The Prescience of Sir Winston Churchill

by The Editor

The Prescience of Sir Winston Churchill
By David Hamilton - An historical fact that is little known is that Sir Winston Churchill tried to introduce a Bill to control immigration in 1955, but it was not ready until two months after he had stepped down because of his health. He also wanted the Conservatives to fight the general Election with the slogan “Keep England White.” There is a great and evil slander laid upon those who call for control and common sense in open-door immigration. They are demonised as “Nazis” and “Racists" - we fought Nazism and many lost family in that war. They are accused of following Hitler when we follow Churchill.

Churchill was aware that religions compete with one another for power and territory and he knew the truth of slavery. In The River War he wrote of slavery but not the perverse version we are taught to instil guilt into us. ”The stronger race soon began to prey upon the simple aboriginals... But all, without exception were hunters of men. To the great slave-market at Jeddah a continual stream of Negro captives has flowed for hundreds of years ... The dominant race of Arab invaders was unceasingly spreading its blood, religion, customs, and language among the black aboriginal population, and at the same time it harried and enslaved them” and, "Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.” (1)

This is especially pertinent now that the widespread Muslim raping of young White girls is starting to come out.

These abuses of our youngsters by a rival community is obscured by the Cultural Marxist Establishment.

In his St. George’s Day address of 1933 Churchill warned of these anti-British Marxists who were then beginning to take over our political and intellectual life: “The worst difficulties from which we suffer do not come from without. They come from within. They do not come from the cottages of the wage earners. They come from a peculiar type of brainy people always found in our country who, if they add something to the culture, take much from its strength. Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals. They come from the acceptance of defeatist doctrines by a large portion of our politicians. But what have they to offer but a vague internationalism, a squalid materialism, and the promise of impossible utopias?"

A tribute to the Royal Marines in 1936 showed his piety to our history: “Those who do not think of the future are unworthy of their ancestors”

His admiration for Jewish people - “the most formidable and the most remarkable race in the world” - was part of his belief in superior and inferior races.
This recalls Disraeli's attack on racial equality in Lord George Bentinck: A Political Biography.

What is not well known is that Churchill tried to introduce a Bill to control immigration in 1955. He also wanted the Conservative Party to fight the 1955 General Election with the slogan “Keep England White”.(2)

There had been racial battles in 1870s and 1911 in Cardiff with the Chinese community. More in 1919 caused five deaths and serious injuries. Whole areas were cordoned off by the police and hundreds taken into protective custody. The Times reported the Cardiff battle: “Racial riots of a grave character occurred at Cardiff during the early hours of yesterday morning. The trouble seems to have broken out simultaneously in several adjacent parts of the city about midnight. A young man named Harold Smart walked up to a constable and complained that a coloured man had cut his throat”

The constable took him to hospital but he died on arrival. This culminated in crowds of whites and blacks facing and baiting each one another. Revolver shots rang out. Six Arabs faced charges including firing a revolver. It appears the riot grew out of white men's objections to coloured men consorting with white women.
There were Race battles in 1919 in Glasgow in January, in South Shields in January and February, in London in April, and in Liverpool, Cardiff, Barry and Newport in June!

In 1955 Churchill told Spectator owner and editor Ian Gilmour that immigration "is the most important subject facing this country, but I cannot get any of my ministers to take any notice". (3)However, Oliver Lyttleton (later Lord Chandos) and the great fifth Marquess of Salisbury are two other notable opponents of open-door immigration as was Major Gwilym Lloyd George, 1st Viscount Tenby.

Incidentally, for those who have been shamed by images of Black people being turned away by landlords: as Windrush sailed up the Thames people cheered and clapped and boats sailed out to greet them as the newspaper reports of the time recorded. Opposition came with the increase in numbers.
Yet while Windrush carried immigrants here in 1948 there was racial conflict: Liverpool again, between 31 July and 2 August, in Deptford on the 18th July; and Birmingham between the 6th and 8th of August 1949 involving immigrants from seafaring backgrounds but the Progressives ignored them. The Times reported the Liverpool battle as about 50 persons ”mostly coloured appeared in court after. ..”a gang of negroes' stoned several white men who were walking peacefully. They were armed with bottles, swords, daggers, iron bars, coshes and axes. The white men hopelessly outnumbered ran away. A Negro club appeared to have been the headquarters of the coloured men, and police officers were stoned and had bottles thrown at them from club windows as they tried to disperse the crowd.”(4)

Despite this they continued with the policy of free entry for immigrants but gave no practical support to local councils and voluntary organizations. Throughout the 50's many delegations from local councils of areas effected went to 10, Downing Street, to ask for practical help and funds. On the 21st of November 1952 the Town Clerk of Brixton asked for regulation of immigration because they could hardly cope and MP Marcus Lipton led several delegations to appeal to Downing Street as did other local councils. The programme of slum clearance was held back.
This is the unrealistic, impractical outlook of idealists and utopians.

