Universities & Left Review 5 Autumn 1958

the people who live in them. So far as we can tell there had been no contact whatever established between West Indian immigrants moving into the area and the liberal- The Habit of Violence minded people living there, until the riots actually began. This is the kind of failure of values—or the failure to project values into our relationships with other people—for which We publish below a series of " Notting Hill documents "— the community itself, and all others like it, should feel a essays written by fifteen year old girls at a Secondary School personal responsibility. in West London. They were asked by their teacher to write In the second place there is the growing problem of un- frankly their opinions about the recent outbreak of racial employment and the mounting attacks upon the welfare state violence which disfigured the Kensington and Paddington which the Conservative Government has made during recent areas, about the subject of West Indians living in Britain, and months. Already unemployment is beginning to rise, and a the problem of immigration. The selection, which has been sense of insecurity to grow. carefully made to reflect the scatter of different opinions in In the third place, between the lines of these essays, we can the class, ought to make us sit up and think, long and hard, see the unmistakable profile of Britain's colonial policy over about the growth of racial intolerance in Britain, and the the last century. These children are relaying second hand conditions in which racial feeling spreads and grows. It the catchwords of colonial policy. Behind each irrational would be comfortable to think that the British Union of phrase stand an impressive list of names—Kenya, Cyprus. Fascists alone was responsible—that, in conditions of growing Malaya, British Guiana, Southern Rhodesia. They may have unemployment and housing famine, people, innocent of difficulty finding some of these places on the map: but in racialism, had been induced to find a scapegoat for their one sense at least, these youngsters know, with a terrifying frustrations and anxieties in the West Indian minority in their and distorted precision, what these names stand for. Here midst. Certainly, the fascists have been at work, both in is the primitive barbarian, the " black man," abused in a London and elsewhere, exacerbating feeling on this question score of governor's houses, beaten in a hundred district and stirring up violence. The sinister figure of Sir Oswald officers' huts, but who has Jived on to haunt the nightmare Mosley has once again made its appearance on the advertising world of a fifteen year old girl. The terrible tragedy of billboards—(right next door, according to a recent photograph colonialism—not the past only but the present as well—has in the Observer to a sign which read, " Advertising brings you at last come " home." Think of the ways in which Kenya the good things of life . . . "). They may have acted as a and Cyprus have been treated in the press: think of the trigger—but, as Mr. Manley, the Prime Minister of Jamaica, racial discrimination in Central Africa's " experiment in part- asked, " who loaded the gun ? " nership." Then consider the nightmare logic which " admits that white men do the same thing, but for a black man to do That question is more difficult to answer simply, because it it is worse." takes us to the heart of the spiritual and moral malaise into which this country has drifted in the period of The Oppor- Finally, the most crucial problem of all. because it involves tunity State. Some of these issues we take up in more detail and heightens all the others: the problem of where our young elsewhere in the issue: but it is useful to stress the point that people are going. The cult of youth—like the " angry young such startling outbreaks of racial violence, involving as active men "—is beginning to catch on now. The papers are going participants large numbers of children and adolescents, and to build it up in features, and the recording machines are as passive (for the most part) incitors large numbers of beginning to hum. They may help: at least they will make ordinary men and women, isn't the sort of problem that we us, for the first time since Mr. Macmillan made it so good can neatly stow away as the conspiracy of an active, racialist for us all, listen to what young people are saying. We have minority. It reflects the decline of a number of human brought up, in prosperity, a generation with more to spend responses and values—from fair-minded liberalism to working but nothing to spend it on and nowhere to go: a generation class international solidarity—which this country is going to with nothing to hold on to. Within the conformist class need, more and more, if Britain is to pass peacefully out of culture that has grown up around them, they have no ways colonialism into a new relationship with the new nations of of expressing themselves: and they have taken a plunge back Africa and Asia. into the night-life of experience to find some kind of mean- ing for their lives. In that world, many things which the Let us try and briefly pin-point the issues. First of all, little life of Brixton, Notting Hill Gate, Paddington, Notting- there is the growing and urgent problem of unemployment ham and Cardiff has squeezed out of them, are rediscovered: and the concealed poverty and neglect which have survived song and skiffle, rock and roll, drain-pipe jeans. Tony Curtis triumphantly into the " age of welfare." It is an appalling haircuts—rhythm, colour, and violence. Not the wilful, failure in our current notions of " welfare," that we have violence of the organized minority, but the floating violence accepted the poverty and squalor which is still to be seen, in of the many. Who is bothered? Is anybody listening? and round about the large cities of the country. South No. We are busy with 11 + , school curricula, and the public Paddington is physically and visually—a moral outrage. There schools. Meanwhile, in some backstreet off Notting Hill Gate, is not even the skeleton of community life in the Notting bottles in hand, there are a hundred children, " learning to Hill Gate area. The houses are falling down, and so are live." They are our children, and Notting Hill is London.

