Aussie hero: Arthur "2 Wongs don't make a White" Caldwell
Jon Jonsen
Australia's immigration policy, and the man who popularized the quote
"Two Wongs don't make a White".
Here is an excerpt from this Aussie hero's autobiography:
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~natinfo/calwell.htm
Black Power, a Multi-Racial Society, and the Immigration Saga
Arthur Calwell
Arthur Calwell was Australia's first Minister for Immigration (1945 to
1949), and later became the leader of the Australian Labor Party (1960
to 1967). In the following document, extracted from his autobiography,
Be Just and Fear Not, Calwell mounts a passionate defence of
Australia's traditional immigration policies; opposes non-European
immigration; and explains that the creation of multi-racial societies
invariably lead to bloodshed and disaster.
All nations - black, brown, yellow and white - are racist, simply
because the world consists of different races and nations. All races
suffer from a deep feeling of xenophobia and all are determined to
preserve the homogeneity of their own people. They all reject the
brotherhood of man concept. Some people call me a racist because I am
proud of the blood that flows through my veins. I am proud of my white
skin, just as a Chinese is proud of his yellow skin; a Japanese his
brown skin, and the Indians of their various hues from black to
coffee-coloured. Anybody who is not proud of his race is not a man at
all. And any man who tries to stigmatize the Australian community as
racist because they want to preserve this country for the white race is
doing our nation great harm. Those who talk about a multi-racial
society are really talking about a polyglot nation. Some people talk
about a multi-racial society without knowing what the term really
means, while others talk about it because they are anxious to change
our society. No matter where the pressures come from, Australian people
will continue to resist all attempts to destroy our white society.
I reject, in conscience, the idea that Australia should or can ever
become a multi-racial society and survive. More straight-thinking and
less intellectual dishonesty are essential for any worthwhile
discussion on Australia's restricted immigration policy. What do those
who advocate the creation of a multi-racial Australian society really
mean? Do they even know what they mean? Do they want Australia to cease
to be a homogeneous nation? No nation can be homogeneous and
multi-racial at the same time. Our ever-increasing band of
pseudo-intellectuals should be aware of that.
Do the multi-racialists want Australia to consist of a small number of
people from all the African and Asian nations, or do they want to admit
millions of coloured migrants from those nations for permanent
settlement in a continent that was first settled 184 years ago by
Europeans while other, nearer nations passed it by as a useless, barren
land? If Australians are ever foolish enough to open their gates in a
significant way to people other than Europeans, they will soon find
themselves fighting desperately to stop the nation from being flooded
by hordes of non-integratables. Then we will also need a Race Relations
Board. None is needed now. A Race Relations Board is necessary only
where there are racial problems and racial tensions. We are currently
spared this rather expensive luxury.
Every country has the inalienable right to determine the composition of
its own population. Its policies on immigration are its own affair. It
is entitled to enforce them without any interference from any other
nation. And this applies equally to every nation, large or small, be it
in Asia, Africa, Europe, America or Australia. The question of morality
or ethics does not arise and cannot be artificially created.
In 1964, the brutal slogan, "If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote
Labour", was daubed on walls and hoardings in the electorate of
Smethwick during the British general election campaign. The slogan took
deadly effect. It led to the defeat of Patrick Gordon Walker, a
Minister in Harold Wilson's Labour Government. Three years earlier,
Walker had opposed the Conservative Government's Commonwealth
Immigration Bill, denouncing it as "bare-faced open race
discrimination, serving only to keep non-whites out". He criticized the
timing of the Bill and maintained that the real issues were social
relations, housing and jobs. It all added up to an implication that the
workers of England could be sacrificed. No wonder Walker lost. It was
his defence of unrestricted Asian-African immigration that humiliated
him and triggered of the violent outburst of xenophobic feeling that
now burns fiercely in British politics and will persist for many years
to come. Enoch Powell is not the cause of all this bitterness. He is a
shrewd, calculating spokesman for those in Britain who say that one and
a-half million non-integratable Asians and Africans in a population of
60 million whites are far too many. There will be three million of them
by the end of this century, because they are fecund people. Powell has
been saying what millions of white Britons think, and I believe. And it
must not be forgotten that it was Enoch Powell, and not Edward Heath,
who defeated Harold Wilson's Labour Government. Russell Kerr, an
Australian-born Labour member of the House of Commons, is one of many
who testified to this frightening fact. Three years ago, London dockers
marched to the House of Commons to cheer Enoch Powell because they
feared that coloured migration would threaten their jobs. It was Powell
who said that by 1980, the City of Wolverhampton, in his own
electorate, will have a black mayor and an all-Black council. In 200
years, every Englishman will have a dash and more than a dash of
Indian, Pakistani or Caribbean blood in his veins if two million of
these people in Great Britain become integrated.