Churchill’s Cabinet discussed immigration thirteen times. The first on 25th November 1952 when he asked in Cabinet if the Post Office employed large numbers of “coloured workers”. “If so, there was some risk social problems would be created.” They were from India, Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Mauritius, West Indies, Ceylon, British Guiana and Malaya. In all Churchill's Cabinet discussed immigration on thirteen occasions.

Churchill asked his staff to find out about problems in Lambeth, Brixton and Cardiff. B.G.Smallman, PS, to the Colonial Secretary, produced a paper on “The Coloured Population of the UK". This estimated the numbers to be 40-50,000 which included about 6,000 students. (5).

There were no records kept of numbers entering, apparently because the immigrants were, as Commonwealth citizens, British subjects, but I believe they could not face it and wanted it to go away. Though they kept records of emigrants to Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

Historian Andrew Roberts wrote that The Commonwealth Relations Office worried that with restrictions “ there might well be a chance of the governments of India and Pakistan introducing retaliatory restrictions against the entry or residence of members of the British business community.” Commonwealth Secretary Earl Home, worried that they should not give the impression that Commonwealth citizens from India, Pakistan and Ceylon would be less favourably treated than those from the Dominions otherwise there could be retaliation.

In private interviews Roberts shows the decadence of those around Churchill: “A Minister closely involved in the decision-making process, ‘ In fact…we were just stalling and hoping for the best’… One of Mr. Churchill’s private secretaries, ‘at that time it seemed a very good idea to get bus conductors and stuff’ … a junior minister, ‘it was becoming hard to find somebody to carry your bags at the station’.’’(6)

Iain Macleod who became Colonial Secretary, who is infamous for rushing de-colonisation and causing many problems had a booklet “One World” published by Conservative Central Office in1960 the same year Prime Minister Harold MacMillan made his Winds of Change speech to the South African Parliament in Pretoria.

Norman Pannell, a Conservative MP in Liverpool, urged a practical approach to immigration at the 1958 and 1961 Conservative conferences suggesting immigrants have health checks and those who are criminal be deported. In 1958 Home Secretary RAB Butler agreed with him but did nothing. At the 1961 conference Colonial Secretary Iain Macleod countered Pannell at a fringe meeting declaring his utopian belief in the brotherhood of man.

On the 27th of June 1953 Sir Winston suffered a stroke that left him paralysed down the left side. After, he told RAB Butler, “I feel like an aeroplane at the end of its flight , in the dusk, with the petrol running out, in search of a safe landing.”(7)

Interviewed by Andrew Roberts his Foreign Affairs Personal Secretary Anthony Montague- Brown recalled that he was “simply too tired to deal with the immigration problem. He could concentrate on a few big issues at a time- like the Russians -and the rest of the time he could only give a steer and not see it through.” (8)

In November 1952 His Private Secretary, Sir John Colville noted, "He is getting tired and visibly ageing. He finds it hard to compose a speech and ideas no longer flow. (9)

Cabinet set up an Inter Departmental Committee to look into preventing an increase in the number of immigrants. It reported its findings in December 1953. This Inter Departmental Committee comprised Ministry of Labour and National Service, the National Assistance Board, the Colonial Office and Chief Constables from areas where immigrants were settling.

The Home Secretary was to ask the Committee to look into preventing an increase in the number coming for employment. There is a note to R.J.Guppy of the Home Office in The Prime Ministers papers notifying him that Churchill had seen the report in that day's Daily Telegraph "about what is termed an influx of West Indians. He is considering bringing the matter before the Cabinet and would like to have a report from the Home Secretary about it." (10)

January 1954 Home Secretary Maxwell Fyfe reported on the findings of the “Working party on the Social and Economic Problems Arising from the Growing Influx into the United Kingdom of Coloured Workers”. He stated “the unskilled workers who form the majority are difficult to place because on the whole they are physically unsuited to heavy manual work…”

The prime minister's papers show Private Secretary Montague-Brown to Civil Servant Johnston 2/11/1954 on an article in the Telegraph of 19 Oct in which the Jamaican Minister of Labour said he would not attempt to stop mass immigration. The P.M. thinks this should be brought up in Cabinet.

It is important to note that Commonwealth citizens were classed as British citizens and had the same rights as British people here. This was known as Civic Britannicus Sum, or “equal rights for all British subjects.” Contrary to widespread opinion the British Nationality Act of 1948 did not give them that right but codified it.

The Cabinet Secretaries Notebooks are a valuable resource for historians. These are the handwritten notes of Cabinet Meetings. They record that on 3 February 1954 under the item 'Coloured Workers', Sir Winston stated ‘Problems which will arise if many coloured people settle here. Are we to saddle ourselves with colour problems in the UK? Attracted by Welfare State. Public opinion in UK won't tolerate it once it gets beyond certain limits.' Even he did not forsee the malicious propaganda that would be used to destroy the British people by their own elites!

In March 1954 Maxwell Fyfe told Cabinet: “ large numbers of coloured people are living on National Assistance” and that “coloured landlords by their conduct are making life difficult for white people living in the same building or area…the result is that white people leave and the accommodation is then converted to furnished lettings for coloured people, with serious overcrowding and exploitation”.

