The ’situation’ with Eastern Africa
David Aaronovitch listens to the revolting Minister for Politically Expedient Demagoguery Phil Woolas on the radio:
Mr Woolas: “It’s assumed that Labour is soft on immigration. In actual fact the largest influxes of migrants into this country came during Conservative periods of government – if you look at the 1950s and early 1960s and indeed the situation with Eastern Africa.”
“The situation with Eastern Africa”? He means the time when the Kenyan and Ugandan Asians were expelled, and arrived in a Britain for which they had passports, where they were called “Paki”, and where they became some of the most successful and dynamic citizens this nation has possessed. And this is used by a Labour minister, a Labour minister, to attack past Conservative governments for softness on immigration! I wanted to throw up.
Nauseating, if typical, indeed. If Woolas wants to rake over history, however, he needs to get it straight. In an attempt to slow the influx of Ugandan Asians, the Conservative Party attempted to buy them off. They didn’t want them here any more than Woolas retrospectively does.
Ministers were prepared to offer Asian families expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin £2,000 each to give up their right to live in Britain.
They dropped the idea because they feared Enoch Powell would demand the same offer to immigrants already living here.
The Asian community in Britain today clearly have to be thankful they were less scary to the Tory high command than Powell was. Still, you’d imagine Woolas would find the idea of financial inducements as ’soft’. Labour, it seems, have always had the capacity to out-nasty the nasty party. Take the Kenyan Asians expelled in 1968:
Alarmed by an increase in the number of Asians from Kenya entering Britain, the Labour government under Harold Wilson introduced emergency legislation to end the freedom of entry of Asians – but not white settlers – from East Africa. The Times called it “probably the most shameful measure that Labour members have ever been asked by their whips to support”.
And to think some Tories thought the campaign slogan ‘If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour‘ was accurate. Hellish, topsy-turvy times to be sure. But back to 1968…
Within two weeks, Enoch Powell was to make his notorious “rivers of blood” speech in Birmingham. But by then the Labour government had already done more to catalyse racial prejudice than Powell’s rhetoric ever could. In fact, as [then Home Secretary James] Callaghan’s biographer, Kenneth Morgan, points out: “From Callaghan’s point of view, Powell’s antics were a valuable distraction. They enabled the government to appear, by contrast, sane and balanced . . .”
Swap ‘Powell’s antics’ for ‘the BNP’s antics’ and we’re bang up to date. Some things never go out of style.
Posted on January 13th, 2009 at 5:33pm under Human rights, New Labour, Tories
Good flag.
This is really fucking bad politics, how low have they fallen, how thick are they?
feel i have to post something just to get this phlegm off my chest. where the fcuk does woolas get off being a member of any political party – let alone labour – spouting this kind of dismal racist crap as some kind of boast in AD 2009? fair enough, labour’s past may have been chequered 40 years ago, but surely such sentiments should have gone the way of “love thy neighbour”. shame on him for spouting it, shame on me for voting for them. only question is: what to do when the election comes round? don’t want the tories in, don’t want cnuts like him to represent me. pass me the pistol next time the port comes round: i’m off to do the decent thing…
Christ, Doug, when will the English get over this sterile two-party fixation? Vote Liberal, vote Green, vote Morrismen Against the Bomb, whatever. At least that way you’ll be complaining from the moral high ground – and if you think that’s pointless because everyone else will continue to vote the way they always have, then get campaigning to persuade them otherwise. No-one is unelectable unless we decide they are.
I take your point from a personal perspective, Will, but I think we have to recognise other, broader, arguments at the same time. The next election is only two years away. The two party system isn’t a “sterile fixation” in this country, it’s a statement of political fact. The planet is up shit creek. I don’t think we have time to persuade others that liberal green morrisdancers are the alternative. Frankly, I’m coming to the conclusion that something a bit headier than campaigning is what’s required (didn’t say what I was going to do with the pistol, did I?)
I think he’s probably wrong on the fact anyway. Migration now is huge, in both directions, in part because it’s quicker and cheaper. And net inflows have been over 100,000 for most years since 2000 – higher than they were in the late 1950s according to the Home Office.
The crudeness of the rhetoric probably owes to insincerity – the Government have been two-faced for years on immigration, allowing it to flow because it helped provide abundant cheap labour, while always denying it and never making the case for it. After having allowed a couple of million new entrants, some of the core vote are no longer fooled, and so the likes of Woolas play to the gallery.
By the way, am blogging again.
[...] the issue of immigration. Woolas himself has never played politics with the issue, has he? Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, [...]
[...] brass neck to wish New Labour would carry out its immigration policies with a modicum of humanity. Woolas never called previous Conservative governments ’soft’ on immigration for admitting the Ugandan Asians when they were expelled by Idi [...]