Australia, like every other country, has the right to determine the
composition of its population, the rate of its development, and the
measures to be taken to guard its security. These are matters for
determination by the Australian Parliament alone. They are not matters
to be decided by newspapermen, multi-racialists, academics, humanists
and a handful of assertive, garrulous State politicians and
over-zealous do-gooders. These people all mouth noble ideals. A noble
ideal is a wonderful thing, but common sense must be used in its
application. A little idealism must be mixed with large doses of
pragmatism. I suggest that the Colombo Plan, now twenty years old, has
fulfilled its purpose and should be scrapped. It should be replaced by
a better system costing Australia as much money, or more. No more Asian
or African students should be brought into Australia. High-ranking
Australians should be sent to teach more of these students in their own
countries.
Australia can admit a migration intake of only one per cent of the
current population each year. There should be no reduction of British,
German, Scandinavian, Dutch, Italian, Greek, Maltese or such migrants,
but we should tread warily when dealing with applications from certain
other countries. The Labor Party's policy on immigration permits of no
ambiguity or misrepresentation. Those who think it means that a Labor
Government would be authorized to open the flood gates to Indians,
Pakistanis, Ceylonese, Indonesians or Caribbean negroes are hopelessly
wrong. Such a policy would cause a grievous split and jeopardise
Labor's election prospects. Foolish people who try to help their
arguments for a multi-racial society by abusing Spaniards, Greeks,
Lebanese, Maltese and Italians, betray their own arrogance and
sectarianism. The next generation of these good people will be
well-educated, devoted citizens. They will be absorbed into the
Australian community. The non-Europeans who are troubling the United
Kingdom today will always be "chip on the shoulder" citizens. Some of
them will always be unhappy misfits while others will become "black
power" happy. The British, more than any other people, erred badly in
allowing so many Asians and Africans to settle in their country under
the guise of being British citizens.
I saw very few coloured people in Moscow, Leningrad and the Ukraine
during my visit to Russia in 1967. It is not easy for non-Russians,
white or non-white, to enter Russia. The same is true of Germany and
Poland. Mrs Gandhi has told the white missionaries in India, men and
women of various religions and nationalities, that they can stay until
they die or leave India, but no permission will be given for any
replacements. Is Mrs Gandhi a racist? Ceylon insisted that 600,000 of
the 800,000 Tamil Indians in Ceylon must go back to India. Is Ceylon
racist?
For political and diplomatic reasons, the 1965 Federal ALP conference
removed the words "White Australia" from the Labor Party platform. We
certainly did not try to water down the policy nor take the ideal of a
White Australia from the hearts and minds of the Australian people.
Nobody will ever be able to do that. A Gallup Poll published in
October, 1969, showed that only 9 per cent of those interviewed would
favour the admission of 10,000 or more Asians a year, and only 5 per
cent would admit between 2,000 and 9,000 a year. Twenty-two per cent of
the people said 1,000 Asians a year was all right, 6 per cent would
reduce Asian immigration, and 8 per cent would stop it completely.
Fifty per cent of those interviewed did not give an opinion. As the
recent rate of Asian immigration has been much higher than l,000 a
year, the poll indicated that 36 per cent of our population would not
care if all Asian immigration was greatly curtailed. Another Gallup
Poll, published in September, 1971, found that Australians were
two-to-one against increasing immigration from Asia to 25,000 a year.