1. " I honestly and truthfully hate the coloured people. I admit 2. " I think coloured people are a load of savages. They .are its our own fault for having them here because when the uncivialized, they have got no manner's and no sense of Queen gave her Christmas Broadcast out over the Radio she Hygiene. When they come over from their own countries said that there was more room at the Inn, but she's alright they pinch our Houses and the work that's if they go to she won't have them living with her in Buckingham Palace work but most of them are just to lazy and live on National its us kind of people who have to live with them. And its Assistance. Then with the money, they take out our White us kind of people who have to bring our children up with the girls and start up brothels and other vice rackets. If a white filth there teaching us to live in. girl walks down the street they come up to her and start jabbering in the own tounge Nobody knows what they are " Some of the black men call after our white girls yet when talking about exept themselves. And the things they eat, I we say something back to them were called all the white know a woman who owns a shop and she told me that the things under the sun. And they drug our girls and take them come in and buy tins of cats food to eat. Cats food of all into Brothels Thats our the riot began because a house things, you can't tell me they don't know the difference occupied by the black was nothing but a brothel and the boys between cats food and their own food. There are quite a didn't like to see our white girls being mucked around by few contenential shops for people who are foreign where they the Blacks can buy the food the.y eat in their own country's. But they are so uncivilized that it is no good teaching them what is " When I think of the families living in two rooms who have right or wrong. When they go into a shop the expect to been on the housing list for years and them black people be served first, they push their way through the queue and just come over here there not here five minutes when they yell " OI " to the shop assistant. If I was the ruler of this have got a house, car, and night clubs it makes me sick. I country and everyone did what 1 said I would not let one can't see how they do it My mother and father work for coloured person step foot in England unless they were sluding their livings They don't. Why don't they go back to there to be a doctor or a nurse and then after learning all they have own country instead of teaching us to live in filth." to make them go back again and stay there." 4 3. " Today coloured people are allowed to come into England " We only have ourselves to blame for the unruly way in in the hundreds some come over to study to be a doctor, a which some of them live. But I am sure if we treat them nurse, a teacher, something of some use to the word. in the right way a human being should be treated they will do us justice." " But others come over with no intention of being a hard- working person. In my opinion there are two different sections 4. " Should they go back to their own country ? that is the of coloured people the good working kind who want to work question asked all over England. Well 1 think yes, they should. or do something for there own country or our country. On If they did England would be much better off. Many of our the other hand you get the lazy ones who never do a good own people have been put in prison, and are out of work and days work, but hang around the white woman in some cases homes through them. I hate them and 1 would spit on every live with them without being married to them which I think one if I had the chance. Most of them smell like dog's muck, is disgusting. and eat like dogs to. If they go into a shop, for food or clothes, they muck the shopkeeper about, make them pull out "To take the better class of coloured people first. They everything, and decide they don't want it. come to England with good intentions not wanted to harm " Another thing which is done by coloured men is assault. or trouble anyone but to earn a good living. But what do Often you see in the paper coloured man attacks white girl of they come to ? A country where they are looked down 14 (or what ever age she is). Admitting white men do the upon like animals in most cases, people who don't want to same thing, but for a black man to do is worse. The way live near them who shun them when they have done no harm they go around they make people hate them. at all. It is hard for them to find anywhere to live because "That is how the riots in Nottinghill started, black men taking the English people do not want them. So what can they do girl's into their houses to make them common prostitutes. So the only thing they can do is to live with another coloured the white youths took steps and beat them up every time a person thus you get the horrible houses with about 12 coloured black came in sight. The way blackies call after our girl is people living together when really the house is only meant for discusting and following them home. I said it once and I'll 4. When this happens the English people do not call them say it again, I hate all the (Black B). Let the lot of them be dissent, but what else can they do ? thrown back to their out countries, and stay there for good."