RACIAL PROBLEMS AND EDUCATION

HL Deb 12 March 1963 vol 247 cc709-23

3.27 p.m.

LORD WALSTON rose to ask what steps Her Majesty's Government are taking to promote by educational means a proper understanding of racial problems. The noble Lord said: My Lords, the object of this Question which I am putting to Her Majesty's Government—and I hope that when the noble Lord, Lord Newton, comes to reply he will be able to fill this gap in our knowledge—is to attempt to ascertain what steps Her Majesty's Government are taking at the present time to promote by educational means a proper understanding of racial problems.

I have three reasons for asking this Question to-day. The first is that, unfortunately, discrimination is still with us. I will not weary your Lordships by repeating what many of you will remember from the previous debate we had on an allied subject in May of last year, or by repeating the various instances given then to support the fact that there was widespread discrimination on the grounds of race or colour in this country; but, simply to bring your Lordships up to date, I would mention two instances which have occurred recently. The first of them was also the subject of a Question in your Lordships' House concerning a decision of the Nottingham juvenile court magistrates which made it abundantly clear that at least some of the Nottingham bench harboured feelings of racial discrimination. The second is more recent and took place in the town of Gravesend, and I will read to your Lordships a short extract from the Guardian dated March 6 of this year, the headline being: "Town Accused of Racial Prejudice". It states: Efforts to disparage Indians and Pakistanis who have come to live and work in Gravesend, Kent, were condemned yesterday by the town's Conservative M.P. … and the prospective Labour and Liberal parliamentary candidates… In a statement, they say that they are perturbed at recent attempts to sow dissension between different groups living in the constituency. 'We are particularly disturbed that the more virulent of letters published by Gravesend papers have been submitted by persons who prefer to remain anonymous'.

And so on. That is sufficient evidence to convince most observers that, regrettable though it is, we cannot say that we have progressed at all from the state of affairs which prevailed rather less than a year ago, when it was quite apparent that in many parts of this country there were indications of racial prejudice.

The second reason why I consider this to be a subject of very considerable and pressing importance is the effect that such discrimination has upon the Commonwealth. I think that all of us in this Chamber are agreed as to the value of the British Commonwealth. I think that most of us are also agreed that it has in the past years and the past months been subjected to very particular strains, not the normal strains which occur as former Colonies gain their independence—which are in themselves strains, though of a sort which we should expect and be prepared for and which, in the long run, will strengthen the ties of Commonwealth—but the strains arising from the Commonwealth Immigrants Act, which has had a very profound effect upon the feelings of many members of the Commonwealth towards this country, and also the negotiations concerning the Common Market. Those factors, although in my opinion with no justification, at any rate did in many parts of the Commonwealth have the effect of making people feel that this country no longer cared for members of the Commonwealth in other parts of the world. So those are strains which have been imposed, and undoubtedly anything which fosters racial discrimination or allows it to exist in this country is a still further added strain. So those of us who are sincere in saying we wish to hold the Commonwealth together have as a duty, simply for that reason, if for no other, the job of combating racial discrimination wherever it occurs.

The third reason is that, during the debate we had last May on proposals for legislation to combat discrimination, there was, I think I am right in saying, not one of your Lordships who spoke—even among those, who were the majority, who opposed any form of legislation—who did not condemn racial discrimination and who did not say this was something which should be dealt with not by legislation but by education. In fact the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor (as he was), Lord Kilmuir, speaking from the Woolsack at the end of the debate, used these words [OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 240, col. 519]: In the Government's view, this problem is not solvable by legislation. There is, unfortunately, no short cut answer. He went on to say that patient education was the only means by which the matter could be dealt with.

So we now turn to the problems of education, to see what is being done and what can be done—a very wide subject and one which perhaps is most conveniently dealt with by dividing it into two sections, adult education and the more conventional form of child education. With adult education I will deal only very briefly. I hope that when the noble Baroness, Lady Swanborough, comes to speak she will possibly develop some of those aspects of it, particularly in the light of the Committee, of which she is Chairman, set up under the Home Office, which very largely deals with these matters. But it goes almost without saying that if we are going to make any inroads upon these very grave problems we cannot confine ourselves merely to the conventional form of child education. We must do all in our power to encourage the proper education of adults also.

