'If you want a nigger for a neighbour vote Liberal or Labour': Smethwick 1964 is the nasty smell in British politics which everyone in the country's public life wishes would go away.

'If you want a nigger for a neighbour vote Liberal or Labour': Smethwick 1964 is the nasty smell in British politics which everyone in the country's public life wishes would go away. New African's Clayton Goodwin tried to get some of Britain's star politicians of today to comment on the shocking "race problem" in Smethwick in 1964, but they all (bar one) "looked the other way". This is his report for Black History Month.

"If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Liberal or Labour." It was the British general election of 1964. It was Smethwick in the West Midlands, England. It was 40 years ago. Yet the memory lingers sharply on. Today it is impossible to appreciate fully the shock of the election result in the Smethwick constituency fought in the shadow of that notorious slogan.

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The shock was not so much that racial issues played a prominent part in a general election for the first time--such feelings had bubbled under the surface for some years--but that the sentiment should be expressed so openly. British people preferred to believe that they were not "like that".

Race, nationalism, colonialism and the end of Empire were very much on the electoral agenda that year. The trickle of "coloured" Commonwealth immigration had turned full tide as many of the former colonies in Africa and the Caribbean were accorded political independence.

Furthermore, the home electorate was becoming increasingly aware, through the growing prevalence and popularity of television news, of current racial troubles from places as far apart as Little Rock, Arkansas in the US, and Sharpeville, South Africa.

Nevertheless race, though an important issue, was not then regarded as being a determining issue. The Labour Party, seen to be the more liberal of the two main parties, was favoured to end the 13 years of Conservative government. It had fallen to Patrick Gordon Walker--the party's speaker on foreign affairs and designated to be foreign minister in the then forthcoming Labour administration--to challenge the more outrageous contentions of his opponents on race and related matters. His parliamentary constituency was at Smethwick. Alarm bells should have started to ring: Smethwick had "previous"--as they say in traditional police stories. Sir Oswald Mosley, the most notorious (and able) of all British extreme rightwing politicians, had once been an MP there--admittedly, however, that had been before his conversion to fascism.

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All the same, against the unfavourable tide of current public opinion, the Conservatives had continued to win local council seats there on the strength of the disquiet of local residents over the influx of non-white immigrants working in this heavily industrialised area.

Ironically, the West Midlands around Smethwick is known as the "Black Country", because of the soil and air turned dark by the out-flowing smoke and pollution from factories.

Local councillor Peter Griffiths, a school-teacher by profession, was chosen to be the Conservative candidate a year before the general election was due. The campaign became increasingly ill-tempered. The Labour Party watered down the affirmation of former leader Hugh Gaitskell, who had died suddenly at the beginning of 1964, namely that: "The Labour Party is opposed to the restriction of immigration--every Commonwealth citizen has the right as a British subject to enter the country at will."

Patrick Gordon Walker may well have considered that he had done enough to pacify critics by declaring: "Labour favours continued control of immigration, stricter health checks and deportation of those convicted of criminal offences." If so, he was much mistaken.

The notorious notices, "If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Liberal or Labour" began to appear in endorsement of Griffiths' campaign, and their sentiments were never denied convincingly.

Whereas in the general election of October 1964 Labour swept to success in the country generally as expected, Patrick Gordon Walker was beaten in Smethwick. The country was stunned--the candidate supported by the most openly racist slogan had defeated one of the most prominent politicians in the land.

When the new Parliament assembled, Harold Wilson, the incoming Labour prime minister, who, incidentally, had declared just two years earlier that "we do not contest the need for control of immigration into this country", said that Peter Griffiths should be treated like a "political leper".

Even Conservatives were ashamed of this shocking result. Speaking on television, Bob Boothby, one of their most colourful characters, described the vote in Smethwick as being the most disgusting election in 200 years--"a racial fight in the worst American tradition".

Indeed, as the recrimination continued, it was an American, Malcolm X, who said on his visit to the town in February 1965: "I have come here because I am disturbed by reports that coloured people in Smethwick are being treated badly. I have heard that they are being treated as the Jews under Hitler. I wait for the fascist element in Smethwick to erect gas ovens". Nine days after these words were spoken, Malcolm X himself was shot dead on his return to America.

Peter Griffiths did not seem to profit from his success. At the next general election two years later, he was defeated by Andrew Faulds, a well-known actor, and disappeared from political life. That is until 1979, when Griffiths was returned to Parliament for Portsmouth North, a seat which he held until his defeat as recently as 1997. Yet he conducted his subsequent career so cautiously that the country at large was not aware that he was the same "Peter Griffiths" as before.

