‘Race and Nation’ lecture notes
Chronology of immigration - prewar
- 19th & 20th centuries: Britain at most times a net exporter of people
- 1826-1905: no immigration controls, as a result of which Britain attracts a
range of immigrant groups, including: Irish, Jews, & to a lesser extent Italians,
Germans, Russian Poles, Communard French exiles, Asians & Chinese
Chronology - post-war
- Largest immediate post-war group was Irish, who remained the largest
immigrant community until 1971
- The Empire Windrush docked in Britain in 1948, with 492 West Indians
- No large scale Afro-Caribbean immigration until early 1950s, & later for Asians
(Punjabi Sikhs, Gujarati Hindus, Pakistani Muslims)
- By 1971: 705,000 Caribbean & Indian origin residents
- By 1990: 2.5 million non-whites – 5% of population. This was non-white
immigration on an unprecedented scale
Post-war developments
- 1946: the Attlee government envisaged a labour shortage of 600,000-1 million
- As a result, between 1945 & 1961, 1 million people added to British
population. They belonged to 3 main groups, & the treatment received by each is
highly revealing of British governmental attitudes:
Firstly, there were European refugees, brought in under the European Volunteer
Workers scheme. Primarily Polish, they were generally accepted as equals,
receiving standard wages & conditions
The second migrant group of period was from Ireland: by 1961 just over 1
million Irish-born people lived in Britain. Like refugees, they were not British,
but they were given citizen’s privileges
Gov protected & encouraged a regular migrant flow from Ireland
The third migrant group came from West Indies, India & Pakistan. Between
1948-1952 this involved 1-2000 people each year; 10,000 in 1954. In 1960, net
intake of colonial migrants was 58,000; & in 1961 reached 136,000.
Theoretically the most favoured group (the 1948 Nationality Act conferred
British citizen or subject status), but it faced the least welcoming reception (&
many unofficial measures to limit numbers)
Government & ‘protection’ of national identity
- Policymakers categorized each migrant group according to how well it was
perceived to fit within British national identity. They also presumed that this
national identity was a singular, fixed entity which it was their duty to protect
- Among these 3 immigrant groups, the ability to assimilate was above all
calculated on an index of skin colour, and this was allowed to trump the legal
stipulations of the 1948 Nationality Act
- Britain’s imperial heritage ensured that coloured skin was also presumed to
connote ‘un-British’ behavioural and character traits
- Contemporary governmental language defined black people as ‘other’ and
alien, & represented their immigration as a ‘problem’ for Britain
Immigration legislation
1905 Alien Immigration Act, reinforced in 1914 & 1919
1920, 1925: Alien Seamen Orders
1948 British Nationality Act
1962: Commonwealth Immigrants Act. Effectively overthrew the 1948 Act, &
(while attempting not to antagonise the Commonwealth) was aimed at
restricting the entry of unskilled blacks & Asians. It did not apply to the Irish
1968: 2nd Commonwealth Immigrants Act aimed, in particular, at Kenyan Asians
1971: Immigration Act. Commonwealth applicants have to prove connection to
the UK through birth, descent or settlement. Irish Republic citizens exempted.
More recently, restrictions on migration from certain sources have increased
Race relations legislation
Race relations legislation often accompanied (& was seen as a sop to)
immigration control based on colour discrimination
1965: First Race Relations Act established a Race Relations Board (did not cover
housing or employment). 1968: Second Race Relations Act
1976: Third Race Relations Act, which significantly strengthened the law. It
defined direct and indirect discrimination, and also founded the Commission for
Racial Equality
Popular prejudice, racism & rioting
- anti-Semitic rioting in 1947; violence against blacks in Liverpool (1948) &
Notting Hill (1958). Brixton riots (1981)
- Infrastructure & housing failed to match population growth, & people
competing for limited resources blamed colonial migrants
- Widespread denial both of the extent of white alien immigration, & of the legal
entitlement of blacks & Asians to settle
- National Front (founded, 1967); Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech (1968)
- Questions of race and nationality deeply contested ever since
- By the mid 1990s: 330,000 incidents of racial harassment every year
- Reality of widespread racism within a mythology of tolerance
Areas of non-white settlement:
- 1945: London, Liverpool, Manchester, Cardiff etc had non-white residents
- After the war, this expanded to include industrial conurbations of the North &
Midlands, as well as new parts of London. Asians worked in textile mills & the
clothing trade; black workers joined the public sector: NHS, public transport
Broader context
- English/British identity from the 1930s onwards stressed the nation as
private, un-aggressive, kind and unassuming. Non-white immigrants
conceptualised as violent and predatory interlopers
- Wartime mythology of a cross-class consensus, & a united national family, was
the context in which the notion of non-white people as misfits who would be
unable to integrate took root
- During the 1950s and 1960s, this sense of wartime purpose rapidly dissolved:
decline of empire; demise of great power status; uncertainty about Europe etc
- This led to intense questioning of what British national identity meant, and
notions of whiteness and race began to fill this vacuum, with Britishness &
whiteness become increasingly homogeneous. By labelling blacks as a threat to
cohesion, particular ideas about the ‘real’ nation, the ‘real’ Britain were brought
into focus during a period of disorienting change & uncertainty
- The threatening difference and strangeness of black & Asian immigrants was
taken to be self-evident, not something that needed to be demonstrated
- Race began to play the role that class once had in debates about who
represented the nation & who undermined or imperilled it
- There was soon a new geography of sinister alienness: not the industrial slum
of the white working class, as at the start of the century, but the urban
environment of coloured communities
- The % of Britons supporting unlimited entry for new Commonwealth workers
dropped from 37% in 1956 to 10% in 1964, to 1% in 1968
By the 1980s, it remained black people – not problems of poverty, appalling
housing & unemployment – that were seen as ‘the problem’