Almost a decade after the publication of The Lonely Londoners (1956), Selvon again returns to the story of his West Indian immigrants’ struggle for survival in London. Selvon’s extensive exploration of the pressing need for a home amongst these immigrants reemerges in The Housing Lark. However, given that this novel was written in the aftermath of the notorious Notting Hill and Nottingham riots of 1958, The Housing Lark refers to some things that are left unsaid in The Lonely Londoners,
such as the increasing number of immigrants and growing racial tension.
Based upon a report produced by the Home Office, approximately 210,000 people from the Commonwealth countries were reported to be living and working in Britain in 1958 (Winder 362). Therefore, as Phillips and Phillips (1998) point out, although the riots in 1958 were not exactly unpredictable, they were more or less inevitable, since “race was the trigger which set them off and kept the passions burning”;9 they do not, however, provide any lengthy explanation of the causes of the riots, since they consider them to be too complex.
On the other hand, however, Stuart Hall proposes three possible constituent
9 The race riots, which erupted in August and September 1958 in Nottingham and the London borough of Notting Hill, led to several days of disturbance and aggression against black West Indians by white British people. For more information on the race riots, see Phillips and Phillips 159.
elements. According to Hall, the most important factor leading to the riots was “the structure of antagonism between ‘colony’ blacks and sections of the indigenous white working class and petty-bourgeoisie of this decaying ‘Royal’ suburb” (“Racism and Reaction” 27). What Hall keenly observes is a rivalry within the changed British class structure, in which the white working class found itself leveled with the blacks from the ex-colonized countries. In the decaying London borough of Notting Hill, for instance, the houses were affordable to both white working class and black immigrants.
Hall accordingly concludes that this is what led to the emergence of racism in Britain.
The riots have, accordingly, been regarded as “an important watershed in the development of racialised politics in Britain” (Solomos 54).
The major significance of the 1958 riots has, however, been much more far-reaching, since they would ultimately arouse the attention of both the media and the public to the race question and the immigration problem. From her analysis of the way in which the riots, and their subsequent impacts, were represented in certain films,
Wendy Webster finds that they present an imagery of Englishness under threat:
In the 1950s, much social exploration of the “colour problem” produced similar siege narratives and, like colonial war imagery, portrayed immigration as a threat to an Englishness symbolized by the idea of home. Colonial war imagery showed the violation of English domestic sanctuaries in the Empire, elaborating domestic detail to signify Englishness. Social exploration of immigration in the 1950s and 1960s also made home a symbol of embattled Englishness, mobilizing imagery of “little England” to signify that the nation was threatened. (166)
According to Webster, the sequential riots of 1958 created images throughout the media of English streets filled with white violence, with such racially-motivated riots having resulted from the fear that immigration would threaten the very idea of home that was firmly embodied in the symbol of Englishness. The riotous scenes evoked concerns amongst ordinary white people that their ideal home, England, had come under threat from their black neighbors; it is, therefore, hardly surprising that a consequence of the 1958 racial conflict was increasing pressure to end coloured immigration (Phillips and Phillips 165).
Clearly, a connection had instantly been made within British society between the race riots and the urgent call for immigration control; indeed, Peter Fryer recognised that race had been turned into an important public issue leading, step-by-step, to racism becoming “institutionalized, legitimized and nationalized.” Thus, in the aftermath of the riots, the setting of immigration policy was considered to be a political issue involving discriminatory legislation (Black People 381).
The Commonwealth Immigrant Act of 1962 was therefore seen as “a piece of discriminatory legislation with the obvious intention of reducing the total annual inflow of black people into Britain” (Fryer, Black People 382). The Act, which was surely a reaction to the impact of the Notting Hill riots in 1958, imposed a distinction
between citizens of Britain and those of independent Commonwealth countries.10 Fryer argues that the aim of such discriminatory legislation was clearly to decide a fixed British race relationship, illustrating that “blackness was officially equated as second-class citizenship, with the status of undesirable immigrant”; thus, it was obvious that the legislation endorsed racism (Black People 381).
The racist and discriminatory climate in which British society found itself immersed in the 1960s led to questions as to the ways in which the black immigrants would react towards everything around them in England – authority, politics, work, their neighbors and even their everyday lives – and how they would subsequently feel about the value of their lives in England with their newfound sense of being
“unwanted,” “undesirable.”
In The Housing Lark, published three years after the enactment of the 1962 Act, Selvon continues the story of the struggle by West Indian immigrants for a living in London, dealing with themes similar to those covered in The Lonely Londoners.
