Mrs. Thatcher's Bold Gamble

Immigration and racism become campaign issues

A funny thing happened to Margaret Thatcher on the way to No. 10 Downing Street: the economy and political mood of Britain underwent a sea change. Less than a year ago the Tories were running 21% ahead of Labor in the polls, and Conservative Leader Thatcher was the odds-on favorite to become her country's first woman Prime Minister. Now the two parties are in a dead heat, and Prime Minister James Callaghan is more popular than his party while Thatcher lags behind hers.

Callaghan's main accomplishment has been to turn the economy around, a feat that was aided by both the expected gush of North Sea oil and his success in holding the line on wages. According to Gallup, the electorate now believes that Labor can do a better job than the Conservatives in controlling inflation. Even such a stalwart establishment organ as the Financial Times praised Callaghan for giving Britain "almost as good a conservative government as we are likely to get."

With national elections approaching, Mrs. Thatcher undertook a highly public effort to reach out to the common folk. She turned up for a walkabout along Petticoat Lane, London's celebrated street market, where she was bussed by a local huckster. But she also needed a popular issue, and so she did what had hitherto been politically unthinkable: she injected the explosive issue of immigration, meaning race, into the campaign. In a television interview, Mrs. Thatcher called for a "clear end to immigration," on the ground that "people are really rather afraid that this country might be swamped by people of a different culture. And, you know, the British character has done so much for democracy, for law, and done so much throughout the world, that if there is any fear that it might be swamped, people are going to react and be rather hostile to those coming in."

Until that point, only the maverick former Tory Enoch Powell and the small, neo-Fascist National Front had dared to stir up the fears of those who object to the presence of 1.9 million "coloreds" in Great Britain (total pop. 54 million). Thatcher's statement touched off an uproar in Parliament. Labor members shouted "Racist!" There was some dismay in the Conservatives' shadow cabinet, whose members had not been consulted about the declaration, but other Tories applauded her stand, gleefully dubbing her "Thatcher, the Vote Snatcher." Callaghan accused her of "opportunism," while one Cabinet member despaired: "I have no doubt that race can win the election."

Even before the Tory leader spoke out, another Gallup poll showed that 59% of the British public felt that immigrants were "a very serious social problem in Britain today." To 46%, race relations were getting worse, while 49% wanted the government to offer immigrants financial help to leave the country. Unquestionably Mrs. Thatcher had seized an issue of particular appeal to traditionally Labor blue-collar workers, who see the immigrants as a threat to their jobs, and to a large segment of the British public who resent the intrusion of a different culture.

Home Secretary Merlyn Rees calls Britain's immigration problems "the legacy of imperialism." The current furor is not aimed at the shrinking number of West Indian black immigrants (600,000), but at the larger influx of Indians and Pakistanis (1.3 million), who began arriving in the late 1950s. Ironically, Tory governments passed the laws that granted amnesty to those who had been in the country illegally for more than five years and gave them British citizenship rights.

Immigrants from the subcontinent have formed London's biggest Asian communities, at Hounslow and Southall, in ear-aching proximity to Heathrow Airport, where they first set foot on British soil. Many found service jobs at the airport, saved their money and brought over their families. The Indians and Pakistanis also brought different languages, religions, styles of dress and mores. Steak-and-kidney pies have given way to curries in some neighborhood shops; saris, turbans and mosques have become distinct features of the English cityscape. But none of the customs has been more inflammatory or more misunderstood than the subcontinent's tradition of arranged marriages. Under present laws, immigrant parents can bring into Britain suitable young men or women from their native lands for their sons or daughters to marry. As one London housewife put it: "Nobody can convince me it isn't a racket, whatever the Indians say."

Statistically, at least, the issue appears less of a problem than the public outcry suggests. The government last year issued only 391 work permits for males from the subcontinent. The best estimates are that at the present rate of immigration, the coloreds by the end of the century will still be only 5.5% of the British population. As for the popular fear of a hordelike bridegroom brigade, out of a total of 11,061 men permanently admitted to Britain in 1976 as fiances or husbands, only 3,612 were Indians and Pakistanis. Ian Martin, director of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, believes that those numbers will taper off even more as Asian girls in England rebel against the idea of marrying unknown boys from their fathers' native villages.

Since the National Front has proposed expulsion of the immigrants, Callaghan and Rees understandably challenged Mrs. Thatcher to say just how she planned to end immigration without abrogating Britain's legal commitments. TIME has learned that the Tories have drawn up several new proposals on immigration. The major points: 1) virtually a total clampdown on admission of fiances, 2) a register to be compiled of all remaining direct dependents of immigrants already in Britain, with a strict quota system for entry of those dependents, 3) citizenship granted "only in the most exceptional circumstances" for those who entered the country after 1973, and 4) repeal of the amnesty granted illegal immigrants in 1973. The latter point, some Conservatives indicate, does not mean uprooting those already settled, but it would deny them the right to bring in wives or children.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives have made another move toward winning votes from Labor: they have backed away from bipartisan support of the concept of power sharing between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. The Tories have also raised the possibility of changing laws that give instant voting rights to Irish immigrants. Labor M.P.s from industrialized areas admitted that the anti-Irish swipes would go down well in the British Midlands. "Margaret is desperate," protested a Labor Cabinet Minister. "She wants to be Prime Minister --by any means."

But Callaghan has plenty to fight back with. Last week the Prime Minister reaped a substantial political bonanza with some favorable economic news. Britain's mine workers agreed to go along with the government's 10% limit on wage increases; the pound, already surging, rose another half a cent; and key Labor economists projected a drop in the inflation rate (13% in November) to 7% by July. One pollster believes that the party may also pick up a large block of new votes in the next election from the traditionally apolitical Asian immigrants. His prediction: "They are going to crawl over broken glass to vote against Mrs. Thatcher." sb

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