(Editorial note: This article is based upon a
t ress st by Councillor George Powe on his decision to : : i ee The fact that a firm supporter of the Labour Party of
many years standing felt obliged to take this action is further proof of the urgent necessity to oppose by all means the Government's immigration policies, Let every reader of the Week get all the organisations he or she is a member of to go on record against the Government's disgraceful proposals.)
I am a West Indian who has lived in this country for 21 years, As an active socialist I have been a member and a supporter of the Labour Party for over 15 years, For the past two years I have sat on the Long Eaton U.D.C. in Labour's interest. It is with deep regret, and after a severe crisis of conscience involving nearly a week of sleepless nights, that I have come to the canclusion that I must make the following announcement,
For 13 years I looked forward with the hope for the advent of a Labour Government. I had hoped that such a Government would represent the inter= ests of the English working people and in so doing protect the immigrant community, of which I am a member, I watched with dismay the successive measures of the Conservatives to discriminate against my countrymen. I pointed out to my friends who were cynical about Labour's promises that the Labour Party had opposed the British Immigration Act in Parliament, with very strong language indeed,
Nov Mr, Bowden, the Lord President of the Council, has placed a White Paper before Parliament, limiting the entry of immigrants from the Commonwealth to 8,500 a year, including 1,000 from Malta, imposing a double health check, and setting out a whole series of insulting and humiliating conditions, This is a direct betrayal of all Labour's previous pledges. It is a racialist measure which is anti-colour, anti-socialist anti- Christian and anti-human. Mr, Bowden had the effrontery to introduce it to a wider public on television by making a whole series of stock racialist innuendoes about the alleged "problem" which I and my countrymen represente
I am deeply convinced that the Labour Party and the trade unions do not support Mr. Bowden's attacks on the immigrants, They know full well that more people have left England than have come into it over the whole of last period during which immigration has taken place. They also know that there is a labour shortage in England. They are aware that the Government has abandoned most of its promises on housing, education and social reforms, and they will resent this attempt to curry favour with the most bigoted and backward section of the electorate, in which lurks a fearful tradition of racial prejudice, For this reason I am not going to resign from the Labour Party, among whose active workers I include many of my personal friends, and some of whom I have been deeply pleased to represent in public life in recent yearse
But I cannot possibly connive at the immoral policy which Mr, Bowden has outlined. I should lose all my self-respect if I did. My fellow immigrants and millions of other socialists, Christians and liberal-minded people must feel exactly the same shame for Mr. Bowden as I do, For this reason I have decided to fight against Mr, Bowden in Leicester in the next General Elections I am appealing to my friends in the immigrant community and the Labour movement for funds and help, and I shall ask the Leicester Labour and the Labour N.E.C. to support Mececeece