Interviewers told the people that about 3,000 non-Europeans and about
7,000 people of mixed blood were being given permanent residential
status in Australia each year. Sixty per cent of those interviewed
opposed an increase to 25,000 a year, 30 per cent favoured it, and the
rest were undecided. Among the reasons given for opposing an increase
were "There are enough Asians coming here now" and "They create racial
problems". Those who favoured the increase often qualified their
answers by saying that Asians should be admitted only if they were
educated and properly screened.
The Labor Party's immigration platform, as approved by the 1971 Federal
conference in Launceston, contains six clauses, one of which is "the
avoidance of discrimination on any grounds of race or colour of skin or
nationality." However, an earlier clause calls for "the avoidance of
the difficult social and economic problems which may follow from an
influx of peoples having different standards of living, traditions and
cultures." A number of Labor Parliamentarians have warned the leader,
Mr Whitlam, that an open door policy towards coloured migrants would
cause a grievous split and jeopardise Labor's future, particularly in
South Australia, where many British migrants have arrived to escape the
racial tensions in the United Kingdom.
South Australia's Premier said while visiting Singapore that Australia
should admit 27,000 non-European migrants each year. This would mean a
total of more than a quarter of a million coloured people, including
Indians, Pakistanis, West Indians and other unassimilable races in 10
years, and about 600,000 in 20 years. I think 3,000 coloured people a
year is too many. When the extraordinary idea of bringing in 27,000 a
year is accompanied by the insulting implication that the same number
of Italians, Greeks, Lebanese, Maltese, Spaniards, Egyptians of
European origin, and Jews, whose relatives are already here, should be
denied admission to Australia to make place for coloured people, I
resent the whole proposition. I appreciate all the hard, devoted,
constructive labour which the Italians, Maltese, Greeks, Lebanese and
other Mediterranean people have expended and are expending to build a
happy, self-contained Australia in the years ahead.
In the South Australian Parliament, the Premier described Australia's
immigration policy as racist. His allegation was rejected by the
Federal Minister for Immigration, Dr Forbes, who said:
"Racism means prejudice, bigotry and attitudes of superiority,
all of which emphatically have no place in Australia's immigration
policy. Mr Dunstan well knows that the aim of the policy is to avoid
serious social problems, but he chooses to distort or ignore this basic
principle. It is disturbing also that he should misrepresent
Australia's policy of expecting overseas students to return to their
homelands when their studies are completed. He should be aware that
Australia is trying in this way to relieve neighbouring countries'
shortages of qualified people. Successful Asian students whose
qualifications are not needed in their own countries are allowed to
stay. Is this racism?"
It was reported that at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labor Party
executive in Canberra on October 13, 1971, the former Labor spokesman
on immigration, Mr Fred Daly, cross-examined Mr Whitlam about the
party's immigration policy. Mr Daly asked Mr Whitlam to spell out Labor
policy with regard to assisted passages without any discrimination on
any grounds of race, colour or nationality. Mr Whitlam was reported to
have said that the policy meant what it said: that non-Europeans, all
things being equal, would be eligible for assisted passages. It was
pointed out by Mr Daly that this policy could mean, in certain
circumstances, that the majority of assisted migrants arriving from
Britain could be of non-European origin. Mr Whitlam was reported to
have agreed that this was correct. We have never prevented anyone from
entering Australia because of colour, but because we feared
interference with our living standards by unintegratable minorities.
Since Federation, the number of coloured people entering Australia has
been limited because of economic considerations. We do not want a
repetition of the race riots that occurred with the Chinese on the
goldfields at Buckland River, in Victoria; at Lambing Flat, now Young,
in New South Wales; and at Gympie, in Queensland. Later there was
trouble over the importation or "black-birding" of Kanaka labourers
from the Pacific islands into the Queensland canefields. At that time
the argument was bruited forth that white men could not live in the
tropics. But there have since been three or four generations of the
same white families born and raised in the tropical regions of
Australia, and they are as healthy as, if not more healthy, than many
people born in the more temperate zones of New South Wales, Victoria,
South Australia and Tasmania.