In a Cabinet memorandum of 8 March Maxwell Fyfe feared “serious difficulties involved in contemplating action which would undoubtedly land the Government in some political controversy.”
In cabinet in October 1954 Churchill warned Maxwell Fyfe: “ the problems arising from the immigration of coloured people required urgent and serious consideration.” Maxwell-Fyfe emphasised that there is “no power to prevent these people entering no matter how much the number may increase.” This was finally tackled by the 1961 immigration Bill.

In case any think the entry in Harold Macmillan's Diary be overstatement the following excerpt from the Cabinet Notebooks of 20 January 1955 clearly show Churchill’s reference to a Bill to control immigration. It also refers to Cyril Osborne’s 1955 attempt to introduce a Bill to control immigration. Incidentally, Osborne began his campaign to control immigration in 1954. This great man should be honoured with a statue on the fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square not artworks to degrade us as proposed by the Cultural Marxists.

NB: The Marquess of Salisbury describes the need for a Bill as “urgent.” This is a transcript from the actual Cabinet discussion.

Coloured Immigrants.

Coloured Immigrants.

P.M. Need for decision before long.

Anthony Eden. Before Commonwealth P.M. mtg.

Henry Hopkinson. Osborne M.P. is thinking of introducg. Bill under 10 min. rule.

Lloyd George . Depn. y’day from B’ham. No objn. to them as workers. But qua housing. Figures are impressive.

Viscount Swinton. Might consider Cttee. on social aspects, alone.

A.E. Might be useful – to re-inforce action we decide to take.

P.M. Not in favour. Better to introduce Bill. May find we cd. get it thro’. At least we shd. have shown our view.

Marquess of Salisbury. Urgent.

H.H. Movement is starting now in favour of immign. from Barbados.

[Exit H.H.]

(11)

This brings us to where we started with the discussion that Harold Macmillan referred to in his diary entry for January 20th 1955: "More discussion about the West Indian immigrants. A Bill is being drafted - but it's not an easy problem. P.M. thinks 'Keep England White' a good slogan!

Then in November Eden’s Cabinet dropped the Bill but set up a committee to monitor it. The representative of the Ministry of Health was Enoch.

-----

(1) The River War

http://www.munseys.com/diskone/8rivr.pdf

(2) Peter Hennessy, 'Having It So Good - Britain in the Fifties' (Allen Lane, 2006) p 224. Hennessy's reference is: Peter Catterall (ed.), 'The Macmillan Diaries: The Cabinet Years, 1950-1957' (Macmillan, 2003) p 382.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2007/aug/06/past.politics

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/churchill-renews-appeal-for-tighter...

This is Enoch Powell referring to Churchill's attempt at 56 seconds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fw0rUJbE9k

(3) Inside Right. Sir Ian Gilmour (Quartet.1977)

Panikos Paranyi (ed) “Racial Violence in Britain in the Nineteenth Century.” (Leicester University.1996). The discussions on immigration are classified as our “racism” and usually by Marxist academics who blame us”whites” for any difficulties. See also
British Immigration Policy Since 1939: The Making of Multi-Racial Britain, By Ian R. G. Spencer. (Routledge. 1997)

(4) These are held at the National Archive. CC100(52)8(cabinet Conclusions on 25/11/1952, CAB 128/25; The Post Master General’s report and the Chancellor being asked to restrict entry to the Civil Service is in CC106(52), 8/12/1952, CAB 128

(5) Eminent Churchillians, Andrew Roberts. (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson) 1994,

(6) R.A.Butler,”The Art of the Possible, (London. Hamish Hamilton),1971, p173.

(7) ibid Eminent Churchillians.

(8) Sir John Colville.(London. Stoughton Ltd )1985.The Fringes of Power. P654

(9) Daily Telegraph 29/1/54 "Cities Concerned at Influx of West Indians."

(10) CAB124/1191 Report of the Working Party on Coloured People Seeking Employment in the United Kingdom. 17th December 1953.

(11) Cabinet Secretaries Notebooks. The eleventh Notebook (CAB 195/11) (released August 2007) covers the period 3.12.52 - 26.2.54.
Cabinet Secretaries Notebooks. The Notebook covering this period CAB 195/13 was released at the beginning of February 2008.

(These are transcripts of Cabinet discussions on immigration taken in the hand of Cabinet Secretary Sir Norman Brook. I researched many original documents at the Public Records Office, Kew.

Cabinet Secretaries Notebooks covering this period CAB 195/13 was released at the beginning of February 2008. The papers of British Prime Ministers are classified under PREM at the public records Office at Kew. PREM 11/824 covers Churchill’s premiership. It has Information requested by the Prime Minister on immigration of coloured workers to the UK and their employment in the Civil Service; deportation of British subjects; powers of Colonial Governments; employment of Jamaicans in the UK 1952-1955 etc.

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