Evan Smith, "No Racist Immigration Laws: The CPGB, Immigration Controls and the State".
Paper presented at the New Socialist Approaches to History seminar, Institute of Historical Research, February 12th 2007
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At the heart of the struggle against racism in Britain was the issue of immigration controls. From 1962 onwards, increasingly racist legislation was introduced by both the Conservatives and the Labour Party restricting black immigration from the New Commonwealth. The argument against immigration control was one of the hardest arguments the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) had to put forward to white workers in their anti-racist campaigning. Unlike the clearly visible and every-day problem of racial discrimination against black people in Britain, the argument against the prevention of further immigration, and therefore lessening the burden of employment, housing and welfare shortages, was much harder to disseminate amongst the labour movement. The fear of further black immigration, for both economic and social reasons, was successfully exploited by the Conservatives and the National Front (NF) and accepted over time by the Labour Party, with consensus formed over the idea that for social cohesion, a policy of immigration control combined with integration should be pursued. From the time that the Commonwealth Immigrants Act was introduced in July 1962, the Communist Party opposed the Act on the grounds that it was ‘not an act to control immigration in general’, but ‘constitute[d] colour discrimination in immigration’. However the Party did recognise that ‘Governments have the right to regulate immigration and emigration’, but denounced the immigration policies introduced by Labour and the Conservatives as ‘racialist’ and ‘directed specifically against black immigration’. For the CPGB, their position over immigration control was particularly difficult, being torn between the position of opposing all immigration controls and the more populist position of supporting controls and integration. The CPGB’s position was therefore a compromise – supporting the principle of immigration controls if they were void of racial bias or discrimination, distinctly between the far left and the two major labour movement institutions to the right, the Labour Party and the Trade Union Congress (TUC). The Party held this position throughout the 1960s and 1970s, consistently opposing the racial bias inherent within the legislation created by the British Government between 1962 and 1981.