The question of White Australia was raised at a Commonwealth
Parliamentary Association conference in Canberra in 1959. I was chosen
to speak in defence of the policy. One of the delegates was Learie
Constantine, a famous West Indian cricketer who was later knighted and
became a member of the House of Lords. After I had explained our policy
of admitting a limited number of non-European migrants, the delegates
from Africa, the West Indies, India and Pakistan were still not
entirely happy, but they were greatly mollified.
I said:
"White Australia is a term that finds no place in any of our
laws. It was a term that grew up forty years before we had a
Federation. It is journalese. It arose over difficulties on the
goldfields between Chinese and, for the most part, Englishmen, Scotsmen
and Irishmen who had also come here in search of gold. Under our
immigration laws, we do not exclude people solely because of race or
colour. There is not one delegate to this conference who could not come
to Australia to live permanently if he could fulfil the requirements of
our laws ... Our laws are much more liberal than are many Asian laws in
respect of immigration. There is discrimination in Asian laws, as I
know, between the peoples of one Asian country and another, but it is
the right of Asian people to discriminate, if they wish to do so, even
against fellow Asians or any other people. The Americans have a quota
system. They allow 100 Australians into the United States each year.
They allow in 100 Indians and 100 Chinese each year. But they allow
65,000 Englishmen and 25,000 Germans and 5,000 Italians and 2,600
Russians to enter their country each year. As an Australian, I refuse
to believe that one Englishman is better than 650 Australians or that
one Russian is better than twenty-six Australians, no matter what
American immigration laws might say. But if that is the way the
Americans wish to have it, let it be. I am the grandson of an American;
I have a tremendous regard for America, but I am not worried about the
provisions of American immigration law, because I want to live and die
in my own country, and I think most Asian people want to live and die
in their own country. Very few people anywhere ever want to emigrate if
they can avoid doing so."
When the conference adjourned, I met the former Australian Test
cricketer, Jack Fingleton, who was working there as a reporter. He was
waiting to go to dinner with Learie Constantine, who, by his long
residence in England, was regarded more as an Englishman than a West
Indian. Fingleton introduced me to Constantine, who said with a glint
in his eyes: "Never mind the bloody White Australia policy. Come and
have a drink." So we went and had a drink. In fact we had three drinks.
And I respected Constantine, because he was a highly intelligent man
who recognized the wisdom of our immigration policy.
My colleague, Dr Jim Cairns, asserted in Perth in 1971 that a Federal
Labor Government would admit more than 12,000 coloured migrants a year.
This is four times as many as the average intake of all coloured
migrants, apart from those of mixed blood, who had been given entry
permits in the previous three years. If we established a quota system,
would we allow more migrants from India, with its huge population, than
from Ceylon or Fiji? This is one criterion that would have to be
determined. How many manual workers would be admitted? And how many
educated people? Would we exclude qualified architects and engineers
because there was an over-supply of people in these professions in
Australia? I am completely opposed to our bringing out coloured doctors
from India, Pakistan, Ceylon, the West Indies and England when our
various medical boards will not permit enough Australians to graduate
each year, either on the pretext of lack of teachers, lack of
facilities, lack of cadavers, or lack of money. Indian and Pakistani
doctors, in particular, should be encouraged to go back to their own
countries, where the need of their services is the greatest. They
should show some patriotic interest in the sufferings of their fellow
countrymen, women and children. Hundreds of thousands of emaciated and
disease-ridden Pakistani and Indian people have been dying from
malnutrition and a lack of medical attention. I have always objected,
and I always will, to the sending of Australian doctors and nurses to
Asian and African countries while we import people from those
countries. The sooner these ridiculous practices cease, the better it
will be for the peace of mind of the Australian people, and the better,
too, for the victims of social and wage injustices in the Indian
sub-continent.