It is even written in a reputable encyclopaedia open on my desk now that "winning the seat in 1979 and holding it until the time of writing with little controversy" ... such little controversy, in fact, that it was hardly noticed when he was no longer there.

Peter passed the decades following his 1964 election, a period in which race relations regularly raised its ugly head, without being asked to become involved publicly again. His was the voice that dared not speak its view. Nevertheless, by showing that playing the "race card" could bring electoral success, however limited and temporary, he had thrown a primed grenade into the parliamentary process, and it exploded four years later, little more than a stone's throw away from Smethwick.

Enoch Powell, MP for the nearby constituency of Wolverhampton Southwest, had "ridden out" the 1964 storm without coming down on either side of the argument. If anything, he was regarded as being more liberal than his colleagues because it was during Powell's term-of-office as minister of health that nurses were recruited en masse from the Caribbean and West Africa to fill the employment gaps in the National Health Service and their working conditions were improved appreciably. Things were about to change.

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In 1966, Powell lost to Edward Heath in a three-way contest for the leadership of the Conservative Party. He did not have a natural base of support, and the rightwing of the party, hitherto comprised substantially of crusty old colonels and blue-(hair) rinsed matrons whose numbers were being culled by time and electoral defeat, did not have a spokesman.

The two came together in April 1968 when Powell delivered his now notorious "rivers of blood" speech in Birmingham, the West Midlands conurbation of which Smethwick is seen to be a suburb.

By contending that the continued immigration of non-white people from the Commonwealth would have apocalyptic consequences, Powell took the issue to a level of profile of which even Griffiths may never have dreamed, but he was sacked by Edward Heath from the Shadow Cabinet and never achieved ministerial office again.

Neither Powell, who observed more presciently here than on other issues that "all political lives end in failure", nor Griffiths can be counted to have been personally successful, but by making racist attitudes appear to be socially acceptable, their influence on the British political landscape was considerable.

When the then Labour government tightened up even on the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, which the party had opposed initially when it was out of power, Richard Crossman, a leading cabinet minister, admitted: "Politically, fear of immigration is the most powerful force today. If we hadn't done this, we would have faced certain electoral defeat in the West Midlands and the Southeast."

Then just over a decade later, Margaret Thatcher, who had succeeded to the leadership of the Conservative Party, referred to the country being "swamped by an alien culture" and romped home to victory the next year in the 1979 general election.

"Now here's a funny thing"--to quote the old-time Cockney comedian Max Miller. You would have thought contemporary politicians, trade union leaders, community relations representatives and prelates would have been eager to prove the situation had changed considerably since the "bad old days" of 1964.

Yet when New African invited a dozen of those associated most closely with the West Midlands, and in particular with race relations and party strategy, for their comments on the progress made in the last four decades, they all (bar one) "looked the other way"--pleading that their work-schedules prevented them from giving time to the request.

Smethwick 1964 is the nasty smell in British politics which everyone in the country's public life wishes would go away.

The sole, and honourable, exception has been the Labour MP, John Spellar, the representative for Warley, which includes the old Smethwick constituency. His reply deserves to be quoted in full:

  "The changes which have taken place since the notorious election in
1964 have been considerable. Firstly, of course, in 1966 the seat was
won back by my predecessor, Andrew Faulds.
  "Since then in local policies and indeed representatives on the
Council and also the attitude in the community, there has been
considerable moves towards a multi-cultural identity that is not only a
factor of the very substantial percentage of the constituency who are
from the ethnic community, something like 25%, but also there are much
better relations between communities.
  "There is a very clear understanding that they do not want to go back
to those days that gave Smethwick such an unfortunate national
representation. Indeed I think it is fair to say that today, far from
being an unfavourable example, Smethwick is an extremely good example of
how hard work and goodwill, along with public investment, can turn a
situation around."

Spellar's remarks are much appreciated. By the time of going to press--well over a month after the invitations to comment had been issued--Michael Howard, the new leader of the Conservative Party, had not taken the opportunity to "correct" the adverse light cast on his party by the incident at Smethwick.

As for Prime Minister Tony Blair ... surely he would have jumped at the opportunity to emulate his predecessor, Harold Wilson, in declaring racist politicians to be "political lepers" ... well, not quite.

John O'Connell of his office in Downing Street told us: "I regret that the many calls on Mr Blair's time make it impossible to send you his personal comments."

Ah well, the man did have an "ongoing situation" in Iraq to occupy his time and a holiday to take with Silvio Berlusconi, the rightwing Italian prime minister.