A Smethwick ‘effect'

The role that Peter Griffiths’ victory at Smethwick played in the development of the new Labour Government’s migration control policy has shaped many interpretations of the result. Shamit Saggar has suggested that Labour policy prior to the result was seen to have inspired a ‘white backlash…an electoral penalty’ and that policy propagated afterwards has ‘tended to be measured with a Smethwick-inspired nervousness’. 1 This chapter examines the role of primarily British, but also international, political actors as they defined the Smethwick result as the result of ‘racial politics’. In turn, this was developed as a counter-myth to Peter Griffiths’ analysis of the town’s problems and proposed solutions. First, this chapter explores Harold Wilson’s parliamentary criticism of Peter Griffiths in his first parliamentary speech as Prime Minister, which built on his criticisms on election night. It then considers how this stance, and his appointment of Patrick Gordon Walker as Foreign Secretary despite his lack of a constituency, underpinned the attempted engineering of the Leyton by-election to resolve this. That the manoeuvre failed, and halved Labour’s tiny parliamentary majority despite Leyton’s limited integration problems, demonstrated the power of unintended consequences influenced by the Smethwick contest. Furthermore, it set the tone for the Midland constituency’s interaction with the new Labour administration.