Update: The Oxford Mail and Oxford Times have both published this blog. The version in the Oxford Mail, published on 1 April 2021 is here
Sorting through my father’s papers at his home near Oxford,
I come across cuttings from the local paper, the Oxford Mail that give me a
jolt. They are about events in the city decades ago, in the 1960s. Yet there
are such strong parallels to today.
One of the moments of this summer in Oxford has been the
renewed protests on the city’s streets against the statue of Victorian
imperialist Cecil Rhodes outside Oriel College. Hundreds marched down the High
Street and sat outside the college entrance, a building funded a century ago by
Rhodes. “Rhodes Must Fall” is the protesters’ battle cry.
Confronting Britain’s colonial past; Black Lives Matter; Windrush.
Themes of this spring, this summer. And of course, just a few months earlier:
Brexit, ‘take back control’; cuts to immigration.
Parallels to Oxford in early 1962. The Conservative
government under prime minister Harald Macmillan had tabled the Commonwealth Immigration
Bill, to heavily limit immigration from the former colonies in the
Commonwealth. The Tories said it was necessary to protect jobs of British
people. Labour called the draft “cruel and brutal anti-colour legislation”.
People from many walks of life in Oxford opposed the Bill. Tens
of thousands of people from the Commonwealth had in the proceeding years settled
in Oxford, filling labour shortages in industry and the public sector, giving the
city a multicultural identity earlier than other places. Pressure groups were
emerging to promote racial integration and anti-racism.
Canon Tony Williamson, my father, was part of this movement.
He was a freshly elected Labour member of Oxford council, giving him a voice, a
platform, to speak out.
On Sunday 4th February 1962 those opposing the Bill, marching under the banner of the Movement for Colonial Freedom, processed through the town centre, ending outside St John’s College on St Giles.
My father spoke to the crowd. As the Oxford Mail reported: “Mr
Williamson, waving a copy of the Bill, told an audience of about 200 people: “We
have got to see that we get over this problem without making coloured people
scapegoats. We cannot build our council houses in Oxford because we have not
got enough labour. We have 3,000 jobs waiting and yet we say ‘No, you cannot
come in’”.
Despite this protest, and others across the country, this
battle was lost – the Bill became law in July that year. Race relations didn’t disappeared
from the political agenda, however.
Conflicts over race and racism were brewing in the 1960s and
early 1970s, also in Oxford. In one case that made national headlines, an
Indian man, Hans Raj Gupta, who worked on the Oxford buses, was the victim of a
racist attack outside his home, only months after he had been recognized as the
first Indian in Oxford to become bus inspector.
Dozens of anti-racism protesters were arrested for occupying
Annette’s hair salon on the Cowley Road, after staff refused to cut the hair of
Black and Asian customers. Dozens more were detained when Enoch Powell, the
far-right politician, came to speak at Oxford town hall. And the offices of the Oxford Committee for
Racial Integration (OCRI), a pioneering anti-racist community organization set
up in 1965, were vandalized. OCRI warned of the rise of the “extreme right”.
Tony was chair of OCRI for two years in the late 1960s. Indeed,
this was the time in his career when he was most focused on anti-racism work.
One more example from his files.
In 1965 – again, according to the Oxford Mail - Tony played
a big part in overturning an evidently racist decision by Oxford police that stirred
such a controversy that it reached the Home Office and House of Commons. Immigration
officers blocked Ghulam Shabir, a 15 year old Pakistani boy from entering the
UK to join family members in Oxford, based on a local police report that the
family was living in overcrowded conditions.
Tony was shocked by the immigration decision, called up Oxford
police and council officials and compiled facts on the case – leading to an abrupt
police climbdown, admitting their original report was untrue.
“A dogged tracking back of the facts by Councillor the Rev A W Williamson”, as the Oxford Mail noted,
forced a retreat by the Home Office and a decision to allow Ghulam to re-apply
for an entry permit to the UK.
This week I visited the Oxford sites of the current and
historic struggles against racism. It was quiet outside Oriel, and later on my
stroll, also outside St John’s. A few tourists, but no protesters that day.
Cecil Rhodes, Oriel College, Oxford
As I stood outside St John’s, I wondered about Tony’s mood
as he prepared to speak to the crowds on that Sunday afternoon. Was he nervous?
He was after all only 28 at the time and had only been a councillor for nine months.
St John’s College, Oxford
Tony told me racism was a problem in the car factory where
he worked, towards black and Asian colleagues, from managers and workers. Maybe
it was also a problem in Cowley, the largely working-class district where he
lived with my mother and sister. Did this motivate him to speak out? Or did he
sense the growing significance of questions of race in society, in the years, the
decades to come?
History has a long arc, connecting dots spread across decades
- and places only a few minutes apart on a summer walk through Oxford.