Where The Lonely Londoners had depicted the everyday experiences of these West Indian “boys” during the 1950s, The Housing Lark could be read as its sequel, with Selvon continuing to relate the stories of the hardship that the boys had to endure in
the early-1960s, a decade or so after their arrival in their “Motherland.” In one
10 The 1962 Act restricted entry from the Commonwealth and its colonies to those issued with job vouchers. For more details on the Commonwealth Immigrant Act 1962, see Spencer 129-134.
interview, Selvon relates his thoughts and feeling towards the writing of The Housing Lark, admitting that this novel “follow[s] swiftly on the heels of The Lonely Londoners
[and describes] in even greater detail than The Lonely Londoners, something of the hardships that the Caribbean people [endured], particularly with housing and jobs and things like that” (Thieme and Dotti 122).
Both The Lonely Londoners and The Housing Lark probe into the plight of these immigrants caught up in poverty, having to deal with bitter racism and limited accommodation, in degrading areas. Selvon’s “boys” in The Housing Lark continue to encounter accommodation problems; Battersby has been threatened, as usual, by his rent collector; Nobby has to pretend to be an animal lover so as to please his white English landlady; and Sylvester, an Afro-West Indian, is so desperate to find accommodation that he has to lie to a landlord who only takes in “real” Indians as his tenants.
However, if The Lonely Londoners is replete with the boys’ idle talk or complaints, it is in The Housing Lark where the action begins. Getting tired of searching for accommodation and feeling insecure for their status, Selvon’s “boys”
begin to yearn for a proper house of their own and begin to pool money in order to purchase such a house for themselves. Indeed, it is in The Housing Lark that these black Londoners stop searching for shelter, and begin focusing directly on settlement.
As Gallows ponders in The Housing Lark, “If a man have a house he establish his right
to live” (49). Indeed, this is a clear demonstration of the “homing desire” that continually drove them on (Brah 192).
The evolving sense of belonging is very much apparent in The Housing Lark.
Even before Selvon’s immigrant characters begin to stake out their claim for a place in London by actualizing their plan to purchase a house, they all experience a process involving the recognition of the many ways that they are marginalized and excluded, accordingly being driven by the homing desire to strive for their home, and eventually making sense of their relationship within British society.
Following the constant white racist bullying which they had continually encountered during their attempts at finding decent accommodation, these immigrant characters began to probe into the possibility of making their own home within a racially-hostile and discriminatory British society. In Dominic Head’s observations on the theme of dealing with a quest for a settlement in postwar British fiction, their idea of purchasing a house represents “an attempt to come to terms with the implications of permanent settlement” (Cambridge 170).
Gallows’ ballad of finding his place in London is a typical story of an immigrant who goes through the process of belonging, searching for a permanent settlement in gloomy London. Throughout The Housing Lark, Selvon portrays Gallows as the type of immigrant who comes to England essentially by accident, and thereafter leads an
aimless life in London, usually having to “attach himself to other men” (Housing 49).
Thus, there is much hope in the sense that Gallows’ life becomes more meaningful
when he gets involved in the scheme to purchase the house with the other boys:
The loss of the fiver was a good thing in a way, as he had something to do looking for it. But the biggest thing that ever happen to Gallows, bigger even than God, was this idea that the boys come up with to buy a house. To Gallows, if a man have a house he establish his right to live, and he didn’t mind even if he had a tenth of a share, or a twentieth for that matter, he would still feel he is the sole owner. (49)
Gallows’ sense of affiliation with London becomes abundantly clear in the way in which he becomes involved in the scheme, carefully watching the boys pool their money to purchase the house. Instead of following the other boys and fooling around together, Gallows goes to the market where the boys usually congregate in order to see if any participant of the housing scheme is squandering money on smoking or drinking.
Although he is not the central character in the novel, his role serves as an important device within the sequence of the plot. Where Galahad is portrayed as a foil to Moses in the Moses Trilogy, Gallows takes on the role of a foil to Battersby and the other boys.
In his analysis of the relationship between Moses and Galahad in Moses Ascending and Moses Migrating, Victor Ramraj considers that Selvon’s creation of
these two characters suggests “the classical dichotomy of the writer’s psyche: the sedentary observer and the active participant” (78); and indeed, the dichotomy of Selvon’s psyche does reappear in The Housing Lark. Yet Gallows is depicted as a
fervent commentator, energetic observer and lively dreamer, whereas Battersby, the protagonist, enthusiastically commits himself either to squandering money or to ways of making more of it.
