two sides to the closing door . by Colin Legum , our commonwealth correspondent . the government is going to have a hard job defending its intention to change Britain &apos;s traditional open door policy for commonwealth citizens - a policy that goes back to 1608 , when Lord Chief Justice Ellesmere declared that James 1 was one entire king over all his subjects in whichsoever of his dominions they were born . of Britain &apos;s right to change this policy there can be no question : she is the only commonwealth member who has not so far acted under the 1918 imperial conference decision giving each member complete control of the composition of its population by means of restrictions on immigration . the question is not , therefore , about her right to make this change , but whether it is wise . nobody tries to deny that the problem of immigration into Britain is primarily a problem of colour : the need for control was never raised so long as immigrants were largely European , as , until recently , they were . a nauseous campaign waged by a group of tory M.P.&apos;s has been directed almost exclusively against coloured immigration ; and it is unfortunate that the home Secretary waited to make his formal announcement until the end of an unpleasant ( though by no means one-sided ) debate at the conservative party conference at Brighton . hence the need to disentangle the facts from the racial prejudices which have obscured them . voluntary control . what are the facts ? until 1953 immigration from the commonwealth was negligible ; and the permanent coloured population was less than 50,000 . the largest intake was from the West Indies , running at about 2,000 a year . the one exception were the Irish : the citizens of the republic were treated for purposes of migration as if they were commonwealth citizens . between 1945 and 1959 Irish immigrants ( 353,000 ) exceeded immigrants ( 333,000 ) from all other commonwealth countries . the great wave of West Indians started in 1954 with 10,000 immigrants ; by 1960 the figure had risen to more than 54,000 ; and the estimated figure for this year is likely to reach 70,000 . this great increase is due to fear of immigration controls . there are now about 200,000 West Indians ( mainly Jamaicans ) in Britain . there is , however , another factor which weighed perhaps more heavily with the government &apos;s decision to introduce some form of control . in the past the governments of both India and Pakistan voluntarily agreed to maintain strict control over emigration to Britain . this system worked well until last year . the net inward movement of Indians never exceeded 6,600 ; in 1959 it was down to 2,900 . in the first eight months of this year , however , it reached 13,500 . for Pakistan , the highest figure was 5,200 in 1957 , which dropped to 2,500 in 1960 . but in the first eight months of this year it rose sharply to 13,160 . clearly , the control systems operated by India and Pakistan have broken down . it is difficult to find exact figures of non-coloured immigrants because many people from Australia , New Zealand , Canada and South Africa are in fact emigrants returning home . but , with the exception of the Irish , they are a negligible proportion of the total figure . non-commonwealth immigrants ( mainly Europeans on restricted work permits ) rose from about 45,800 in 1959 to just over 53,000 last year . public services . what conclusions can be drawn from these figures ? there is first the overall picture of an expanding working population , with immigration accelerating , emigration decelerating ( 230,000 in 1957 , about 130,000 in 1960 ) , and very little unemployment . immigrants starting new jobs totalled 177,500 in 1959 , and 236,000 in 1960 . immigration has therefore been meeting a real need ; without it British industry could not have expanded as fast as it has done . as Mr Butler stressed last week , London transport and hospitals would have been in poor shape but for the immigrants , especially the West Indians . the same is true of many public services , particularly in the midlands and Liverpool . but there are clearly other factors which must be considered . as things stand , there is no evidence that immigration will slow down of its own volition . the reality of the world to-day is of unequal economic development , with the richer countries growing richer and the poorer being forced to export their unemployed . within the commonwealth all other countries control immigration . the West Indian islands even discriminate against one another . the older dominions ( especially Australia ) discriminate against non-whites . the United States and Latin America have also recently tightened up their immigration controls . this is no reason for Britain to behave likewise , but it does raise the problem of what will happen if Britain remains the only uncontrolled area into which the spill-over can go . is it right to assume that the volume of this spill-over should be allowed to find its own level without any attempt at planning ? will immigration slow down once the British employment market begins to reach saturation point ? or shall we suddenly wake up to find that failure of plan has produced a large surplus of unskilled and semi-skilled labour , largely among the coloured communities ? what would result from such a lack of foresight ? real problems . if undiminished West Indian immigration is now to be matched by a rising tide of east Indian immigration ( after the breakdown of the voluntary system of controls ) , can we believe that racial and social tensions will not be increased ? and who would benefit from this ? even though the real problems have become obscured by the deplorable arguments of racists , it remains true that they are real problems , and can be dealt with most effectively by rational discussion . Mr Butler has firmly rejected the idea of any controls based on discrimination . he has made the reasonable suggestion that people with criminal records should not be allowed free entry , and that immigrants with bad criminal records in this country might be deported . he has also suggested that it might be desirable to relate immigration to employment opportunities here . there can be no real objection to these