Politics of Difference: The Delusion of Liberality in Post-War Britain

Article by Chris Johns. Edited and Researched by Rob Russell.

The perception of the British liberality and tolerance is one that resonates through the British media and the political stage alike. Windrush Day has recently passed, and politicians did not miss the opportunity to pay their tributes and even gratitude to those West Indians who arrived on our shores 65 years ago. Further buttressing the delusion that Britain has astoundingly maintained itself a country of acceptance and is a celebration of difference. And what an astounding delusion this has been. Whilst waving the flag of tolerance, in the last 65 years we have persecuted those who are different from the native Britain, equating dark skin with criminality, laziness and now terrorism. The right-wing media has bombarded us with reports of immigrants that scrounge off the welfare state or attack our democracy from the inside. This has led the white population of Britain to comfortably believe that it is not immigrants we are against, just criminals, echoing the caricatured phrase; ‘I’m not racist, but…’

From the moment the Empire Windrush arrived in 1948, marking the beginning of mass emigration to Britain, the public consciousness was plagued with fears of outbursts of social disruption caused by the mere presence of these new black workers. Many had come at the request of companies in order to fill the labour shortage that had resulted from WW2; however, the disparity between the need for a new source of labour and societal acceptance was made clear to the black population who settled in Britain. This tension would soon manifest itself with what the authorities were waiting for: inter-racial violence.

To many, the racial clashes that occurred were proof that inter-racial mixing was ultimately a bad thing. As the ‘science’ of proving black inferiority had been overwhelmingly discredited by the 1950s, the media and the public focused on the cultural incompatibility of inter-racial mixing. Of course, there were cultural differences that made the initial task of integration more challenging, but the more the blacks assimilated themselves into British culture, the more resistance they faced, demonstrating that the prejudices of Britain ran deeper than the cultural disparity. This was most clearly demonstrated by the sexual tensions that emerged, caused by the inter-mingling of black men with white women. This very issue sparked two weeks of rioting in what came to be known as the Notting Hill Riots in 1958.

However, this riot posed a challenge to those opposed to immigration. This was a white riot. White Teddy Boys came from all over London to go ‘black burying’ across North Kensington. The media however, whilst condemning the violence argued that this was the result of legitimate concerns, held by the white population over the ‘coloured invasion’, as it was typically referred to. As a result, the black population were implicated by the media as the root cause of the violence instigated by the white population, an attitude that had maintained itself throughout the 10 years since the arrival of the Empire Windrush.

From 1958 onwards, the relationship between the black population and the public sphere scarcely improved. While the Race Relations Act was being introduced, a fairly weak piece of legislation which actually did little to improve race relations, black youths were being openly and relentlessly persecuted by the police under the now infamous SUS laws. This piece of legislation, introduced in the early 1800s, granted the police the powers to arrest those they suspected of wrong doing, for which no evidence was needed. These laws not only worsened the relations between the growing number of black youths and the police, but to the general public, the sheer number of black youths who were charged under these laws was a clear demonstration of black criminality.

On the surface a lot has changed in the last 30 years. Open hostility between the general public and the black community has fallen; there are more black and Asian people in parliament and more non-whites in executive positions. However, of those non-whites below the poverty line, public and police distrust is still a neglected problem and ethnic minorities are still the victims of racial discrimination. For example, blacks are subjected to 6 times more stop and searches than whites; in 2007 around two fifths of ethnic minorities lived in income poverty, double the rate for whites; it is African and Asian countries who have recently been the target of the Home Secretary’s policies to restrict immigration to charge a £3000 ‘cash bond’ coming from ‘high risk’ countries which she identified as Nigeria, India and Pakistan; it was just after the 2011 London riots when David Starky equated black culture with criminality, reflecting wider prejudices; and the Muslim community are just as likely to be equated with terrorism or religious fundamentalism.

This demonstrates that the media and the authorities still respond to these issues in a way that demonises the non-white populations of Britain. The black population are still represented in the press as welfare scroungers and criminals and Elizabeth Poole conducted a study demonstrating the negative treatment the Muslim population receive in the press. These examples demonstrate that there are still undercurrents of deep-seated racial prejudices in this country completely at odds with the idea of British tolerance. Throughout the public sphere, the view that blacks and Muslims are culturally incompatible with the British way of life has been adamantly perpetuated which begs the question: in the last 65 years, how far have we really come?

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