Orders of the Day — Expiring Laws Continuance Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 17 November 1964.

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Photo of Sir Edward Boyle Sir Edward Boyle , Birmingham Handsworth 12:00, 17 November 1964

The hon. Member says that encouragingly, but my impression is that after midnight hon. Members are best not indulging themselves too much.

In our whole approach to this matter, we should avoid the errors both of excessive optimism and of excessive pessimism. I have no patience whatever with those who say that the problem of assimilating immigrants can never be solved to any appreciable extent and that, therefore, the only course of action is try to eliminate the problem. Let us recognise that in many parts of the country we are already today a multi-racial society.

I will not go over again all that has been said about the services performed by many of the immigrants. Those services are of real economic importance. It is, however, nothing new in politics to have to draw a balance between economic advantage and social advantage. This leads me to those who. as I see it, take too easy and too optimistic a view of this question.

Let us have no doubt about it. This matter of immigration, even at its present level, is causing a great deal of extreme unhappiness and a considerable amount of tension and difficulty. That is why I ask the Home Secretary, as I am sure he will, on this matter not to think in terms just of ideas and principles, but to realise that for the sake of social harmony and for the sake of solving our problems, bearing in mind the heavy level of concentration of immigration that we already have, it is bound to be necessary to continue strict control of immigration for the future. It is for that reason that my party greatly welcomes the fact that we are today more agreed on this principle than we might have dared to hope two or three years ago.