Amelia Adams- Across the Universe: Racial Violence and the Post-War Crisis in Imperial Britain, 1919-25

Evans article focuses on the 1919 seaport riots and explores the many reasons for the tensions after the war, especially between black and white soldiers. The mood throughout 1919-1920 was very aggressive, a four year war had a thorough impact on the soldiers. A violent attitude mixed with many rising attitudes impacted the period after the war greatly. Black soldiers were occupied with past memories of oppression and ensuring that their place in society was never brought down to this level again. Whereas many white soldiers held a lot of resentment due to an uneven sacrifice throughout the war and many white rioters wanted to restore the pre-war ways of segregation and discrimination.

This article explores the various factors which affected the rising tensions after the war with many being a knock on effect due to the economic disruptions. The international channels for trading in Britain were majorly disrupted after the war and there many struggles in trying to fit into the new ways of working post-war. There were engineering strikes in Glasgow and South shields which had a knock on effect on production, then onto unemployment and therefore affecting ex-soldiers living situations. Evans shares that in June of 1919 around 3,200,000 soldiers involved in the war had been released and at least 400,000 of them had not been reabsorbed into the workforce.

“Flag saluting, foreigner hating”

In this period there was a clear domino effect which was made up of a variety of reasons which exacerbated the riots. All under the overarching racism of the time. 1919 marks the peak of the sea port riots but during the war, issues were already rising, especially with past troubles still present. Evans explores the Aliens act and shows how minorities were not accepted into Britain during this time and successfully uses a timeline of events to portray how prevalent the idea of the alien population. Minorities were never fully accepted and even in the 1960s there were still restrictions to live in Britain.                                                                                                                           Through the addition of external factors to the already widespread racism present in Britain at this time, seaport riots were fierce and resulted in many being injured and harmed. The way in which riots were dealt with was by separating black soldiers and white soldiers. Cardiff was one of the places where the riots were rife and after major riots, police began to cordon off areas. Evans successfully highlights how the way in which police reacted to these outbreaks accelerated the tensions as they often took society back to a segregated state where there was a clear objection of segregation. Black people were blamed for many of the riots but different to other authors who have explored this period of time, Evans suggests how blacks did contribute to the riots and disturbance of the time.

Evans’ article is a successful and thought provoking read which focuses on the fact that the black population remains as an “obvious remnant and reminder of empire.” The article effectively highlights that this period of time and the experience of the black population throughout the war and after has not been thoroughly recorded and remembered in our history and life today. This article successfully portrays how significant the seaport riots were and how minorities were also partially responsible for the disturbances. Therefore this article effectively ties into our work this week as it too explores the economic and social issues which Britain faced after the war while also conveying how racism was still very strong and prevalent after World war 1.