In a debate on immigration in the House of Commons in l971, the British
Home Secretary, Mr Reginald Maudling, said that when considering the
admission of people from other countries, the Government's first
concern must be for the people of Britain. He said Britain must be
protected from the tensions which were such a sadly frequent feature of
modern life in many countries. I think the same applies to Australia. I
maintain that a big influx of coloured migrants would be a menace to
social standards and to the trade union movement. The coloured people
would tend to congregate in ghettos. They would form the nucleus of
"black power" in Australia. They would try to identify themselves with
the Australian Aborigines who have been maltreated from the earliest
days of white settlement in this country. The Aborigines are still an
unhappy people.
What is wrong with most coloured migrants is that they form hard core,
anti-white, "black power" pressure groups in every country that accepts
them. I predicted a long time ago that immigration would become not
only a highly emotional issue during the 1972 election campaign and all
subsequent campaigns, but also an explosive issue.
More than 9,000 coloured or partly-coloured migrants are arriving in
Australia every year, and such a flow should be cut. The Immigration
Department has supplied me with figures which show that 44,52I persons
of non-European and mixed descent arrived in Australia between January
1, 1966, and December 3I, 1971. The total arrivals in the past three
years were: 9,4I0 in 1969, 9,055 in 1970 and 9,666 in 197I.
I have never been a lone voice in my advocacy of a homogeneous
Australia. In fact, I believe I have the support of a big majority of
my fellow Australians, and of many people in other countries. Only the
small minority of Australians who are too blind to see will continue to
ignore the hideous tragedy of the United Kingdom and the United States.
Why should Australia, always so free of racial strife, wish to import
trouble? In 1968, six out of ten British immigrant families interviewed
on their arrival in Australia said that their main reason for leaving
Britain was their fear of the colour problem.
The late Sir John Latham, an outstanding jurist and politician, wrote
in 1961:
"Australian policy is not based on race or colour, but on
difference. Ours is a European civilization ... At a press conference
in Japan, I found no difficulty in dealing with Australian immigration
policy. I asked my forty interrogators why Japan imposed restrictions,
amounting to prohibition, upon immigration of Chinese and Koreans into
Japan. They knew that Japan was protecting a standard of living and a
manner of life. They were not prepared to contend that Australia could
not properly do the same thing."
In l959, the then Minister for Immigration, Mr (later Sir) Alexander
Downer said Australia had the clear right to follow a policy of
building up a homogeneous society. In 1966, as Australian High
Commissioner to England, Sir Alexander Downer said Australia could
afford to relax its immigration policy to allow an annual influx of
non-Europeans as its population increased. But he added that we should
make haste slowly because "no country has yet solved the problems of
multi-racial harmony within its frontiers."
In 1969, another Immigration Minister, Mr Billy Snedden, said: `We must
have a single culture. We must be a single Australian people. That is a
view I strongly hold ... So help me, so long as I am in a position of
authority, that is what I will preach."
However, in 197I, Gough Whitlam made a speech to the Perth Press Club
in which he said it was nonsense to suggest that Labor's policy would
open the floodgate to coloured migrants or be the thin edge of the
wedge. Is it nonsense? The flow of coloured migrants from India and
Pakistan into the United Kingdom began slowly after I945, but built up
rapidly. Mr Whitlam then said: "The administration by our immigration
authorities requires immensely more humanity, subtlety and common sense
than has hitherto been shown if continuing and permanent damage is not
to be done to our reputation and our relations in our region." This I
regard as a reflection on Chifley, Evatt, Ward and myself particularly.
In May, 1972, I criticized a statement by the Minister for Customs, Mr
Don Chipp, who had said that he would like to see a stage, in the l980s
where Australia was becoming the only true multi-racial nation in the
world. I said that no red-blooded Australian wanted to see a
chocolate-coloured Australia in the 1980s. There was considerable
reaction to my remarks. I was taken to task by sections of the press
and by members of my own party.
