The Welcome Mat

Many Britons have long clucked over the U.S. troubles with segregation. The British, they rather suggest, are above all that. But with rising colored immigration from far-off places, more and more Englishmen find themselves living alongside new neighbors who look frightfully alien. In the first five months of this year, 38,700 immigrants came from the West Indies. India and Pakistan--84% more than the same period last year. There is no legal barrier to immigration from Commonwealth countries. The government, worried by the increase, officially talks of finding a solution "as friendly to these people as we can and not based on color prejudice alone."

Homely Smells. Friendliness was far from the minds of the residents of a spanking new civic housing development on Price Street in Smethwick (pop. 68,000), when they learned that prospective neighbors were no natives of the black industrial Midlands, but proper natives--from Pakistan, of all places. The father, 28-year-old Sardar Mohammed, is a hardworking factory hand, the mother shy and house proud, the two children positively sparkling.

"I don't care what color they are," grumbled one housewife. "They aren't civilized like us, are they? They kill their chickens by cutting off their 'eads and shaking them up and down in a sack. The children don't want to see that." Another housewife complained of cooking odors, "All that garlic or whatever it is," so unlike smells the English feel at home with, like boiled cabbage. Said a third: "They spit. We don't."

A protest petition circulated. Ninety-six families refused to pay rent unless the town council backed down. But the council stood firm. "We are not submitting to mob rule," said one councilor. "These colored people are with us, and we must integrate them." Agreed another: "We have a moral as well as a legal obligation to house this family."

It was hard for the Sardar Mohammeds to understand talk of obligation; they could not quite see the problem. Said Sardar: "At work I get on well with my mates. Everyone calls me Sam and is friendly. Why shouldn't my children have a decent home to live in like other children?" Fingering her long pigtail, her kohl-ringed eyes wide with nervousness, his wife said, "I don't understand what's happening."

Heathen Rites. Last week there were signs that her neighbors were beginning to understand how badly they had let the side down. When the council threatened to evict the families who refused to pay their rent, all 96 of the defaulters capitulated. "Everyone says the Mohammeds are clean," mused a tenant, "and we all know some whites are dirty." "It would be horrid not to say good morning," blurted her friend.

But intolerance got reinforcements too. When a former Congregational chapel on Smethwick's main street was converted into a temple to serve the Indian Sikhs who have recently settled in the town, there were fresh mutterings of alien influences. The Anglican vicar of St. Michael's and All Angels Church lamented in his parish magazine that a building which had long been used for Christian worship was now "being renovated, decorated and adapted as a temple for black people to preach what we have always spoken of as heathen rites."

At week's end the wordy battle for tolerance in Smethwick seemed no better than a draw.

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