In this field there is quite admirable work being done by voluntary bodies and by local authorities in many parts of the country. It is perhaps invidious to pick out any special cases, because there are so many good people and good organisations at work. But I think it is only right to mention the admirable work being done by the National Council for Social Service in this matter, as in so many others, and to pick on two particular districts, Willesden, in London, and Nottingham itself, where forms of citizens' committess have been set up specifically to make it possible and easier for immigrants from the Commonwealth to be integrated into the life of the community. Admirable and encouraging work is being done in those places and in others also. But that clearly is not enough. It does not go far enough and there are many districts which could be mentioned where there is a crying need for this sort of thing and where nothing whatsoever is being done because the local people themselves, the local authorities themselves, refuse to recognise the problem, are unable to take an initiative or simply have not recognised that there are things they can do.

In the field of adult education, too, there is an indirect though very important result: the fine work being done by Voluntary Service Overseas, about which many of your Lordships will have heard last week from the right reverend Prelate, the Lord Bishop of Coventry, when he spoke on world hunger. Voluntary Service Overseas, as your Lordships know, was set up primarily to help the overseas countries by sending young people from this country to the developing parts of the world, including the Commonwealth but not exclusively the Commonwealth, in order to help them. But one of the very valuable by-products of this scheme is that these school-leavers, when they come back after their year of service abroad, return with a wide understanding of and love for the people of the country they have been to. They are the best form of ambassadors and purveyors of good will that we could possibly have. But their numbers are lamentably small, when we think of this as a national problem affecting the whole country.

Currently there are only 300 school-leavers being dealt with by V.S.O. under this particular scheme, and another 250 graduates will be going after they have completed their studies. I am in no way disparaging the magnificent work they do, but it is only right to mention these figures to show that this scheme is not by any means the solution: it is simply one of the ways, and one of the most valuable ways, in which it should be done. But it is also only fair to the Government to make it quite clear that, although Voluntary Service Overseas subsists to a large extent on voluntary contributions, it does receive a considerable subvention from the Government—something like £13,000 in the present year, rising, I believe, to £40,000 next year; valuable, useful, but far from sufficient. In this connection, too, the Department of Technical Co-operation is doing admirable work, though again the main object of this is to help the developing countries rather than solve the problem with which we are concerned this afternoon.

Still on the scale of adult education, although in a way it is closely connected with schools, one must mention the absolutely first-class scheme which has been put in motion, largely due to the valiant efforts of the noble Lord, Lord James of Rusholme (who told me he was very sorry that he is unable to be here to speak to-day), through the incorporated Association of Headmasters. This scheme, which is only just in its infancy, is designed to bring about a liaison, a form of adoption scheme, if you like, between schools—grammar, secondary, comprehensive schools, and so on, in this country—and schools overseas in different parts of the Commonwealth. The idea is that pupils in their last year should be exchanged between the different schools and, if possible, that the headmasters should do the same thing.

At the moment 80 boys' schools are associated with this scheme, and 10 girls' schools. They are operating in 18 African countries, and are doing admirable work there. They are the first to admit that they could not do this work without the help and financial support they have received from voluntary organisations: from, for instance, the Elder Dempster Shipping Line, which has assisted them in the transport of people backwards and forwards and in other ways; from the Ariel Foundation, and, above all, from the Nuffield Foundation which has given them a large proportion of their funds to help with this work. If I may, I should like to quote from a letter that I have received from Mr. Hawkins, the headmaster of Calday Grange Grammar School, who is at present running this scheme, in which he speaks of the future. In particular he says: The scheme really requires a full-time office and could well be taken over by the Central Bureau for Educational Visits and Exchanges. We have inquired into this possibility and I understand that the Bureau would be glad to do this if the necessary finance can be found. At present the scheme is being run in the evening by a busy headmaster with 900 boys (and parents) as his chief responsibility and with some extra secretarial help generously provided by the Nuffield Foundation. Secondly, the scheme needs a 'liaison officer' out in the field visiting the link schools and constantly relighting the fires and rekindling enthusiasms. So although private initiative has started some of these most important and highly valuable schemes, they themselves are the first to admit that they cannot go much further without more financial help than they are able to get at the moment from voluntary sources.

