When the House of Lords ruled that the Immigration Act could operate retroactively, the Asian organisations were unable to sustain any consistent mobilisation against the Act, apart from the 22 July Demonstration in London, But the Lords ruling has had a lasting effect on the Asian community, the police, the Government and the racist right. A number of events in the last few weeks illustrate this.
TORY CONFERENCE The Conservative Party Conference was a significant Indication of the depth of the racist offensive being launched by the ruling class and its allics. The Tory leadership has attempted to carry out two political operations over the last year. Firstly, to stabilise the Tory vote amongst the working class by exploiting the racist hostility to inmigrants felt by many workers. The second, and perhaps more important, was to try to retain the loyalty of the reactionary middle class layers who form an Important part of the social base of the Tory Party, but who are alienated by the EEC and the Government's inability to control inflation.
But the conference showed that the tougher racist measures of recent months have not satisfied the Tory constituency right. When Robert Carr tried to claim that the Government had kept its promises on immigration he was heckled. William Deedes, Chairman of the Commons Select Committee on Race Relations, volced the views of the hecklers when he said: If we want effective control we must think more seriously of internal control, and that means identity cards for all, The Party leadership managed to avoid an open controntation by putting down a motion which could win support from all the different cuttents, Passed with an overwhelming majority. it embodied the demand that in the interests of good and better race relations," immigration must be even more strictly controlled, and That there must he no further Inrge scale immigration into Britain of any kind." WIDGERY RULING The Government was no doubt assisted in its bid to project an image of unity by the gratification felt by delegates at Lord Widgery's ruling in the High Court two days carlier, While Carr was speaking before the TV cameras at Blackpool about Britain's responsibility to black passport holders in other countries, Lord Widgery had removed any logal responsibility by a simple ruling. When Powell argued at the 1972 conference that Britain had no legal responsibility to the UK passport holders from East Africa, Carr opposed him, and at the time Heath reminded the Monday Club of the legal position.
However, Widgery has now ruled that there is no legal right of entry, independent of the 1971 Act. Britain no longer has any legal oblipation to accept UK passport holders unless they can claim specific ties of blood or birth with Britain. It is known that Widgery consulted the Home Office and therefore Carr -before making this ruling.
Carr's promise at the Tory conference to take tougher measures against illegal immigration means more than just spectacular catches in the English Channel by the Immigration Unit, as the experience of the last few weeks shows. The rescue by neucopter of Seamus Twomey, Kevin Mallon and J.B. O'Hagan from Mountjoy jail has had Republican song-writers dashing for pen and paper. But it should not be allowed to obscure the fact that it came as the culmination of a series of operations, carried out by the Provisional IRA, which have given the lie to the British propaganda campnign designed to conn be wor that tae rrovos were dead. In over one hundred incidents, in every ane of the Six Counties, units of the Provisional IRA have thurbed their noses at the British Army. In Belfast two 25lb. mines were laid at the base of the giant "Goliath" crane in the shipyards, and in Lurgan a British military intelligence agent was shot dead.
This could not have come at a worse time for the British army. For several precedine weeks there had been a decrease in the scale of Provisional operations, necessitated by a On 11 October, a squad of police descended on Whitfield Street in Camden, North London.
They cordoned off the street, and conducted a nouse to house search in an entire block of houses and restaurants, Every Asian who could not produce a passport was bundled into a police van, and taken to Leman Street Police Station, where up to fifty (some of them from similar raids in Tower Hamlets the same day)
were held until their friends or relatives could bring their passports to the station.
THE REA in East London.
In this case the police, enforcing detention orders made out by immigration officers against 14 named persons, used a dragnet technique, in which every black person who did not keep his or her passport with him at all times was rounded up. In other words, la both these cases every Asian in the area was presumed guilty until they could prove their innocence. CarS promise that the black communities would not be harassed, which helped moderate black community leaders to damp down the rising struggle against the Immigration Act following the Lords ruling, clearly meant nothing.
Another recent case illustrates what can happen to an indinidual whom police and impigration officers believe to he an illegal immigrant. ABDUL MALIK In August, Abdul Malik, an Asian worker Living in Southalt, was taken to Southall police station and accused of being an illegal amrigrant. He bad submitted his passport lo the Home Office, along with his application for #ritish citizenship, and they had sent a reorganisation of the Provisimals designed to tighten security following sume British successes in the summer. The British used this tall to step up the suppression of news about their casualty figures and 'incidents.
Since most joumalists operating in Northern Ireland do their reporting front the bar of Belfast's Europa Hotel, they are totally dependent on the British Army's Press Office for information. Systematic suppression of news is therefore not difficult.
The extent of this suppression can be gauged from an IRA Belfast Brigade communique issued in carly October (and published in the 13 October Republicen News). This detans 1o separate attacks carried out by Republican forces against the British Army, Yet a Closu reading of the British press indicates that only one of these incedents was reported in this LITELY immigrant.
