By A. Sivanandan
“Below we reproduce the speech by the IRR’s director, A. Sivanandan, at the IRR’s fiftieth celebration conference on 1 November 2008.”
History tells us where we came from and where we are at. But it also should tell us where we should be going. I’d like, therefore, to look at past struggles to see what resonances they have for us in today’s society.
The Institute battle was won on the basis of a simple principle – that an Institute of Race Relations should not serve the cause of racism by collaborating with the racist policies of government whether abroad (in Smith’s Rhodesia) or at home (in the immigration acts). And it was principle, not ideology or dogma, that guided the work of the new Institute – and political criteria, not political line, that saved it from pragmatism. The criteria themselves arose from the problem we were addressing; and the problem, quite simply, was not race relations or racial attitudes but racism and, especially, the racism of the state. We were not grand enough, though, to be Establishment (which we had just left anyway) nor pretentious enough to be grassroots. But there was a plethora of grassroots, community movements at the time (unlike now, alas) that we could serve. If we could not be at the barricades in the fight for racial justice, we could, at least, be servitors in that cause. We could do research that spoke to the issues and problems confronting Black communities. We could be a servicing station. We could put gas in the tanks of Black and Third World peoples on their way to liberation. That, in any case, was our pious hope. Whether we succeeded or not I do not know. But what I do know, and I say it without any false modesty, is that we are today the only radical think tank in this country on questions of racism and imperialism.
Our task was twofold. First, to debunk the myths and stereotypes that masked the problem of racism and its causes, and tell it like it is. As we must do again today in relation to the myths regarding refugees, asylum seekers, Islam, the war in Iraq, Palestine and so forth.
Second, to do in-depth analysis of the problems of Black people (as opposed to Black people as a problem) and therein find suggestions for a course of action. Action research as opposed to policy research – thinking in order to do, not thinking in order to think – thinking and doing being part of the same continuum.
Myths and stereotypes reinforce each other. The myth sets out the story, the stereotype fits in the characters. It was said, for instance, that the post-war “influx” of West Indian and Asian immigrants to this country was due to “push-and-pull” factors. Poverty pushed us out of out countries, and prosperity pulled us into Britain. Hence the stereotype that we were lazy, feckless people who were on the make. But what wasn’t said was that it was colonialism that both impoverished us and enriched Britain. So that when, after the war, Britain needed all the labour it could lay its hands on for the reconstruction of a war-damaged economy, it turned to the reserves of labour that it had piled up in the colonies. That’s why it passed the Nationality Act of 1948 making us colonials British nationals. (Equally, when, after 1962, it did not need that labour, it brought in a series of restrictive and racist immigration acts.) Quite simply we came to Britain (and not to Germany for instance) because we were occupied by Britain. Colonialism and immigration are part of the same continuum – we are here because you were there.
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