Europe. By contrast, a comparatively low-key law had been passed in July 1972 in France to outlaw incitement to racial discrimination, hatred and violence, as well as to prevent the expression of racist ideas in the press. For all its merits, it did not match in any way the scope of Britain’s race relations legislation.⁴²

• 43 See for example TURNER, op.cit., pp 205-225.

30The pro-active British approach of the 1970s paved the way for the multiculturalist policies of the 1980s and 1990s. Although Britain factually was “multicultural” by the 1970s (in the descriptive acceptation of the term), the terms “multicultural” and “multiculturalism” were unheard of in 1970s Britain. It was not until the turn of the 1980s that they started emerging, mostly in activist and academic circles at first, despite what is sometimes suggested.⁴³

• 45 SOLOMOS, op.cit., p. 207

32Unsurprisingly, the appeal of the Conservative Party among New Commonwealth immigrants was at best very limited, although John Solomos does underline that in certain constituencies there were attempts at wooing the Asian electorate, whose views on free enterprise, family or religious values seemed to converge with Thatcher’s. The Labour Party was still perceived as the immigrants’ natural party, notably owing to its decisive role in framing race relations legislation. In the 1974 and 1979 general elections, the vast majority of New Commonwealth immigrants voted Labour. The Labour Party Race Action Group was a pressure group created in 1975 within Labour. Its aim was to “raise awareness of the politics of racism within the party”, as underlined by John Solomos.⁴⁵ It was a comparatively successful attempt and prepared the ground for the radical measures put in place in the early and mid-1980s in Labour-run councils (e.g. contract compliances) or indeed the controversial black sections.

• 46 SOLOMOS, op.cit., p. 206
• 47 Gurharpal SINGH and Darshan SINGH TATLA, Sikhs in Britain : the Making of a Community, London, Zeb (...)

33John Solomos argues that in the 1970s, pretty much like in the 1960s, there appeared in Britain “a variety of different forms of autonomous organisation in a number of different contexts rather than unified ethnic movements”.⁴⁶ As a matter of fact, what few nation-wide movements did emerge rarely stretched beyond the limits of strictly defined communities. The situation of British Sikhs is a case in point. Despite their previous involvement in various bus disputes throughout the country with Afro-Caribbeans and other immigrants from the Indian subcontinent (notably in Bristol in 1963), Sikhs continued, on the whole, to pursue a particularist agenda, after the successes of the first turban campaign of the 1960s. In the 1970s this resulted in the second turban campaign, which went on for three years (1973-1976). Sikhs opposed a new law, which made it compulsory, as from 1 June 1973, for motorcyclists to wear crash helmets (Section 32 of the Road Traffic Act 1972). The Act’s implication was that Sikh motorcyclists would be required to remove their turbans. Like the previous and the following campaigns, it was chiefly managed by the Gudwara networks throughout the country. At the 1974 general election, a Sikh man unsuccessfully stood as a single-issue candidate in Ealing. Harold Wilson’s Labour Government eventually granted Sikhs an exemption (Motor-Cycle Crash Helmets [Religious exemption] Act 1976). Later in 1978, under Callaghan, the third turban campaign began: the Mandla case, which was to end in 1983 with a ground-breaking House of Lords decision, recognising Sikhs both an ethnic and a religious group. Despite their narrow focus, Gurharpam Singh and Darsham Singh Tatla argue that these campaigns had a broader, national impact, as they put the recently created anti-discriminatory legislation to the test and as such, contributed to shaping what was to become British multiculturalism.⁴⁷

• 48 TURNER, op.cit., pp 218-219.

34Although Muslim cultural and religious demands were to be formulated on a large scale in the 1980s with the rise of political Islam, notably following the publication of Rushdie’s Satanic Verses (1988), some particularist grievances started emerging in the 1970s. In 1977, the Union of Muslim Organizations wrote to the Home Secretary to ask that halal food be served in schools and canteens with significant numbers of Muslims. Other grievances included for example provisions for prayer time or prayer rooms and the incorporation of elements of the Islamic law for the country’s Muslims (around one million then).⁴⁸

• 49 Dominic SANDBROOK, Seasons in the Sun. The Battle for Britain, 1974-1979, London, Penguin, 2013, pp (...)
• 50 BECKETT, op. cit., p. 360.

35Sporadically, however, there emerged local movements that rallied a wide range of supporters. One case in point was the Grunwick dispute (1976-1978). Grunwick was a North West London photo-developing business, one of the largest in Britain, with roughly 500 employees. Certain departments, such as the mail order department, were almost exclusively staffed by Asian women, mostly from Kenya and Uganda.⁴⁹ The company would not recognise the right of its employees to be represented by unions and only made provisions for a “works committee”, set up in 1975.⁵⁰ The question of the representation of workers was all the more problematic as the workload intensified. Compulsory overtime was imposed on workers and working conditions deteriorated during the summer of 1976, one of the hottest in the 20^th century. Tensions and incidents between the mostly Asian employees and the management multiplied, with the firing of several employees. On Monday 23 August 1976, Jayaben Desai, an East African Asian, and five of her colleagues mounted a picket and collected signatures for a petition. By mid-afternoon, about fifty Grunwick workers had joined the picket line. In the following weeks and months, the dispute intensified, with clashes between some employees or their left-wing supporters (members of the Communist Party or the Socialist Workers’ Party, notably) and the Metropolitan police.

• 51 BECKETT, op.cit., p. 394.
• 52 SANDBROOK, op.cit., p. 382.

36The dispute received extensive coverage from the national media, which spoke about the “strikers in saris”, while Grunwick strikers got support letters from China or the US. On 30 June 1977, the Callaghan government – three members of which, Shirley Williams, Denis Howell and Fred Mulley had briefly joined the picket line one month earlier – commissioned the Scarman Inquiry. Public hearings took place during the summer and at the end of August Lord Scarman disclosed his conclusions: unions should be recognised and the employees that had been fired should be re-instated.⁵¹ Nevertheless, the employer, supported by Thatchers’ Conservatives and groups like the National Association For Freedom (a libertarian, law and order association launched in December 1975 by right-wing Tories, such as writer and television presenter Norris McWhirter and Viscount de l’Isle⁵², a former Governor General of Australia) rejected the advice. The TUC threw in the towel and the workers’ strike committee announced the end of the dispute in June 1978.

• 53 SOLOMOS, op.cit., p. 69

39In the field of immigration, the sense of continuity with the 1960s dominates. Indeed, the restrictive policies put in place by the Conservatives in the first half of the 1970s were by and large consistent with those put in place by Labour in 1965 and 1968 and later between 1974 and 1979, although some Labour MPs were vocal in denouncing the double standards of the 1971 Act⁵³, which in theory enabled millions of old Commonwealth immigrants to settle in the UK.