Anti-Immigrationism and Conservatism in Britain, 1955-1981
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Anti-Immigrationism and Conservatism in Britain, 1955-1981 Nicole Longpré Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2016 © 2016 Nicole Longpré All rights reserved ABSTRACT Anti-immigrationism and Conservatism in Britain, 1955-1981 Nicole Longpré This dissertation examines the shape, objectives, and fate of the anti-immigrationist movement from 1955 to 1981. During this period, groups and individuals operated within the confines of the British political system to advocate for the restriction of non-white immigration to the UK and also to minimize the perceived negative impact these immigrants were having upon the social and economic fabric of the UK. The study argues that by attaching their anti- immigrationist objections to existing political concerns, including anxieties about the welfare state, and by advocating for anti-immigrationist policies and legislation within the confines of established techniques of political activism and protest, anti-immigrationists were far more successful than they might otherwise have been, and indeed more successful than academic studies and popular opinion have portrayed them. However, their reliance upon a language of active citizenship and genuine democracy to justify their arguments to restrict immigration proved to be less popular with elite politicians and senior civil servants than a language of inclusivity and civil rights. As such, while much of the substantive legislation which anti- immigrationists advocated for was implemented at the highest level of government, the anti- immigrationist ethos, and the language in which they expressed their views, was not adopted by these powerful individuals, resulting in a foreclosure and minimization of the role of anti- immigrationists in agitating for the implementation of this legislation and body of policy. Furthermore, the decline of the anti-immigrationist movement was less the result of the success of the left in persuading the right to abandon its commitment to anti-immigrationism than of the success of the extreme right in claiming anti-immigrationism as its own, to the dismay of the more moderate right and centre-right. Table of Contents Introduction ......................................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1. Who Do We Think We Are? Defining the Anti-Immigrationist Movement ...............34 Chapter 2. The Possibility of a Leader: Building the Anti-Immigrationist Movement .................85 Chapter 3. Stories and Statistics: The Circulation of Anti-Immigrationist Knowledge ..............146 Chapter 4. Family Matters: Women and Domesticity in the Anti-Immigrationist Movement ....201 Chapter 5. Breaking the Rules of the Game: The Control and Decline of Respectable Anti- Immigrationism ............................................................................................................................251 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................304 Epilogue .......................................................................................................................................313 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................320 Appendix: Selected Dates in Immigration History ......................................................................330 i Acknowledgements I am grateful to the staff and archivists at a number of institutions, including the British Library, Butler Library at Columbia, Manchester Central Library, Cadbury Research Library at the University of Birmingham, the Labour Party Archive, the Liberal Party Archive, Leeds Central Library, the Modern Records Collection at the University of Warwick, the National Archives at Kew, Hull History Centre, Liverpool Central Library, Sandwell Community Archive in Smethwick, the University of Leeds, the University of Liverpool, the Working Class Movement Library, the West Yorkshire Archive Service, and the Wolfson Archival Research Centre at the Library of Birmingham. I am particularly and deeply indebted to Jeremy McIlwaine of the Conservative Party Archive in Oxford, who bore my presence for far longer than was in any way reasonable, and who has spoiled me for any other archive or archivist. I thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for providing the major doctoral research grant that allowed me to focus exclusively on this project for a number of years, as well as the Master’s degree grant that allowed me to do the research that first exposed me to these questions. At Queen’s University, Kingston, Tim Smith and Sandra den Otter shepherded the earliest iterations of this project into existence. I will forever be grateful for their confidence in its relevance and success. In New York, Chris Brown provided indispensable advice at a formative stage, as well as warning me about Birmingham, and Guy Ortolano has been a crucial source of information and criticism. Susan Pedersen has not only been an incisive and insightful teacher who has pushed me beyond what I believed to be my own capabilities, but also the best kind of mentor: a model for how to live an academic life. I thank audiences at the University of Birmingham History and Cultures Workshop, the Cambridge-New York Training Collaboration Workshop, the Mid-Atlantic Conference on British Studies, the North American Conference on British Studies, and the Columbia Modern British History Seminar for their useful and astute commentary on early drafts of these chapters. Members of the Columbia History Department Dissertation Support Group supplied the best forum for collegial interaction I have yet encountered; Kathleen Bachynski, Masako Hattori, Nick Juravich, and Ian Shin all helped me to survive this process more than they will ever know. My “quiet bat people” kept me alive(ish) and sane(ish), and provided essential feedback, support, and food: Kelsey Barnes, Lise Butler, Mary Chaktsiris, Anna Danziger Halperin, Steph Diepeveen, Clay Eaton, Katie Johnston, Melissa Morris, Sean O’Neil, Peter Price, Emily Rutherford, Christina Scriven, Pete Walker, Matt Wyman-McCarthy. ii Most of all, I thank my family, and especially my parents, who never doubted my desire to move halfway around the world because there were some questions I needed to answer, and who have provided love and support beyond measure. iii Introduction “I think it is the most important subject facing this country, but I cannot get any of my ministers to take any notice.” — Sir Winston Churchill to Sir Ian Gilmour on Commonwealth immigration to England in 19551 When the news came in, the blood drained from Harold Wilson’s face; Marcia Williams, his political secretary, “burst into tears.” Even the Conservative Quintin Hogg “merely raised an eyebrow and walked away.”2 It was eight minutes to midnight on 15 October 1964, and Patrick Gordon Walker had just been defeated at his seat in Smethwick, in the West Midlands, by a man named Peter Griffiths. The campaign had been a fraught and deeply contested one: Griffiths, by all accounts, had come to power in the wake of an ongoing diatribe against the presence of New Commonwealth immigrants in his new constituency. This was certainly not the first time social tensions had emerged surrounding immigration: the riots in Notting Hill and Nottingham in 1958 were all too recent memories. A Smethwick branch of the Birmingham Immigration Control Association had been founded a few years prior for precisely the reasons that Griffiths was emphasizing. In 1962, the House of Commons had introduced legislation to limit yearly arrivals of new immigrants. Peter Griffiths, however, was the first man (or woman) to successfully run for parliament with explicit anti-immigration planks forming the most central part of his platform.3 Where other Conservatives, many of whom were in favour of varying degrees of 1 Ian Gilmour, Inside Right: A Study of Conservatism (London: Hutchinson, 1977), 134. 2 Patrick Gordon Walker, Patrick Gordon Walker: Political Diaries 1932-1971, ed. Robert Pearce (London: The Historians’ Press, 1991), 41. 3 Oswald Mosley attempted to run in North Kensington on an anti-black immigration platform in 1959. He was unsuccessful. David Childs, Britain since 1939 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 130. 1 control on immigration, had previously feared to tread, Peter Griffiths pressed his campaign to new extremes. Most alarmingly to some, he did so with a groundswell of popular support. Certainly the West Midlands were known for producing some rather extreme personalities: Oswald Mosley, noted anti-Semite and leader of the British Union of Fascists during the interwar period, had formerly served as MP for Smethwick, albeit before the heyday of the BUF. The region was known more generally for its support of the staunchly imperialist MP Joseph Chamberlain. Enoch Powell, one of the rising stars of the Conservative Party, represented Wolverhampton, also located just outside of Birmingham. Yet none of these men were precisely the type of politician that Griffiths was. While Griffiths returned to Parliament under Margaret Thatcher and served for nearly twenty years from 1979 to 1997, he was never promoted to the front bench, and indeed seems to have made little impression on the House or the Conservative