Ultimately, Thomas envisaged a policy of ‘limitation’, but meanwhile, ‘so long as the proportion of coloured people in the white community is low and well-dispersed, then the complicated relationships are minimised and hardly obtrude themselves’.8
One local dispute in February/March 1955 suggested that things were already quite ‘complicated’. This was at West Bromwich, where busmen took strike action in protest at the hiring of an Indian trainee conductor. C. H. Mullard, a bus driver for 18 years, issued a union-sanctioned statement: ‘The platform staff are deeply concerned about this matter because, owing to our low rate of wages, we know that if we accept an influx of coloured labour we shall be brought down to a 44-hour week on which it would be impossible for a family man to exist.’ Tellingly, the busmen received little public sympathy, typified by a letter to the local paper that described West Bromwich conductors and conductresses as ‘the most ill-mannered, bad-tempered and ignorant lot I have ever met’. Bkika Patel himself, who had previously worked with the Bombay tramway service, understandably opted for caution – ‘I have no wish to cause any trouble and I am keeping clear of the dispute’ – and ultimately, as in several other similar public-transport disputes in the Midlands this year, it was the white strikers who largely won the day in the form of (to quote Clive Harris, historian of the non-white ‘industrial reserve army’) ‘the imposition of a quota on the number of black workers taken on, their confinement to specific duties and agreements about redundancy’.
There was a piquant footnote to the West Bromwich episode. After the Bishop of Lichfield had condemned the striking busmen as unChristian, the MP for Wolverhampton South-West (in the Black Country, like West Bromwich) wrote to him to argue that it was not racial considerations as such that had motivated the busmen, but rather their dislike of a foreign group muscling in, as with the Durham miners when they had gone on strike over the employment of Italians. The MP, Enoch Powell, suggested that the time had come for an amendment to the 1948 British Nationality Act, in order to ‘distinguish’ Jamaicans ‘from citizens of this country’, and he concluded piously: ‘In seeking to prevent while it is still possible the creation here of perhaps insoluble and intractable political problems, I hope one is not necessarily in breach of any obligation of humanity or Christianity.’9
In general, the question of immigration controls was starting – but only starting – to become a politically high-profile issue. In March 1954, a few weeks after the inconclusive Cabinet discussion on ‘Coloured Workers’, Lord (‘Bobbety’) Salisbury, Lord President of the Council and a key figure in the Tory Party, sounded an apocalyptic note to the Colonial Secretary: ‘We are faced with a problem which, though at present it may be only a cloud the size of a man’s hand, may easily come to fill the whole political horizon . . . Indeed, if something is not done to check it now, I should not be at all surprised if the problem became quite unmanageable in 20 or 30 years time. We might be faced with very much the same type of appalling issue that is now causing such great difficulties for the United States . . .’ The decisive argument, however, had already been made a few days earlier by the Commonwealth Secretary, Lord Swinton, writing to Salisbury: ‘If we legislate on immigration, though we draft it in non-discriminatory terms, we cannot conceal the obvious fact that the object is to keep out coloured peoples. Unless there is really a strong case for this, it would surely be an unwise moment to raise the issue when we are preaching and trying to practise partnership in the abolition of the Colour Bar.’ There the matter rested for the moment, though one historian, Kathleen Paul, has argued that it was from this point that the government initiated what she calls ‘a deliberate campaign to sway public opinion in favour of control’.