Now I will leave adult education and turn to the more conventional form of education, the education of schoolchildren themselves. In this context let me bring to your attention, if you have not already seen them, the figures produced by the 1961 Census which are now outside on the Table. They show that whereas ten years ago 1.9 per cent. of the population of London came from Commonwealth countries, to-day 5.8 per cent. of the population of London comes from these Commonwealth countries. What that means in this context is that the number of schoolchildren from Commonwealth countries, mainly coloured schoolchildren, mainly schoolchildren from fairly poor educational backgrounds, now coming or about to come into the schools of London has trebled in the last ten years, and undoubtedly the figures will rise at a far greater rate as time goes on.

Following upon that, let me read to you another extract, this time from The Times of March 8, entitled "Coping With The Foreign Child At School. Teachers Discuss Difficulties." The extract reads: An inspector, Mr. A. R. Truman, estimates that there are 5,756 foreign children in the division, which is made up of Finsbury, Islington and Holborn. More than half of them are Cypriots, and a quarter West Indians, and there are substantial minorities of Italians and Indians. About 300 either cannot speak English at all or their knowledge is so weak that they cannot participate in the school programme.… At Gillespie school 40 per cent. of the pupils are from overseas, most from the West Indies. Mr. D. W. McCarthy, the headmaster, said he had to cope with antagonisms between children who came from different islands and whose skin colour was lighter or darker. There was a tendency to form groups at table for school meals so as to exclude white children.

There are further comments concerning the difficulties of actually teaching the English language to many of these children. That is one of the most pressing problems in this whole matter. Already overworked, already overburdened with big classes and the problems which beset the everyday life of a schoolteacher, what is he or she to do when confronted with perhaps 15 or 20 per cent. of the class unable to speak English because they come from India, from Pakistan, from Cyprus, or possibly from the West Indies, where although English is the language it is a form of English which we find it rather hard to understand as they speak it and undoubtedly they find our form of English rather hard? What is that teacher to do? Is he to give special attention to the backward 15 or 20 per cent., to the detriment of those who are already in the class and able to go ahead, or is he to ignore the 15 or 20 per cent. and allow them to fall still further back? It is not an easy problem.

I, and many with far greater experience than I, believe that the answer lies in special classes for these children, to teach them English out of school hours. That, of course, means extra work for the teacher, already overburdened; and unless there is a local education authority of great public spirit and of considerable financial resources to enable this to be done, it cannot be done even if the teachers are available. In most cases it can be done only if the central authority, the Ministry of Education itself, plays a part in it and makes available, if not teachers, at least finance to enable teachers to come in from other areas to do this work.

Again, I do not wish to minimise the assistance which is being given at the present time by certain of Her Majesty's inspectors of schools, who are admirable and devoted men; but I think their job would in many cases be made easier if there were some official recognition of this problem and some official assistance given towards coping with it. In addition, I suggest that the Ministry of Education, while in no way interfering with the autonomy of the local education authority, or the autonomy of teachers' training colleges, could still play an important part by, for instance, calling a conference of the principals of teachers' training colleges, to discuss with them how problems of this kind, those mentioned in the extract from The Times that I have just read out, can best be dealt with. There should be no ordering—of course they should not do that—but helping, co-operating, acting as a clearing house and, where necessary, actually giving a lead, and co-operating, of course, with the National Union of Teachers. That, in my opinion, is one way in which the Ministry of Education can take active, concrete and not too expensive steps to help to cope with this problem, which already is serious enough and which, if left unchecked, will attain formidable proportions.

