LONDON is the town of the tall red double-decker buses, the buses which always appear to be on the verge of overturning as they twist top-heavily around the City's corners and through its narrow streets. The only person to keep his balance is the ticket collector, who passes up and down the aisle with easy poise, bending over each seat and rolling out a ticket from the machine hitched to his belt.

The other remarkable fact about London ticket collectors, and bus drivers, is that most are black. To a visitor, this is probably the clearest and most immediate pointer to a problem which is fast assuming major proportions.

Until the Second World War, many Britishers had never seen a colored person. During the War, they found American Negro soldiers stationed all over the country, but Americans were foreigners and they left as soon as the War was over. The '50's and early '60's, however, brought an important change. Mother of an empire, Britain felt obligated to open its arms to any subject of a Commonwealth nation. Most of these nations are predominantly colored, and most of them enjoy standards of living considerably below those of Great Britain. The result was predictable. Large numbers of colored Commonwealth subject left their countries, which offered them little hope, and made the trip across an ocean or a continent to the tiny island. Today there are one million colored people living in Great Britain, a ratio of one black to fifty whites.

Unequal Distribution

An American would not consider this ratio overwhelming. But statistics don't accurately reflect the situation. First of all, the colored have not spread themselves over the whole country. They live in and around the major industrial centers. Cambridge, the beautiful university town on the river Don, where undergraduates go punting with their sweethearts on sunny afternoons, now has nearly forty-five colored inhabitants for every fifty-five whites.

This can not fail to cause a number of serious problems. One of the most immediate worries for a recent immigrant is finding a job. "No black bastards wanted here," and "No vacancy and why don't you go back to your own country," are the answers he learns to expect. Almost one half of the immigrants surveyed by the National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants (NCCI), which was set up two years ago to advise the government on the integration of Commonwealth immigrants, claimed that they had been discriminated against. Discrimination does not often assume so crass a form. Most employers would not specifically state that they hire on a discriminatory basis, but the NCCI survey found that the general attitude of employers was to hire colored staff only if the labor shortage should become too great, and then only for menial jobs.

People in very low levels of company hierarchy play a large role in the colored man's job-hunt. It is the gamekeeper, the receptionist, the personnel clerk, and the secretary, who act as a filter system and turn the immigrant applicant away.

The rationale offered for this is that "the existing staff would not like it," and, more often, that "the immigrants are underskilled, indolent and unlikely to stay with the company." But the facts do not substantiate the last claim. The NCCI found that almost half the immigrants contracted had been in their present occupation for over three years, that 70 per cent had English trade qualifications, 44 per cent had passed their General Certificate of Education (the British equivalent of a high school diploma) and only 36 per cent had no qualifications. In short, the immigrant labor force, comprised of the more adventuresome and enterprising of the Commonwealth population, is probably better trained than any random group of British or American citizens.

To prove the point, NCCI sent an Englishman, a Hungarian, and a colored immigrant, all equally well qualified, in search of a job. They applied for the same position. The Englishman was never turned down, the Hungarian was turned down thirteen times and the colored person was turned down 27 times out of 30.

It is not unusual, therefore, to find that the man collecting your bus fare not only has a high school diploma but also a college degree, or even a Ph.D. A recent issue of the British magazine, The Economist,indignantly addressed itself to the Minister of Transport, Barbara Castle: "How many colored people drive buses in London?" it asked. "And how many are employed as bus inspectors?" The answer: very many for the first question, none for the second. "This is unforgiveable," The Economist says. "Mrs. Castle, please wake up."

Unfortunately, the fact to which most Britishers are waking up to is that they do not want to work with colored people, that they do not want to eat with them, that they do not want to share toilet facilities. Above all, they do not want a colored man for their boss.

The picture is not all bleak. Some employers have sought to fight prejudice by setting an unofficial quota so the number of immigrants is kept below a particular level in any one department. After a difficult introductory period many employers have found that the hostility dise down.

Unequal Education

At the root of the problem is education. Many of the immigrants are highly educated and competent. Some are not. And that is enough to give rise to prejudice. Also, the immigrants, though competent, may have very little knowledge of the British way of life. Here Indian immigrants, with a hundred years of British rule behind them, have a very definite advantage over the West Indians and Pakistanis. (These three along with Cypriots, form the most important group of immigrants). It is in the school-room that these disadvantages are most glaring. Some Cambridge elementary school teachers find themselves trying to instruct a class where almost half the pupils may not speak English properly. This is the kind of set-back that is very hard, if not impossible, to overcome in a large class. These children may stay permanently behind.

The great influx in immigrants began in the '50's, and Britain has compulsory education up to the age of 16. So it is the next few years that will show whether the school system has succeeded in wiping out these initial disadvantages, or whether it is only maintaining them. If the schools fail to integrate the British-born children of immigrants, it will prove that British society as it is now constituted has failed to cope with, and indeed has succeeded in perpetuating, the problem.

There is every indication that the British educational system has failed. Children are streamed into classes at the age of eleven, according to their score on the British equivalent of an achievement test. Like American tests, the 11+ exam discriminates heavily against children who do not come from middle-class white backgrounds. There is no sign that British-born colored people have an easier-time of it.