By the autumn of 1954 it was obvious that the number of West Indian immigrants was rising sharply, and on 5 November a Labour backbencher, John Hynd, secured a half-hour Commons debate on the immigration issue. ‘If there is a sudden influx of outsiders, whether they be Jamaicans, Poles, Welshmen or Irishmen, it upsets the balance,’ he declared, before going on to excuse the proprietors of a dance hall in his Sheffield constituency who had imposed a colour bar. In response, a Colonial Office minister, Henry Hopkinson, could only say that the whole question was receiving ‘very careful attention’. Three days later The Times warned against the powder-keg implications of the new wave of immigrants becoming concentrated in areas of serious housing shortages – ‘What are likely to be the feelings of more than 50,000 would-be white tenants in Birmingham, who have waited years for a decent house, when they see newcomers, no matter what their colour, taking over whole streets of properties?’ – while on the 12th, in his Smethwick constituency near Birmingham, Gordon Walker came out for a policy of control: ‘I don’t think any country has a moral obligation to import a racial problem . . . I am a great believer in Commonwealth unity, but I cannot see that there will be any danger to it if Britain takes powers over immigration.’10
At Cabinet, the issue came to a head in January 1955, shortly before the BBC documentary and amid considerable press coverage of some spectacularly big-number disembarkations of Jamaicans at Plymouth. ‘More discussion about the West Indian immigrants,’ noted Macmillan on the 20th. ‘A Bill is being drafted – but it’s not an easy problem. P.M. thinks “Keep England White” a good slogan!’ In the event the Cabinet shied away from action. The reasons were probably a mixture of disinclination to accept the potential seriousness of the issue, uncertainty about the state of public opinion and concerns about the implications for the ‘Old’ [ie white] Commonwealth. Irrespective of the question of ‘should’, could Churchill have done more? ‘I think it is the most important subject facing this country, but I cannot get any of my ministers to take any notice,’ he privately informed the Spectator’s editor, Ian Gilmour, though the truth surely was that at this particular point in his political career he was little inclined for major controversy, in the domestic sphere anyway. About the same time, a right-wing Tory MP, Cyril Osborne, tried and failed to introduce a private member’s bill in favour of restrictions. He seems to have been sat on by the government, even to the extent of having to pretend to be ill, while it did not help his cause that Princess Margaret was about to visit Jamaica in celebration of the tercentenary of British sovereignty there. But on the ground, the issue was far from going away. ‘I believe in international democratic Socialism, and I don’t like the idea of controlling the movement of people, but when a city is faced with a problem like Birmingham’s, with a shortage of houses, a shortage of house-building land and workers from many countries flocking to it, it seems to me that we Socialists must do some re-thinking,’ publicly declared Frank Price, an ambitious Birmingham local politician, in March. ‘If the present situation continues without control, conditions in the city, already very difficult, will become chaotic. What the city council can do to meet the problem has yet to be worked out, though my view is that it demands national consideration and action by the Government.’11
It is not easy to judge the state of public opinion as a whole by this time, including in the many areas of Britain where the sighting of a non-white person was still a rarity. In November 1954, following a Picture Post article on mixed marriages, there was strikingly rosy testimony from ‘a young coloured man happily married to an English girl’: ‘Thank God, I can honestly say not one person I have met has brought up the question of my colour. I think I can speak with some authority, since I have completed a hitch-hike tour of the British Isles. On this tour I was treated with every kindness conceivable, and more than one driver went out of his way to oblige me.’ However, there were far more letters to the press of an essentially negative kind. To quote a handful from 1954/5:
I would have been far happier to stay among my own people. Now I find that there is nowhere I can go without being stared at. Even in church many hesitate to sit next to me just because I am dark. (Indian student, Bradford)
The real problem is not the dope pedlars, but the tens of thousands of hard wo
rking types who in so many cases find white wives and promptly produce larger families than their white neighbours. (Les Pritchard, Llandaff)
One must face facts. There is a Colour Bar growing, as the hundreds of West Indians pour into our isle, seeking ‘paradise’. This flow must be greatly restricted. As the American says, ‘Don’t get me wrong’. I want the West Indians to have a fair crack at the whip, but not at the expense of the strife and turmoil that a Colour Bar brings. (Anthony Alton, Lancashire)
At the present influx of coloured people it will be a rarity to hear an English voice on our city streets in a generation, or so. We are known as a hospitable people, but have we not opened the doors of our national hospitality too wide? (C. Corfield, Birmingham)
The influx of coloured people into this country continues. Some firms now employ more West Indians than Englishmen. Are British workers blind to the threat to their welfare or can they see no farther than across the road? (O. Duncan, London SE15)
Unfortunately, there is no satisfactory (or even semi-satisfactory) statistical survey of attitudes, and what we do have from this time conveys a jumbled message. Gallup in April 1955 asked, ‘Do you think it is right or wrong for people to refuse to work with coloured men and women?’, to which only 12 per cent thought it was right, whereas 79 per cent thought it wrong. (In the same poll, to the question ‘Do you personally know or have you known any coloured people?’, 58 per cent replied in the negative.) Also in 1955, the sociologist Anthony Richmond, in a report entitled The Colour Problem, estimated that the majority of Britain’s white population was prejudiced against black people, with about one-third believing that they ‘should not be allowed in Britain at all’. Finally, there was the Daily Sketch, a right-wing tabloid. In January 1955, on the back of a ‘special inquiry’ by the paper into West Indian immigrants which had found that ‘too many of them will be doomed to poverty relieved only by the public purse’, it polled its readers: 97.6 per cent were against unrestricted entry and 81.3 per cent were in favour of stopping entry altogether.