However, I received a great number of letters from people who supported
my point of view. I was also commended by some of my political
opponents, including Dr Forbes and the Victorian Premier, Sir Henry
Bolte. Dr Forbes said that the Federal Government was determined to
maintain a predominantly homogeneous society. Sir Henry Bolte said: "I
believe that the huge majority of Australians would agree with Mr
Calwell and Dr Forbes. If there is one man in Australia whose opinions
on immigration should be listened to, that man is Arthur Calwell. I
give him his due. He was the originator of Australia's immigration
policy. He fought his own party to do it. He rewrote Australian policy
in favour of immigration. I always salute him for that."
About that time, Dr Forbes said in the House of Representatives:
"Our policies are more genuinely liberal in concept and in
administration than those of many countries. But they are also in
harmony with, and do not prejudice, our national interests. To go
further would be to put those interests at risk."
As I have said many times, a homogeneous Australia is possible. A
multi-racial Australia is also possible. But a combined homogeneous and
multi-racial Australia is impossible. Australia must be one thing or
the other; we can never be both.
In April, 1972, the Governor of South Australia, Sir Mark Oliphant,
predicted in a speech at the Adelaide Festival of Arts that sooner or
later, the whole world was bound to be populated by a coffee-coloured
fusion of all peoples. He said it was impossible to prevent
miscegenation. Sir Mark's speech was one that no State Governor, whose
only function is to act as the representative of the monarch, had the
right to make. The Queen never enters into the political arena in the
United Kingdom, and neither should her vice-regents in the countries of
the Commonwealth.
I later made a few innocent, but sapient, remarks about the grave
danger of Australia becoming a chocolate-coloured nation if 8,000 to
10,000 dark-skinned people continued to arrive here every year. The
occasion for my observations was the off-the-cuff advocacy of a
multi-racial society by Customs Minister Don Chipp in a dissertation on
pornography and censorship. There was no real difference between
Oliphant's prophecy of a coffee-coloured world and mine of a
chocolate-coloured Australia. Nobody took any notice of Oliphant, but a
vocal minority of newspaper scribblers, do-gooders and other strange
idiosyncratic citizens, voiced their peculiar nostrums after I made my
statement.
What I objected to was not the colour of any man's skin, his culture or
his history. I objected to the mass importation of people who will form
"black power" groups and menace the security of Australia when their
numbers have grown sufficiently to enable them to behave as they are
behaving in Great Britain and the United States. Japan, India, Burma,
Ceylon and every new African nation are fiercely anti-white and
fiercely anti one another. Do we want or need any of these people here?
I am one red-blooded Australian who says no, and who speaks for 90 per
cent of Australians.
Reverting to Governor Oliphant's speech, I cannot use the term
"coffee-coloured", which he coined, because I could never be a
plagiarist. It seems that "coffee-coloured" is not offensive, but that
"chocolate-coloured" is. I am not a professor of semantics, as Sir Mark
Oliphant is a professor of nuclear physics, but one would not need to
be a professor of anything to realize that there is no fundamental
difference between the two terms.
I wish to make further reference to the speech concerning the death of
Prime Minister Harold Holt made by my successor, Mr Whitlam, in the
House of Representatives on March 12, 1968. He said Mr Holt had
"brought to fruition the post-war immigration scheme begun under the
Right Hon. Member for Melbourne (Mr Calwell) as the first Australian
Minister for Immigration in the Chifley Labor Government.
Significantly, Mr Holt's first action as Prime Minister was to announce
liberalization of our immigration regulations regarding Asians." Mr
Whitlam went on: "When I did subsequently go abroad, it was made very
apparent to me that Harold Holt had been incomparably the best known,
the best liked Australian in all the Asian countries I visited."
This was not an occasion to lavish praise on the late Prime Minister
for having changed the immigration policy which I had established on
behalf of the Chifley Government, and on the supposedly wonderful
effect those changes had wrought on Asian governments. Those changes
can yet be disastrous for Australia.
This document has been extracted from Arthur Calwell's autobiography,
Be Just and Fear Not, published in 1972 (this document comprises
Chapter Fourteen, "Black Power and a Multi-Racial Society", and the
last two paragraphs here are reprinted from Chapter Twelve, "The
Immigration Saga").