Making Anti-Racial Discrimination Law

A Comparative History of Social Action and Anti-Racial Discrimination Law

Iyiola Solanke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781134034055
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Derecho
• Subtopic: Teoría y práctica del derecho

Making Anti-Racial Discrimination Law examines the evolution of anti-racial discrimination law from a socio-legal perspective. Taking a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, the book does not simply look at race and society or race and law but brings these areas together by drawing out the tension in the process, in different countries, by which race becomes a policy issue which is subsequently regulated by law. Moving beyond traditional social movement theory to include the extreme right wing as a social actor, the study identifies the role of extreme right wing confrontation in agenda setting and law-making, a feature often neglected in studies of social action. In so doing, it identifies the influence of both the extreme right and liberalism on anti-racial discrimination law. Focusing primarily on Great Britain and Germany, the book also demonstrates how national politics feeds into EU policy and identifies some of the challenges in creating a high and uniform level of protection against racial discrimination throughout the EU.

Using primary archival materials from Germany and the UK, the empirical richness of this book constitutes a valuable contribution to the field of anti-racial discrimination law, at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. The book will interest specialists and academics in law, sociology and political science as well as non-specialists, who will find this study stimulating and useful to expand their knowledge of anti-racial discrimination law or pursue teaching goals, policy objectives and reform agendas.

1 Black European Union citizens

Introduction

There are black European Union citizens in most of the member states of the EU. Exact numbers are hard to establish as ethnic data is not collected in most of these countries.¹ In most places, they live as settled racial minorities but tend to be seen by white Europeans as immigrants rather than citizens. It remains questionable whether after 50 years of political and economic integration in Europe the member states of the EU are truly home² for black EU citizens, that is ‘a social space that is psychically and physically safe’,³ a world which is both intimate and free ‘with a doorway never needing to be closed’.⁴ Despite being born and fully educated in the member states of the EU, many black European Union citizens live ‘trapped’ within a white culture, insiders but perceived as ‘a perpetual outsider’⁵ asked not only where they are from, but also where their parents are from. Most white Europeans are likely to know more about African Americans than the black Europeans alongside whom they live, study and work. Black European Union citizens remain visible yet unknown and unaccepted, the ‘dark stranger’,⁶ the outsider inside.

The themes of this chapter are arrival and belonging. There have been black people in Europe since the 16th century, working as slaves to the wealthy. Slaves were being advertised in British papers in 1761.⁷ Arrival of black people in Europe in the 20th century and the growth of settled communities since 1945 was directly related to colonial occupation and military campaigns. These were the basis of Europe’s relationship with Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. In this chapter, I will discuss the emergence of communities of black European Union citizens and the initial response to issues arising from their presence in Britain and Germany. Thereafter, I will examine in more detail the circumstances faced by black Britons and black Germans as the public and official authorities began to take notice of them.

Imperialism, war and labour migration

No particular attention was paid during the formation of the European Economic Community (EEC) to colonial relations even though colonies, in one way or another, were a reality for five key member countries: France had possessions in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific; Belgium had present day Congo and trusteeship of Rwanda–Urundi; the Netherlands maintained dependencies in the Pacific (Surinam) and Caribbean (Aruba); Italy had a mandate over Somalia. Only Germany had no colonial connections anywhere in the world, having reluctantly relinquished control over its territories as part of the post-World War I settlement at Versailles.⁸ It was under French insistence (based on a desire to share the costs of keeping colonies), Belgian compliance and German and Dutch acquiescence that associationism was instituted in Articles 131-136, Part IV of the Treaty of Rome (TEC).⁹

France had exerted the deepest and longest colonial presence in Africa. A form of ‘European associationism’ based on the theory of ‘complimentarity between metropolitan areas and colonies – especially those in Africa – and the corollary of mutuality of benefits’ was the method by which Paris dominated while allowing for varying degrees of autonomy in the colonies. In 1946 the French formally included associationism into the constitution. There were four forms of association possible: a Union of Associated States (États associés), which enjoyed a certain amount of autonomy; the Associated Territories (Territories associés); the Overseas Territories (Territories d'outre-mer); and the Overseas Departments (Departments d'outre-mer), which were integral parts of France.