Gallows plays the role of daydreamer who walks along Bayswater Road
“wondering if in truth the streets of London pave with gold” (Housing 67). He is, however, also portrayed as an observant bystander who comments on the absurdity of his West Indian companions when he finds them spending money on smoking instead of saving money for the house. Gallows is the only one in the whole group who takes the plan seriously whilst the other boys are “looking on the whole scheme as a lark”
and have “no intention of stopping smoking or drinking to save money for no house”;
thus he remarks, “That is why we can’t get on! That is why black people could never strive in this world, I tell you!” (52, 57)
As the title of the novel suggests, the whole plan of pooling money to purchase a house is something of a mischievous act, in which all of these West Indian immigrants cheerfully take part (apart from Gallows and the girls). It does, however, become clear that Gallows is not the only foil character in the novel serving as a commentator on the boys’ fun-loving behavior. In contrast to the cheerful nature of the boys, whose days are spent mainly on drinking, smoking or chasing women (with the one exception of Gallows) Selvon’s female characters in The Housing Lark strive hard to improve their
lives. Selvon is particularly keen to make Teena a foil character of great power, given her aggressive ways.
In his analysis of Selvon’s novels, Mark Looker notes that The Housing Lark includes “females as voices and presences rather than simply objects,” and as such, differs from Selvon’s other novels in which the women are usually depicted as objects of desire (120). It is through Teena’s provocative act that Selvon deliberately shows the nature of the personality of West Indian immigrants. Teena chastises Battersby and the other boys when she finds that he will not give her all of the money that was
supposedly saved for the housing pool:
Shame, shame and sorrow, is what scalliwags and scoundrels like the set of you bring on the heads of OUR PEOPLE. Everything is a skylark and a fete and a bacchanal. None of you ever serious … You all can’t even get serious about a thing like housing. You know the distresses we have to go through, you know the arse black people see to get a roof over their heads in this country, and yet, the way you all behave is as if you haven’t worry in the world. No ambition, no push. Just full your belly with rum and food.
(Housing 145).
In such a way, Selvon has Teena serving as the rational voice reminding the others of the reasons why they came to Britain: “That is what you come to Brit’n to do? Fellars like you muddy the waters for West Indians who trying to live decent in the country”
(145). Reacting to Teena’s emotional and sentimental appeal, Battersby gives up both his money and his rum in resignation; thus, through Teena’s melodramatic speech and Battersby’s reluctant resignation, the reader immediately begins to see that their plan to
purchase a house and establish their settlement will be actualized.
Like Selvon’s other London works, The Housing Lark is essentially a comical novel which features not only the humorous portrayal of lively immigrant characters, but also amusing interactions and dialogues between the characters. Selvon adds to the plot of The Housing Lark with an amusing subversion of the symbolism of English history, an episode the likes of which is not written into his other novels. One of the most memorable scenes in The Housing Lark takes place at Hampton Court Palace, a historical spot where Battersby and his West Indian friends take a clamorous excursion.11 Selvon presents a subversive irony in the way that the immigrants erroneously pronounce Hampton Court as “Hamdon Court”; he also portrays the trip to Hampton Court as a performance of “colonizing London”.12 Thus, it is in Hampton Court, a hugely symbolic monument of British imperial power, that these immigrants engage in subverting its symbolic significance. As soon as they arrive in this popular tourist destination, they make themselves at home, exhilaratingly drinking, eating and
shouting to their kids:
[A]nd hear Fitz, high with rum: “Don’t teach the children no wicked things!
Henry Eight was a evil character living with ten-twelve women!”
“It don’t say so in this book,” Teena say, waving a brochure.
11 The boys in The Housing Lark refer to it as “Hamdon Court” as opposed to Hampton Court. For instance, the character Battersby in the novel considers “planning to buy a house is one thing . . . planning to go an excursion to Hamdon Court is another” (Housing 103).
12 This phrase is borrowed from Mark Looker’s usage. Closely examining Selvon’s depiction of the West Indian immigrants’ excursion to Hampton Court, Looker notes that from the moment they arrive in the Court, they determine to make themselves at home (128).
“Never mind the book,” Fitz say, “he uses to behead them one after the other in the Tower.” (Housing 118)
Whilst Teena grasps at the chance of visiting Hampton Court to educate her children, her drunken husband Fitz shouts to her, telling her that the history provided in the National Trust brochure is less than reliable. Thus, Fitz declines to be colonized under the grandeur of past British imperialism, and instead colonizes the historical monument in London through his own gestures.
As Looker observes, in his London novels, Selvon’s immigrant characters have claimed their right of “being” in London by giving names to certain parts of London, for instance, Piccadilly Circus, Bayswater Road or one-eye Nelson with his column in Trafalgar Square. However, Looker considers that it is in The Housing Lark that Selvon makes his characters show their determination “to colonize rather than be colonized” (128). Therefore, when the novel concludes with Battersby putting a swatch of his Aladdin wallpaper in his pocket just before he and his friends move to their new house, this becomes a significant gesture clearly indicating their intentions in Britain, that they are here to stay.