Now I come to a second or further suggestion which has bean made in order to deal with this problem. After the debate to which I have already referred, on May 14 in your Lordships' House, a group of people including myself got together in order to see what could be done by way of concrete proposals for coping with this problem by educational means. After consultation with many experts a particular scheme was evolved. It was not an ambitious scheme, it was not a far-reaching scheme, but simply a modest but realistic beginning, and it had the invaluable sponsorship of the Royal Commonwealth Society which recognised it as a means of coping with the objectives which we all have at heart, of Commonwealth solidarity and understanding in the widest sense. Briefly the bones of that scheme were simply these: that teachers from this country and from Commonwealth countries should be enabled to come together in pleasant surroundings, and should spend ten days or a fortnight together getting to understand each other, getting to learn about each others' problems, getting to realise that a teacher, whether from Ghana, from Trinidad, from Tanganyika, white or yellow or black, has the same problems as the teacher in Nottingham or in Coventry.

How this should be done was worked out in considerable detail by responsible, extremely skilled and experienced people. A syllabus of studies was made up, which included recent political economic developments in the Commonwealth; musical and artistic developments in the Commonwealth; race relations in the Commonwealth itself; movements of people in the Commonwealth, religions, and so on, so that these teachers, when they returned to their schools, whether in this country or overseas, would have an understanding of the wider aspects of the Commonwealth as well as an understanding of the individual teachers concerned. The cost of the scheme was not inconsiderable, because it was felt that it should be a prestige scheme if it was to attract the right type of teacher. In fact, it was estimated that for six courses, spread over two years, the total cost would not exceed, but be in the neighbourhood of, £15,000.

The Ministry of Education—largely in view of the accent on education which had been placed by the Government spokesman in our debate on May 14—was approached and asked if it would put up half the cost of this scheme, the other half to be raised from charitable trusts and voluntary contributions. In other words, the Ministry of Education was asked to put up £3,750 a year for two years, as a maximum, in order to show that it was sincere and that it really meant that this problem of racial discrimination should be dealt with by educational means. The answer received, I am sorry to say, was a flat, though very polite, "No". The actual words of the Minister were: I do not, I am afraid, see how my Department could help you to finance the courses that you have in mind. The Ministry's programme of short courses is limited to those which it arranges itself through the inspectorate, and the expenditure it needs is limited to the amount involved in laying on the courses. Those who attend are required to pay for their board and lodging, and from 1963 their travelling expenses, though they may receive some assistance from their employers. In other words, such courses as the Ministry has, as I think we shall learn when the noble Lord, Lord Newton, comes to reply, are lamentably few and lamentably small, and entirely different in their scope from those which have been outlined. So we are now faced with the reality that the Government at present are refusing to make even a payment of under £4,000 a year for two years in order to make some small, but significant, contribution to solving this problem.

All that they do—and they do something one must admit—is to have an exchange scheme for teachers. The exchange scheme is not operated directly by the Ministry of Education; it is operated through the League of the British Commonwealth and Empire. The entire scope of the scheme, so far as I have been able to discover, is for the exchange this year with Canada of 55 teachers; with Australia of 30 teachers; with New Zealand of 15 teachers; and with Southern Rhodesia of 5 teachers. That is all the Ministry of Education is doing at the present time in order to deal, by educational means, with this problem of racial understanding.

This problem is, in all conscience, bad enough as it stands to-day, but if we project ourselves ten years hence, with not only the additional strains on the Commonwealth which take place the whole time, but with the growth of the number of young people whose parents were born in the Commonwealth and whose skins remain black, although they may be actually born in this country—we have already seen from the Census figures I have quoted how the numbers are already increasing—how much faster will they increase in the next ten years! What will the problems then be in our schools in regard to our teachers and youth employment officers? How will they find work for these young people who will be leaving school—probably, through no fault of their own, at a somewhat lower educational standard owing to language difficulties? This is not something which will solve itself. If we sit back, the situation is going to get ten times or a hundred times worse.