The Treaty of Rome adopted this idea of association. Two types of association were created, those formed under Article 238 TEC and those contained within Articles 131-136 TEC. The former acted as a precursor to full membership in the Community – such association agreements were signed with Greece in 1963 and Turkey in 1964.¹⁰ The latter governed relationships with the former colonies. Article 136 TEC provided for renewable multilateral agreements to be made by an implementing Convention attached to the Treaty. This was initially for 5 years. It was replaced in 1964 by Yaounde I, again in 1969 by Yaounde II. When Britain, joined the EEC in 1973, it brought countries of the Commonwealth in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific into the Community. Her accession acted as a catalyst for the instituting of the Lome Convention I in 1975, which for many years governed EU trade relations with African, Caribbean and Pacific countries. Lome II and III were signed respectively in 1979 and 1984. Lome IV, concluded for 10 years, expired in 1999.¹¹

At the time of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, not only were colonial territories a reality for five of the founding members, but persons from the colonies were also within their midst, for example in France. This was also because protracted war had destroyed European economies and infrastructure. For many economists, such as Jean Monnet, immigration was the answer to severe labour shortages caused by the tremendous losses during the war. French economists were also concerned to rebuild the population and favoured permanent immigration by families to compensate for low population growth.¹² As it is cheaper and less of a public burden to import expertise than to educate and train, usage of migrant labour can be described as a ‘borrowing of human capital’ which supplements the ‘borrowing of finance’ to pay for various services such as the provision of welfare. For example, by 1986 the USA had saved around $4000 million as a result of not having to fully train medical personnel. Foreign doctors as human capital to the USA exceeded the total of US aid to foreign countries.¹³ Migrant, especially skilled, labour makes in this way a net contribution to advanced industrial nations: the host country reaps the benefits of workers in prime age whose rearing and training has been paid for by the home country. Millions of people were encouraged to migrate not only from the under-developed parts of southern Europe, but also Africa, Asia and the Americas to western Europe and the United States, searching for employment and better living standards.¹⁴

The growth in migration from the colonies was undesired yet unavoidable. In France, there was agreement that Africans and Asians were less desirable than Europeans.¹⁵ However, too few Europeans were willing to leave their homes to take up menial jobs in other countries. Migrant labour from the colonies remained the only option. France decided on a policy of immigration immediately after the war: between 1946 and 1970 almost two million foreign workers entered the country.¹⁶ In the years between 1947–1954 an average of 30,500 young men left Algeria for France every year: Algerians were free from immigration controls in France while their country remained a French colony. By the mid-1950s, there were almost a quarter of a million French citizens of North African – mostly Algerian – origin in France.¹⁷ By the end of 1969, France had an immigrant population of 3.2 million.¹⁸

Britain expressed similar concerns. In 1949 the Political and Economic Planning Committee of the British Government warned of the problems of the absorption of large numbers of black immigrants into British society. A questionnaire circulated by the Labour Exchange as part of a Cabinet Report on the ability of black people to be integrated asked questions such as: Is it true that coloured people, or certain classes of coloured people, are work shy? Is it true that they are poor workmen? Is it true that they are unsuited by temperament to the kind of work available? According to the report, ‘coloured’ workers were physically unsuited for manual work, while ‘coloured women are said to be slow mentally’.¹⁹ The cabinet secretary advised against discriminatory controls, however, as it would be embarrassing were it to be revealed that immigration controls were operating against ‘British subjects who are not of European Race’. In addition, as people in the colonies possessed citizenship rights and the right of permanent settlement in Britain, black labourers would unlike the white European voluntary workers be undeportable should they decide to stay. This made the British authorities unwilling to engage in an organised recruitment of their labour for British industry.²⁰ Yet between 1955 and 1961, when Britain first applied for EU membership, around 900,000 women and 115,000 men arrived in the UK from the Caribbean alone.²¹

Germany was more hesitant. As in other countries, external labour was needed not only to replace the indigenous workforce depleted by war but also to release German nationals for the pursuit of less arduous and more profitable work in the cities.²² The first guestworkers to arrive were part of a private initiative undertaken by a farmer frustrated at the lack of official action to overcome the shortage of farm labour.²³ Others arrived via official exchange programmes, some via the Ministry for Labour while after 1957 workers from within the EEC took advantage of EC rules and agreements providing for free movement to work abroad. By 1970 the number of migrant guestworkers had risen to nearly three million.²⁴ Unlike in Britain and France, guestworkers arrived with no rights to stay, and were given relatively few to encourage them to do so. Yet, as will be explained, stay they did.

The British Empire and black Britons

It is probable:

[T]hat the real basis of feelings of superiority towards the African was laid in the Slave Trade, and as early as the 17th century. The effect of this on the rank and file of English-speaking people was to make all slaves members of a permanently inferior caste. All Africa...