PRESS GANG SPECIAL Race for the typewriter

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Thatcher Racialists everywhere have hailed the MP's select committee report on immigration. But nowhere have they celebrated more loudiy or ecstatically than in the pages of the daily press.

The leader writers found a new cutting edge to their bile. Their language veered yet closer to the official publicity handouts of the National Front. They found a new self assurance in the respectability of their anti-black views.

Macabre

Turning the pages of the Sun, the Daily Mail, or the Daily Express was like stepping into the midde of a macabre festival. It •as as * A Capone had taken se e: = a men machine gun neighbourhood.

There was a mixture of awe and jubilation that could be matched only by say, the introduction of public hanging for pickets.

The jubilation was expected. The awe came from the realisation that the most excessive wild and inflammatory opinions expressed in the press had all been given full backing by at least five Labour MPs, including one and a half who claimed left credentials.

The fact that this report was a coalition report between Tribune and the Monday Club was not missed.

The Daily Mail devoted most of its front page and three and a half inside pages to reports and comment. Its leader column grew from a single column blister to a four column plague of boils.

It praised the unanimity of the report and defended the MPsSidney Bidwell and all-from attacks "by the self-appointed spokesmen of the coloured communities ... those tender yet arrogant souls who see themselves as the conscience of the nation' The Mail says that the report will bring joy to the heart of Enoch Powell and strength to his rhetoric. What would any National Front leader find to quibble at in the following passage from the Mail?

"Most fair minded men and women in Britain will consider the Committee's suggestions to be moderate, human and, indeed, long overdue.

"We cannot simply sit back and accept into Britain ап unlimited and utterly disproportionate number of fiances and fiancees from the Indian subcontinent. It is a commitment without end which makes mockery of the spirit of our immigration controls ...

"This country must cease to become the first port of call for any family from Hongkong ... or Singapore . . . or Karachi ... or Delhi... which has itchy feet and a tattered and obsolescent claim to British home and hospitality."

But this is not the whole story.

It was to be expected that a confused and ill-directed on the report would come from the Guardian-a paper which has long stood for the liberal exercise of capitalist rule enforced by the collaboration of the bureaucracy which sits on the windpipe of the working class. Financial Times would greet the report with outrage.

The Guardian accuses the committee of 'shuffling expediency' and inconsistency.

'In its resort to ringing moral declarations coupled with recommendations totally at odds with them, the Committee outdoes many previous contributors to the debate"

It describes suggestions registration as "a proposal full menace"

But the Guardian couches its opposition in terms which themselves appeal to the opportunists and chauvinists. It describes the proposals as "A system of controls entirely alien to and destructive of the traditional liberties of this country" • Key to the Guardian's opposition is a belief in so called British freedoms and an acceptance of the principle that Labour MPs and Tories must have a joint approach.

It sums the effort up in the following terms: "As an attempt at bi-partisan resolution of the problems with which all governments and all communities have nowadays to be concerned, it is a wretched disappointment, valuable opportunity woefully The Financial Times, the voice of the big bourgeoisie, attacks the hypocrisy of the report:

"What the report means is that as many would-be immigrants as possible should be kept out, and that as many of those who are already here should be sent home. It would have been more straightforward simply to have endorsed the views of Mr Enoch Powell".

In conclusion the FT, like the Guardian, wails the imminent collapse of cherished British freedoms:

"Do we really want to move to stricter controls on movement, perhaps even to identity cards, for the sake of keeping out a few thousand Asians and getting rid of a few thousand more? How far is it from there to pass laws? And is it really worth it?"

That last question is what has divided the Guardian and the FT from their trigger happy competitors. It is the same question that faces the bourgeoisie in relation to attacks on the working class in every single shape and form. Is the all-out frontal attack-the commitment to open class war justified by the circumstances? Has the ability of the class collaborators to repress the class

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