Racism in Uk immigration policy arrives as no surprise | Letters
The leaked Household Workplace doc detailing the inherent racism of British immigration plan from 1950 to 1981 is shameful (Windrush scandal triggered by ‘30 decades of racist immigration laws’ – report, 29 Might). Nonetheless, it will surprise no a person acquainted with postwar immigration policy. There is, for example, at minimum just one amazingly specific admission of racism that has been in the general public domain for additional than 50 yrs, and which demonstrates the peculiar capability for British racism to disguise in simple sight.
Race With out Rancour (1968), a political evaluation by the Tory MP and Every day Telegraph journalist William Deedes, talks candidly of the coded message guiding the Tories’ 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act: “The Bill’s actual reason was to restrict the influx of coloured immigrants. We were hesitant to say as considerably openly. So the limitations have been applied to colored and white citizens in all Commonwealth nations around the world – while all people recognised that immigration from Canada, Australia and New Zealand shaped no part of the challenge.”
Paul McGilchrist
Colchester, Essex
As a mixed-race teen with a father who arrived from Hong Kong in 1974 aged 7, I have to agree with Diane Abbott’s short article about the way Britain has had racist immigration policies for decades, no make a difference which social gathering is in cost (The reality is out: Britain’s immigration process is racist, and always has been. Now let us deal with it, 30 May perhaps). My dad’s relatives formally become British citizens as opposed to British abroad subjects in the 1980s because normally they’d have been issue to prolonged bureaucratic procedures.
I under no circumstances considered that I would be so glad to see my grandparents’ British passports until eventually I noticed the expanding tolerance of xenophobia in this region. A little something that I see a ton with white men and women who are nostalgic for the empire is how they despise immigrants, even with immigration staying element and parcel of colonising (and frequently destroying) other nations.
David Chan
Belper, Derbyshire
Rosie Harvey-Coggins is proper to say that a white person could learn about colonial heritage by reading through Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No For a longer time Chatting to White Persons About Race (Letters, 27 Might). But I have always observed very first-hand testimony far a lot more effective than words on a web site. At college, my youngsters have been moved by visits from Holocaust survivors in a way that would not have been probable through a record e book.
Particular recall is, of class, distressing for the unique, but is such an helpful way of having a concept across. We consequently want persons who are courageous more than enough to testify in this way. Why usually do we motivate sufferer impact statements? How else can we understand from the past if no person is geared up to share their experience of it?
Alison Simmons
Ealing, London