Race, Discourse and Labourism
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RACE, DISCOURSE AND LABOURISM This book documents the Labour Party’s construction of the concept of race in political discourse from the 1930s Indian independence negotiations and the defence of Jews from anti- Semitic attack in East London. The author argues that in these historical processes Labour construed a range of negative significances for black citizenship and multi-culturalism and, despite recasting its approach to race in the 1960s and early 1970s, Labour is still unable to sanction officially the effective representation of black voices in its own ranks. The study shows that Labour has not only tolerated racial inequality, but it has given it important political direction. Race, Discourse and Labourism is about political processes. It is about the theoretical and political analysis of how race was constructed and sustained as a category in British postwar politics. This study will be of interest to students of politics, race and ethnicity, as well as those who campaign in the Labour Party for racial equality. Caroline Knowles is a Senior Lecturer at the Polytechnic of East London and Visiting Professor at the Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. She has been researching, writing and teaching about race since the late 1970s in Britain, West Africa and Canada. RACE, DISCOURSE AND LABOURISM Caroline Knowles London and New York First published in 1992 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge a division of Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc. 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1992 Caroline Knowles All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Knowles, Caroline, 1954– Race, discourse, and labourism/Caroline Knowles. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Great Britain—Race relations—Government policy. 2. Great Britain—Emigration and immigration—Government policy. 3. Great Britain—Politics and government—1936– 4. Labour Party (Great Britain) I. Title. DA125.A1K58 1992 323.1´41–dc20 92–4311 CIP ISBN 0-203-97711-4 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-415-05012-X (Print Edition) To the memory of Jackie CONTENTS Preface vi Acknowledgements viii Introduction 1 1 EXPLORING RACE AND LABOURISM: A 7 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK 2 SOCIALISM IN THE 1930s AND FOR THE 1990s 25 3 THE LABOUR PARTY’S COMMONWEALTH 43 4 ANTI-SEMITISM IN EAST LONDON 65 5 RACE AND RACE RELATIONS IN POSTWAR 75 BRITAIN 6 LABOUR AND IMMIGRATION FROM THE 1950s 89 TO THE 1990s 7 ANTI-RACISM IN THE 1930s 109 8 ANTI-RACISM IN THE 1970s 125 9 BLACK REPRESENTATION: PROSPECTS FOR 141 THE 1990s Notes 163 Bibliography 183 Name index 197 Subject index 203 PREFACE This work has long been in preparation. It began as a PhD thesis at City University in the mid-1970s, at a time when student activists were regularly drawn into street battles with the National Front, and when the Labour’s Party stance on race provided little hope of improvement. Racial conflict, racist immigration procedures and race relations legislation which provided little in the way of redress for racial disadvantage characterise the political landscape of this period. Academic concern with race at this time focused on the notion that the working class itself was racist, and not the vehicle of social transformation that those of us who identified with marxism had hoped. It was this contention which initiated this work which was concerned to investigate the nature of the political agency with which working class representation was most closely associated. Significantly, in the long time it has taken to prepare this volume, many changes have occurred in race politics, and in the nature of labourism. Had this work been completed in the 1970s a very different book would have resulted. However, its essential purpose remains the same, and that is to examine whether the Labour Party may be an effective force for race equality in Britain. The fact that it is possible to write in such a detailed way about the Labour Party is a tribute to its openness to public scrutiny, and the analysis offered in this volume, though critical, is offered in the hope that eventually labour will be able to provide political direction in the mainstream of British politics for building a multi-racial society which sustains, rather than denies, human equality. During its lengthy preparation this book has involved research in India, it has lived in West Africa, mostly in East London and was finally completed in Canada. Life in these various locations has served its own particular reminders that race is the most vii significant, dangerous and unacceptable form of social inequality, and that British colonialism still has a great deal to answer for. Caroline Knowles ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks are due to Stephan Feuchtwang who, in his long association with this work, has provided important criticism and comment. I should also like to thank colleagues in the Race, Culture and Policy Research Unit at the City University, London, and particularly Alrick Cambridge and Kazim Khan. Kingsley Abram, Virendra Sharma, the late Fenner Brockway, Jim Benningfield, W.J.Davies, and Dr Levenberg have all provided important background material through interviews, and for this I thank them. Thanks to Sami Zubaida for comments on earlier versions of this. The staff of numerous libraries and archives have been generous with their time, and I should like to thank particularly the Labour Party archivist Stephen Bird, the Labour Party Librarian, the staff of the British Library and the Official Publications Library, the Marx Memorial Library, the British Newspaper Library, India House Library and Records, Westminster Reference Library, Bethnal Green Library, Hendon Public Library and Archives, the National Museum of Labour History, the Nehru Memorial Library in Delhi, the London School of Economics Library, the Institute of Race Relations Library, Nuffield College Library and the City University Library. Thanks are due to the Jewish Chronicle, to Hendon South Labour Party for allowing me to see their records, to Annette Braithwaite for help with research, to the (then) Social Science Research Council for funding, and to colleagues at the LaMarsh Programme at York University, Toronto, for important back-up facilities during the final stages of preparation of the manuscript. Thanks also to John Urry. Thanks to Prue Chamberlayne for discussion and moral support. Thanks to Daniel, James, Alan and Philippa Weitz for help with the final stages of manuscript preparation. Recognising that books do not get written by female academics with small ix children unless time and space can be created, I should like to thank Michael Rustin and my colleagues at the Polytechnic of East London for ensuring that I got the time free from teaching that I needed to complete this. Thanks are also due to David Mofford, for lengthy debate as well as support of a more practical kind. Thanks to my family and friends, especially Eric and June Litton, Patrick Knowles and Norma Jones for their support and for making life pleasant. Finally thanks to Jessica and William who tolerate most philosophically my absences and preoccupations. This volume owes many intellectual debts. It offers an approach to race which has developed out of my teaching in adult education in London, at the University of Miaduguri in Nigeria and at the Polytechnic of East London. Whilst challenges from students and colleagues have not always been comfortable they have undoubtedly helped me develop an analysis of race. I owe an intellectual debt to colleagues in these various institutions, and especially to other members of the Race, Culture and Policy Research Unit at the City University in London. For the views expressed in this volume I, of course, take full responsibility. x INTRODUCTION Britain is in no sense a multi-racial community. It is a political community fraught with racial tension and racial inequality. Statements about human brotherhood and social cohesion, uttered by the labour movement, cannot obscure the fact that in Britain, a visible minority are socially disadvantaged in ways which impinge upon every facet of their lives. Black Britons suffer the indignity of physical attack, low wages and racist allocations of goods and social facilities. What kind of a community can possibly tolerate these inequalities? Labour and Conservative governments, in turn, have presided over this community in which there is profound division and discord. Both parties are equally to blame for the political conditions which produced this community. Both parties are responsible for pernicious immigration controls, and ineffective race relations legislation. Both are guilty of giving political direction to a society which supports a web of racist practices. But there is a crucial difference between them. Conservatism lacks a conception of social justice which can support a multi-racial community of equal opportunity. Labour does not. Labourism has a conception of social justice which can support these political objectives. Why then has it failed to act upon it? Why has it tolerated racial inequality? Unfortunately labour has done more than tolerate racial inequality, it has given it political direction. Notions of racial difference lie behind some of the most damaging and significant forms of social inequality in Britain today.