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45
While not claiming to have had undiluted success with problems brought to me, it has been gratifying
to hear certain employers say how they appreciate the imagination of the City Council in providing
the services of an officer who can assist with problems which are still bewildering to them and to the
employees.
There will always be resentment and difficulty where the housing shortage necessitates multioccupation
of houses which do not conveniently lend themselves to this purpose, particularly when
people of sharply contrasting backgrounds are forced to live in close contact. These difficulties are
exacerbated by factors which were explained in some detail in my report of last year.
Houses in the area where immigrants are concentrated continue to change hands frequently, for
reasons explained in the last report; there have also been a number of owner occupiers—many of
whom were known to me as newcomers when they first moved into the district—who have moved
away to what they feel is a more desirable house or neighbourhood. The houses from which they have
moved have mostly been purchased by other non-English people.
Unfortunately, cases of friction between landlord, occupiers and controlled tenants have shown
little signs of decreasing, particularly where the landlord is a coloured immigrant and the controlled
tenant is white. In fact, I am still concerned with problems which were brought to my attention three
and more years ago.
It is true that legal machinery exists to deal with persecution and harassment by landlords, but in
explanation of the fact that these cases have continued it must be remembered that even the new
legislation can be ineffective against behaviour which is motivated by the will to persecute in a petty
fashion, or a blank refusal to compromise. Courts can adjudicate only on positive evidence placed
before them, and the production of substantiated evidence where the people in question are acutely
conscious of the limitation is almost impossible. There are many forms of nuisance which cannot
be proved to have been deliberatively committed by hostile landlords.
The introduction of the Rent Officer brought hope to exploited tenants, and I welcomed the
opportunity of being able to refer to him those people with rent problems which come within this
category. During the period covered by this Report it is too soon to evaluate the degree of help which
this provision will afford. Nevertheless, very early in the day my attention was drawn to one method
employed by an unsatisfactory landlord to avoid this intervention. Knowing that the rents he was
charging were exorbitant and also that his tenants would, at this stage, be unlikely fully to understand
the function and powers of the Rent Officer, the landlord in question approached them to explain
that there was a new Act which meant that rents would be reduced. He then explained that in order
to save his tenants the bother of applying for this reduction in the "normal" way he was volunteering
to reduce rents right away. Needless to say, the volunteered reduction was considerably less than the
one which I would imagine the Rent Officer would make.
Marital and extra-marital problems brought to me have increased. "Londonization" of West
Indians, particularly West Indian ladies, proceeds apace. Unfortunately, however, the attitude of
certain West Indian men (more especially from the more retarded areas) towards their women has
not progressed to the same extent, and is rather akin to that existing in the Victorian era in this country
when many husbands expected their wives to be an economic genius in managing the house and also
expected to have a separate social life in the way they could if they were bachelors.
I am concerned where there are children in these circumstances because they inevitably suffer from
the situation. The Victorian parallel usually ends here because Victorian family life was such that
emotional scenes and intimacies between parents seldom occurred with children present, whereas
with West Indian families living in limited accommodation they invariably do.
Children of immigrants have to face increasingly difficult problems of adjustment as they grow up
and are confronted with situations where their cultural patterns and family loyalties are in conflict
with life in this country. Children of non-English speaking groups whose religion imposes a pattern
of life which is essentially foreign, experience even sharper clashes of culture than other groups.
Nevertheless, these children often receive more sympathy than children of English speaking immigrant
families who share our religion. The problems of these children are often underestimated.
It has to be borne in mind that the English spoken by West Indians from rural areas is different
in construction and accent from the colloquial English, including terms and expressions that are
completely foreign to English people. Therefore, when the child from this environment begins school
he has first to become familiar with the language of colloquial English which is completely new to him.
This situation must create enormous problems of word misunderstanding and communication.
I would not know if, or how seriously, this situation might affect the average child's reception to
education, but I, nevertheless, feel some useful research might be undertaken in this connection.
Certainly a linguistic handicap can mask intelligence.