Margaret Thatcher reluctant to give boat people refuge in Britain

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/dec/30/thatcher-snub-vietnamese-boat-people

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Margaret Thatcher initially refused to give 10,000 Vietnamese boat people refuge in Britain, privately warning her ministers that there would be riots on the streets if they were given council housing, Downing Street papers reveal.

The papers also show how Thatcher told her foreign secretary, Lord Carrington, and her home secretary, Willie Whitelaw, that it was "quite wrong that immigrants should be given council housing whereas white citizens were not".

The Downing Street files provide shocking evidence that a personal element of racism, not evident in her public statements as prime minister, lay behind her reluctance to agree to a private and informal request from the United Nations high commissioner for refugees for Britain to take in 10,000 refugees who had fled Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in April 1975. The papers, released at the National Archives today, show that her reluctance to take in any of the Vietnamese boat people led to her making a proposal to the Australian prime minister, Malcolm Fraser, that they jointly buy an Indonesian or Philippine island "not only as a staging post but as a place of settlement" for them all. This proposal was blocked by Lee Kuan Yu of Singapore, who feared it might become a "rival entrepreneurial city".

The new prime minister went on to tell Carrington and Whitelaw that those who were pressing the government to help the Vietnamese boat people "should be invited to accept one into their homes" and she asked if they could not simply be "shifted from one warehouse in Hong Kong to another in the UK". At an earlier meeting, the Downing Street files show that she warned her colleagues that there "would be riots in the streets if the government had to put refugees into council houses".

By July 1979 more than 60,000 were in camps in Hong Kong, then still a British colony, and they were arriving at the rate of 500 a month. British merchant ships were continuing to pick up large numbers in the South China sea.

Hundreds of thousands were fleeing Vietnam and Cambodia and Britain had led the calls for an international conference.

Thatcher made it clear that any admission of Vietnamese boat people would have to be matched by a cut in the level of immigration to Britain, particularly in the admission of dependants. Thatcher said "that she had far less objection to refugees, such as Rhodesians, Poles and Hungarians, since they could more easily be assimilated into British society".

Her reluctance to take in Britain's UN quota of 10,000 was all the more embarrassing in that it came after Thatcher had lectured the Soviet premier, Alexey Kosygin, on the plight of the Vietnamese boat people after fleeing "the tyranny of communism". Britain had also played a leading role in calling for a UN conference to tackle the humanitarian crisis in the South China seas.

On 9 July in the run-up to the UN conference, the Downing Street files show that Carrington and Whitelaw cornered her in an informal meeting. Carrington gave a vivid first-hand account of conditions in the camps in Hong Kong and suggested that Britain take the 10,000 spread over two years, and those picked up by British sea captains should be included in the quota. Whitelaw made it clear that 3,000 a year could be accommodated in Britain without the need for extra camps. He also promised Thatcher a new crackdown on immigrant male fiances, saying that he was thinking of "a kind of steeplechase designed to weed out south Asians in particular".

The official minute says: "The prime minister said, that on humanitarian grounds, she would much rather see the UK take in refugees than immigrants. With some exceptions there had been no humanitarian case for accepting 1½ million immigrants from South Asia and elsewhere. It was essential to draw the line somewhere."

When Whitelaw said his own postbag indicated a shift of opinion in favour of accepting more refugees, the prime minister said that "in her view all those who wrote letters in this sense should be invited to accept one into their homes. She thought it was quite wrong that immigrants should be given council housing whereas white citizens were not."

As the UN conference loomed, Thatcher relented and agreed that 10,000 should be let in, spread over three years, with a preference for those who spoke English and had no medical problems.

Visit the National Archives site for the 1979 papers