I should like to end by quoting the words of an eminent Negro historian from the United States, Professor John Hope Franklin. In one of his books, he wrote: Almost invariably the Negro progresses only to the extent that the white man advances in understanding that a human being is a human being. There have been Negroes as talented as I before me, but they could not get where I have because the white man was not advanced enough to let them. My Lords, it is our job to see that the people of this country are advanced enough to let anybody who comes here—and particularly any child, whether or not he is actually born here, who is educated in this country—advance just as far as his own capabilities enable him to, and to see to it that there is no question of racial discrimination or colour prejudice put in his way.

This is a challenge not only to the goodwill of the country; it is at this stage a direct challenge to the honesty of the Government. We cannot allow this problem to be left to the magnificent work of the private individuals and of the organisations upon whose work I have already briefly touched. It has now got beyond that. It must not be taken over by the Government, but must be assisted by the Government in a very concrete manner. As an earnest of their sincerity the Government must now put their hands in their pockets—in the taxpayers' pockets—in order to help to rid from this country a stigma which attaches to-day (and there is no use burking this issue) in the eyes of so many members of the Commonwealth both here and overseas, and to prove quite conclusively that we are prepared not merely to utter these pious platitudes and vague hopes but, as a country and as a Government, to take action and to spend money in order to rid this country of what can develop into one of the greatest blots upon our national honour.

3.58 p.m.

THE LORD BISHOP OF SOUTHWELL

My Lords, it is obvious that we on this Bench must be very deeply concerned with this question. I will not keep your Lordships longer than I can help, but it is hard to be brief without seeming to be trivial, and a lot of positive harm can be done by trivial discussion of great subjects. This is a subject of profound importance for the social and moral health of our community, and, indeed, for the whole human future.

In the past our people have had pretty wide experience of racial problems overseas. Now we are encountering them in our Island, owing to the post-war tide of immigration, and we are not finding it altogether easy. Of course, there is always, and probably always must be, some tension between the "in" group and the "out" group; and the native is always suspicious of foreigners, even if they are only inhabitants of the next village; but that becomes vicious and destructive if it flows from differences of race and colour, and if it is bedevilled by sexual jealousy, housing problems and economic competition it can be worked up into a most dangerous antagonism. It would be tragic and disastrous for ourselves, as well as for them, if the immigrants from the Commonwealth countries were to become in any way here the victims of racial prejudice.

I want to suggest to your Lordships that, though this is a new problem, it is one that is going to be always with us. It is not merely a temporary incident; it is part of a vast movement due to the fact that the world is one world, one nexus of interdependent organisations, one common market and common labour pool, in which what I may call "racial closed shops" can no longer be maintained; and in which self-contained communities will now be obsolete. Multi-racialism is going to be normal, surely, everywhere in the future, and we must catch up with history. But, after all the disappointments in Africa, let us resolve to do everything we can to make this country a model of trans-racial relationships. For surely the long and not inglorious history of Commonwealth and Empire is really leading up to this. Somebody put it in this way: "The Empire is coming home".

Race prejudice is a form of mental illness. From time to time it becomes epidemic, and when it does it kills men by millions. I am not thinking only of the gas chambers: there are some murky patches in our own record, and it is not only in Europe that it happens. But this horrible thing, which poisons and corrupts all human relationships, on both sides, is very difficult to cure, just because it is irrational. It comes up out of the depths of the unconscious. It is really a kind of psychosis which cannot be exorcised by rational argument. Myths and stereotypes, emotion-charged fetishes, are far more potent with it than the most demonstrable fact. The psychotic cannot bear to live with disturbing realities. No doubt we all tend to externalise the tensions and conflicts within our own psyche, and there is a psychological compulsion to project our own failure on to a scapegoat. Therefore, by and large, it is the "mixed-up kid" who is most likely to be found joining in race riots or the obscene rites of anti-Semitism.

The wording of the Question we are discussing asks Her Majesty's Government to use educational means to deal with this problem. As the noble Lord reminded us, the Government spokesman in the last debate laid great stress on educational media. Is tolerance something that can be taught, or is it, as has been said about Christianity, something that can only be caught? Or is that distinction really "too clever by half"? If it can be taught, how are we to set about it?

