Aimee Steele’s post on Paul Rich “Blacks in Britain: Response and Reaction 1945-62”

Paul Rich article on Immigration in Britain argues that “while official response to post-war immigration was slow to develop, the tensions and white backlash of the late fifties marked its emergence as a national political issue”.  Rich discusses how during the beginning of immigration, the Home Office targeted immigrants by planting worries around lack of employment and accommodation to colonial governors in post-war Britain. As well as this, Home Office following SS Empire Windrush docking in June 1948 stated, ‘sooner or later action must be taken to keep out the undesirable elements of colonial population’ because if not ‘their presence in Britain would present a formidable problem”. The Prime Minister Clement Attlee refused to take the ‘Jamaican Party’ all that seriously, however, the worry amongst government officials increased over the following years. By 1953, the numbers of Black immigrants were close to 3,000 a year. Due to this high number, other government departments such as the Ministry of Labour and the Home Office used Nazism to place emphasis on educational control training programmes to regulate more immigration control.

Rich also discusses that during the early 1950s, the local boards for public service across the country faced the immigration crisis with little clear guidelines and instead depended on whatever expert advice there was available – some from anthropologists and sociologists who were becoming more involved in the concern over ‘race relations’. One of these sociologists was Kenneth Little who undertook research alongside his students from the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, Dr Kenneth Little concluded in his research that Black communities were not a single population, but instead divided between class, religion, and cultural differences.

Following the riots in 1958, increased political debate arose for race relations which in hand increased the want for immigration power in Britain. Labour activists such as John Hatch were keen to develop a powerful governmental retort to these riots during summer of 1958. However, there were very prevalent worries that any sense of concern surrounding Black immigration would cost them the loss of White working-class voters. Little addressed the Party’s leader to explain that basic understanding was merely not sufficient and they needed a sociological perspective to fully understand these issues and the audience to whom they were trying to please.

Finally, Paul Rich writes about the impact of the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrations Act. This regulation imposed a different government purpose to interfere in the Commonwealth immigration and begin to impede the numbers of Black immigrants coming into Britain.

Personally, I agree with Paul Rich’s article. He is very concise and to the point while helps to understand all the wider issues that arose through immigration issues in Britain. He also uses America to support his argument which helps the reader to understand the differences between the extent to what is happening in Britain vs elsewhere in the world. As for historians’ debate, he doesn’t appear to use any. However, he does use many political leaders and sociological researchers throughout his article to further develop his argument.