proposals , in principle . what should concern us is how this policy is to be administered , and whether in fact it can be administered without racial discrimination . since the majority of immigrants to-day are coloured , it will be difficult to avoid the suspicion of discrimination . it is vital therefore that , before any form of control is introduced , Britain should consult all her partners in the commonwealth , and possibly her future allies in the common market as well . for it is not only a question of deciding how best to arrange for immigration to continue into Britain ; it is equally important to explore the possibility of greater migration within the commonwealth itself . Trinidad , Australia and Canada might all be expected to make a greater contribution than they have done in the past . finally , there is the central question whether Britain will not somehow be altering the whole nature of her relationship with the rest of the commonwealth if she abandons her open door policy . we should not pretend that Britain has somehow been behaving in a way worthy of special praise . our own economy has benefited enormously from immigration . nor must we think of ourselves as being uniquely generous . France has always maintained an open door policy for members of her community - a policy much more difficult to maintain during the Algerian troubles than anything we have so far had to face . Holland , too , has kept open house for her associated territories . also we must remember that even if the coloured immigrants in this country should reach 500,000 in the next year or two , they would comprise only 1 per cent of our total population . to shirk from the implications of trying to integrate this tiny minority of coloured peoples into British society is to show little confidence in our own ability to practise what we always preach . danger-spots . but the problem of absorbing immigrants harmoniously into British society is as important to the immigrants as to the British . one of the important conclusions reached by Mr James Wickenden in his valuable study on colour in Britain is that a danger appears to lie where a concentration of immigrants has formed too quickly for an area &apos;s capacity to absorb them . where this occurs there has been violence and the danger of violence and hostility will always be present . as a short term measure it is therefore surely desirable to keep the number of immigrants to a level which can be absorbed . the open door policy is of value only so long as genuine hospitality and security can be offered to the newcomers . it is with this aspect that we should be mainly concerned . Russia to-day . by Edward Crankshaw . why Mr K is out of date . in twenty years Russia may well achieve the prosperity promised in the new party programme , but the Russian people are not likely to be satisfied with material progress alone . what Mr Khrushchev was talking about in the Kremlin last Wednesday was 1984 . he was looking twenty years ahead . but the picture he painted - a picture which , he said , many people would dismiss as utopian - was not in the least Orwellian ; and for this we should be thankful . it was not utopian either . it was , rather , a picture of metroland in 1961 , extended to cover the vastness of the Soviet Union . that Mr Khrushchev should be able to think of it in the same breath as utopia is itself a sign that he is hopelessly behind the times , not only in relation to the world as a whole but , more interestingly , in relation to his own people . he was introducing the new party programme to the twenty-second party congress , convened to approve his development plans for the next two decades . twenty years is a long time : Mr Khrushchev will be eighty-seven if he lives to see his utopia come true . and if there is one certain thing about this programme , it is that long before the material promises are realised the whole concept will have become irrelevant , overtaken by events ; or , to use Mr Khrushchev &apos;s own favourite expression , life itself will have shown up the startling insufficiencies of his present thinking . air of triumph . this is not to say that there will not be great material advances , or that these are not necessary . indeed , they are highly necessary if the Soviet Union is ever to stand comparison with the advanced nations of the west . for the west is also moving , and a great deal will happen in the next twenty years . whether because Mr Khrushchev is ignorant of the social revolution in , for example , Britain , or whether because he thinks we shall stand still , or collapse , Mr Khrushchev seems incapable of visualising any forward movement outside the Soviet Union . he says , for example , with an air of triumph , that within the next two decades every family in the Soviet Union will have a comfortable apartment to itself : is it inconceivable that this may also happen here ? apparently unaware that British agricultural labourers get holidays with pay , pensions , and benefits under the health services , he announces that paid holidays will gradually be extended to farm workers , who are also , some time in the next two decades , to receive old-age pensions and sickness and temporary disability grants . with regard to education , he said that about 40 per cent of the country &apos;s workers and over 23 per cent of its farm workers now have a secondary or higher education : by 1981 all children are to receive a complete secondary education . during the same period the goal of free medical treatment and hospitalisation for all , as well as free rents , will be reached . all this , with a reduction of working hours , is designed to bring about in the next twenty years a living standard higher than that of any capitalist country . for the first time in history , Mr Khrushchev said , insufficiency would be fully and finally eliminated : no capitalist country , he asserted , could set itself this task . but he adduced no evidence to support either of these statements . productivity only . it is one thing to congratulate Mr Khrushchev on breaking down the Stalinist paralysis ( somebody had to do it ) and setting the Soviet Union on the road to material prosperity after the negative horrors of the cruel years . 