RECORDER
The racist forces have an effective ally in the press, as the Nowham Recorder showed recently when in a front page story it tried to make out that Asian immigrants were responsible for the overcrowding of local schools. However, this did not go unchallenged, and fast Saturday over 50 anti-racist militants mounted a picket followed by a meeting outside the newspaper's offices Journal, Hidernia, says: death "for security reasons"
photocopy to the Southall police. The only explanation of what happened next is that the police and immigration officials mistook the Abdul Malik sitting in front of them for another Abdul Malik, believed to be an illegal In an attempt to force him to sign a "confession"
that he was an illegal immigrant, the polico subjected him to a series of assaults, including beating him on the knees with truncheons, pulling his hair, choking him, beating his proposals. genutals, and hitting his head against a wall. He Some days later he was taken on the orders of immigration officers to the Queens Building Detention Centre at London Airport, without even being allowed to pick up any belongings from home. There he was given the Hobson's choice of either signing the confession or being 'removed" Le. deported under a section of the Immigration Act which allows people believed to be legal immigrants to be shipped out of the country without a hearing. Had Malik signed the coafession he would undoubtedly have been deported. He was only released when a cousin manased to obtain a writ of habear corpus. The Home Office has since droppod all charges against him. This case illustrates the possibilities open for collaboration and mutust cover-up between police and immigration officers. By getting sn immigrant to sign a 'confession,' immigration officers would score another success". Charges of police brutality made by a self confessed illegal immigrant would not carry much weigl raids. A recent article in the prestigious Dublin "Pot some time, the Provisional TRA has been insisting that the British Army is now admitting only a small proportion of the casualties it is suffering. Alone such suggestions might be dismised as simple propaganda, but there are increasing reports fron: medikal staffs and eye-witnesses which ghe credib bity 'One journalist with an English "quality" newspaper las established from non attributable Army sources. я me somes were as to a and mime explosion for which the Army claimed only three. Anothe British journalist has tracked down the family of one soklier who died in Northern incland, and whose parents were not toki the cause nor the place of his Several other points have emerged. Recently, Le body of a male patient, admitted in the early hours of threat the morning to Ward 18 of Belfast's Royal Victoria children. Hospital, was removed by military molies to the (assuning that he has time to make a complaint against the police before being deported), And if it turas out that the police do make a mistaken identification, immigration officers can cover up for police brutality by removal of the immigrant concerned from the country.
HOME OFFICE MOVES Hand in hand with these new legal and police attacks on black people the Home Office is thinking of ways to improve immigrant-police relations" by. liberal measures. This is illustrated by its recent response to last year's Select Committee Report on Race Relations and Immigration, which put forward a series of proposals designed to reconcile the black communities to the repressive role of the polios.
These proposals include the building up of u body of community and youth leader to "counter distortion and exageration", the extension of the police community liaison officer scherne, systematic pro-police proparanda in schools, the recruitment of more coloured policemen, and training for police officers in 'race relations" and a ow simple words of Hinti and Urdu. Most important, they propose independent tribunals to consider complaints against the police. The Home Office agrees in general with these A Runnymede Report, published last week for the Eating Community Relntions Council, makes proposals similar to those of the Select Committes. It sets out to prove a priner Jacie case against the police on charges of brutality and partial conduct against the immigrant community in Eating BREAKDOWN OF COMMUNICATION' Kunnymede, whose personnel overlaps with that of the Select Committee, has shown through its study of Baling that there exists a layer of bluck people "predisposed to believe in the fairness of British institutions, whose faith is being destroyed by a handful of errant officers whose treatment of all black people with indiscriminate contempt wil wreck the Soundations of goud will.
They argue that this can be avoided through independent tribunals, youth leaders, a few words of Hindi and Undu" and social science gimmickry for policemen: as if the entire problem of police-immigrant relations was, in the words of Runnymode, 'a breakdown of communication The metbod used in the report, of separating 'police immigrant relations' from the very real political and legal repression which these policemen are expected to implement, fits in with the strategy being employed by the state The avorage racist bobby is to be taught to distinguish more carefully between the black mititant, the illegal militant, the unemployed black youth, and the rest of the immigrant community, so that through reforms and simuling bobbies a portion of the immigrant community can be politically neutralised, or even won over as allies. This will effectively isolate the militants and the illegal immigrants While any reforns of the police or the complaints procedure, won throught struggle over the years, should be welcomed by black people, nobody should be confused by the Jekyll and Hyde games of the Home Office. Their two faced policy is designed to divide the black communities so that racist laws can be more casily implemented. The white racists will thus be gratified, while at the same time opposition from the black corammity is dampened and co operation promoted Any strategy for a renewed offensive apainst the racist immigration laws will have to involve a struggle against the political elects of this proposed "new deal" as well as the Camden-style Dave Bailey morgue at Musgrave Park Military Hospital - which u a highly restricted area even fior soldiers - and nothing has been seen or heard of it since. The Provisionals claim to have made 14 attacks with fragmentation grenades on British troops in Belfast within the last two mondles. They daim posithely confernied luts in ten cases - yet only once has the Press been told about an atrack, and them it was descraned asa much le lethal base pome "It indeed Provisional success are being covered up "Tor security reasons" if will not he the first time this has happened, Earlier in the vear. Lord Carringson occasions armour-piercing bullets had entered armoured vehicles but that detais of this had been with-held "for security reasons." "
British military performance in the battle to beat the Provos is far below official predictions. In September the Sun newspaper went so far as to run a centre-page spread claiming to describe 'How the Provos Were Beaten." Now, less than two months later, the Army has been forced to adopt a new tactic to crush the Provo - a campaign of interning schoola week, plus an occasional E2 bonus, Among