Racism for Children By Jan Needle
When I wrote my novel 'My Mate Shofiq' all those years ago, the race relations problem seemed not too difficult to understand. We had invited many people into Britain from our former colonies, because we needed the labour. When I was a young reporter, the Minister of Health came to the Royal Portsmouth hospital to explain why he was recruiting nurses from the West Indies. The young hopefuls were predominantly black, and he addressed them thus: "You are all wonderful. You are caring, hard-working people. Tell all your friends back home in the Caribbean that we want them here, we need them here. Our welcome will be unequivocal." Loud applause, from everybody in the room, black and white. This is not a quiz, so I won't ask you to guess his name. It was Enoch Powell. The headline on my story read something like "Health Minister urges West Indians: 'come and save the NHS.'" In they came, of course – why wouldn't they? – and duly sa...