style="overflow: hidden; color: #000000; background-color: #ffffff; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; border: medium none;">“An influx of coloured people domiciled here”, a group of Labour MPs wrote to Clement Attlee in 1948 when the prime minister was considering filling Britain’s postwar labour needs with colonial immigrants, “is likely to impair the harmony, strength and cohesion of our public and social life, and to cause discord and unhappiness among all concerned.” The legislators were right and wrong. In the decades since, mass immigration has often brought the disharmony and discord they warned of. But most modern Britons would be appalled to hear these problems chalked up to simple racial animosity. A confusion results. Fear of getting called a racist stifles debate about managing immigration, which remains among Britain’s direst policy failures.