I want to say a word or two, first of all, about formal education. I think all your Lordships will agree that the matrix of tolerance is a liberal education, which opens the mind and widens the sympathies. But I suggest that there are limits to the possibility of changing adult society through the children, though many people from Plato onward have hoped they could. Surely it is the adult society that conditions them. I do not think young children as a rule have any feeling of race or colour prejudice, until adults put it into their heads. No doubt something effective can be done to forewarn and forearm them against that shock. But what we get from our teachers and our preachers is not so much what they actually say, as the attitude to life that comes through. It is possible for religious instruction to communicate an essentially irreligious attitude of mind.

Religious values at school are communicated not only, even if chiefly, through the periods labelled "Religion", but through the whole tone and ethos of the school's life, and the standards which the community acknowledges. So it is here. The important thing, what really matters, is the total education in human relationships, rather than new subjects inserted into the syllabus. All the same, something can be done by formal teaching and the provision of factual information. Children can at least be disinfected by historical and biological fact from the stubborn, persistent fallacies of race, which have been called "man's most dangerous myth", and the false and deadly simplifications identified with race in the popular mind.

We are well aware here, that there is no such thing as a pure race; and, indeed, probably nowhere in the world could you find a race more mixed than our own. Children can at least have that explained to them and can be taught to realise how much of our strength derives from that admixture in our inheritance. Nor is there the slightest valid ground for equating differences of mental ability, intelligence and so forth with racial origin. There is a book by Doctor Cyril Bibby (the ministry, of course, is familiar with it) called Race, Prejudice and Education, which offers the teacher valuable help on this point. The teacher in the English literature department has his chance. What about The Merchant of Venice or Othello, to say nothing of the school visit to Oliver?

The current affairs man has his opportunity, as does almost anyone who teaches history or geography, although some of the text books badly need revision. Too often they leave exactly the wrong impression. I was reading a careful study and analysis of the G.C.E. syllabuses and the questions actually set, in an article in Race, the periodical of the Institute of Race Relationships, and it pointed out that questions like, "Discuss the differences between the coastlines of East Africa and West Africa" might profitably be widened to include some reference to the people who live in them, and so on. Of course, a good deal more can be done at the sixth form level and in universities, where one hopes there will be a growing development of departments and institutes, and where the humanities now on the defensive might find a new, creative rôle if they would reflect on the meaning of "humanitas" and widen out into a study of human relations.

But, of course, contact matters far more than information. In the schools now, in industrial centres, there is a substantial number of coloured children. The noble Lord was giving some figures. I believe the number occasionally rises to 28 per cent; in a few, I gather, it is as high as 10 per cent.; but the average is not more than 2 per cent. But it is going to rise, obviously, through natural increase, quite apart from fresh immigration. There are contacts there, but I hope the Minister will do everything he can to encourage the interchange of pupils between schools in this country and Commonwealth countries; to encourage the development of work camps on an international basis, and the overseas voluntary service; and to provide increased opportunities for travel. Of course, the same goes, and even more so, for teachers; and I should like to add my little plea in support of the noble Lord, who drew attention to the need for some public funds to assist the residential courses for teachers which efforts have been made to get going.

Lastly, I must be allowed to say that what we need most in the long run is the permeation of society by the Christian attitude to men and women. The Churches have been doing a great deal, as was their obvious duty—we take no credit for it—and I feel sure that the Lord Bishop of London will be able to give your Lordships information later about the activities of the World Council of Churches and the British Council of Churches in our own land. I should like, however, to be allowed to refer to the admirable work in education and reconciliation which has been done by the Society of Jews and Christians. Christianity has its own reasons for believing in the dignity of man and the sacredness of personality, and in that there can be neither Jew nor Gentile, Barbarian nor Scythian, slave nor free. I long to see the Christian Church as the rallying point of all liberal-minded and humanist endeavour.