For all too many West Indian newcomers, irrespective of these various figures and estimates, there was often huge ignorance to overcome, abetted by an instinctive suspicion or resentment of ‘the other’, and further compounded by the time-honoured English vice, hypocrisy. One West Indian, A. G. Bennett, offered this wry but heartfelt sketch in his 1954 book Because They Know Not:
What is wrong is with what they style the ‘neighbour’. Since I came here I never met a single English person who had any colour prejudice. Once, I walked the whole length of the street looking for a room and everyone told me that he or she had no prejudice against coloured people. It was the neighbour who was stupid. If we could only find the ‘neighbour’ we could solve the entire problem.12
‘It’s a good programme on Thursday night,’ Nella Last in Barrow noted gratefully on 13 January 1955. ‘When I look at my husband sometimes, I wonder whatever I’d do without the wireless.’ The following evening, Any Questions? came from Taunton, and among those dealing with the first question, ‘Are the measures taken to deal with travel difficulties due to seasonal frost adequate?’, was the Labour MP for South Gloucestershire, just back from a lengthy trip to the States. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea whether the measures are adequate or not – I don’t know what measures are taken,’ impatiently declared Anthony Crosland. ‘As far as I’m concerned, the weather as a subject of conversation after three months away from it, is out.’ Last did not yet have a television, but by this time more than four million households did, and the following evening, Saturday the 15th, saw the debut of The Benny Hill Show. ‘A career that owes all, or nearly all, to television,’ remarked Radio Times about ‘the burly, chubby-cheeked young man who made such a hit as compère of Showcase,’ and the 29-year-old, who had left school at 16 and still lived ‘quietly and modestly in a North London boarding house’, was indeed the first British comedian to forge a style specifically tailored for television. ‘Even though he was prone to be “saucy”,’ his biographer Mark Lewisohn has observed, ‘he traded on a larky, good-natured, boy-next-door image, epitomised by his cheeky looks and grin,’ and at this point his appeal to the television audience was ‘universal – across the classes and generations’. No doubt this was partly a reflection of the still relative novelty of the medium, with BBC audience research finding soon afterwards that ‘there seems to be far less “class difference” in viewing habits than in listening habits’. As it happened, Hill’s was not the only notable debut programme this mid-January weekend, for on Sunday afternoon there featured for the first time The Sooty Show. It was almost seven years since Harry Corbett, a Yorkshire engineer-surveyor who also tried his hand at amateur magic, had bought a teddy-bear hand puppet in a Blackpool shop for 8s and called him Sooty. Now, having gone full-time with his little friend in 1952, he was at the start of what would become one of the world’s longest-running children’s television programmes.13
Mid-February also had its moments. ‘Although Picture Book will set out to interest its very young viewers and awaken in them a sense of wonder and discovery, no attempt will be made to teach,’ solemnly promised Radio Times about the latest addition (‘Pages turned by Patricia Driscoll’) to the Watch with Mother line-up, going out for the first time on Monday the 14th between 4.00 and 4.15. Two days later, at the Strand Theatre, the curtain went up on Sailor Beware!, a kitchen comedy that made an overnight star of the foghorn-voiced, 38-year-old Peggy Mount. In a performance ‘instinct with horrid truth’, according to the Spectator’s Anthony Hartley, ‘she roars and bullies, snaps and frets with the immense and hideous gusto of one whose mission it is to make other people’s lives a hell on earth’. He added that, as the raucous Emma Hornett, she was also ‘extremely funny’, and ‘the audience rolled in the aisles’. ‘Peggy, you will never play glamorous roles,’ one cruel-to-be-kind producer had told her. ‘Even if you were slim, you’ve got a character face, character arms, a character body, a character voice.’ Next evening, on the 17th, a less endearing – but almost as enduring – battleaxe appeared on screen. ‘John and Phyllis Cradock, the Bon Viveur husband and wife cookery team, present an unusual style of cooking to a studio audience at the Television Theatre,’ was how Radio Times signalled the first Kitchen Magic. John and Phyllis were soon much better known as Johnnie and Fanny – with little doubt about who wore the trousers – and that evening their three party dishes comprised a Swiss roll, éclairs and soufflé en surprise, prepared for eight people at a cost of just over 6s. The Listener’s Reginald Pound called it ‘one of those put-up-job programmes in which the characters try hard to appear as if the inspiration for it has only just come to them’, but the short-tempered, snobbish, attention-seeking Fanny was poised to become post-war Britain’s first celebrity chef.
The difference between her and two longer-established cookery gurus was considerable. ‘Philip Harben and I weren’t celebrities,’ Marguerite Patten recalled half a century later. ‘We were informers, much less important than the food. Our role during rationing was to guide people through interesting meals when what you could buy was so limited.’ But by the mid-1950s rationing was passing into history, and food was starting to become about display as well as nourishment. In short, the mood music was just right for some culinary flamboyance, even some conspicuous consumption. ‘ANOTHER BOOM YEAR IS HERE’, pronounced the News Chronicle on the first Monday of 1955, on the basis of a Gallup poll showing that 80 per cent of adults expected to earn at least as much as in 1954. ‘In booming, buoyant Britain,’ declared the paper, ‘people are getting ready for a spending spree in which millions will be poured out on TVs, cars, houses, washing machines and refrigerators.’ Or, as Mollie Panter-Downes not long afterwards told her American readers, Britain was turning into a land of ‘new television masts sprouting from roofs, new cars in garages, and markets bulging with every conceivable necessity and luxury’.14
One new car was in Chingford. February started well for Judy Haines – ‘Engl
and have won Fourth Test in Australia and consequently retained the Ashes,’ she wrote on the 2nd. ‘Lovely!’ – and then got better. On the 15th a local car dealer returned, at her husband Abbé’s request, the deposit for a Ford Anglia: ‘Can’t wait for car indefinitely. We are all delighted the way is clear to negotiate for a Standard 8.’ The following Saturday was cold and snowy: ‘Just sat around fire and dreamed of a Standard 8 and much better weather.’ And then on Saturday the 26th, after Abbé had bought the car but not been able to bring it home because of still needing insurance: ‘Thrilled! He went off to see Leyton play Watford. Pity they had to lose on this lovely day. I can think of nothing but cars, especially 825 CEV.’ The great day came on Saturday, 5 March: ‘Excitement runs high. Abbé went off to Lamb’s and brought home the beautiful Standard Eight de Luxe 825 CEV. The girls were watching from window. “It’s a black Standard! It’s CEV! It’s 825 – it’s Daddy!” ’ Two days later Abbé was going to work in central London by car, which soon had the family nickname ‘Kevin’. The Standard Eight was a four-door saloon, launched two years earlier, and from May 1955 even the non-de luxe version of it had winding windows and trimmed door panels, at the cost of an extra £28 6s 8d. The Standard Motor Company, explained the Economist rather sniffily, ‘has now accepted the fact that motorists are prepared to spend quite substantial sums for details that add nothing to a car’s mechanical efficiency and little to the physical comfort of driving it’. From Judy Haines herself, there remained gratitude for anything that made day-to-day life easier. Or as she eloquently wrote in early May, ‘My back is aching. Oh how lovely to have a washing machine.’
Family Britain, 1951-1957 Page 55
