British Cities and Ethnic Minorities in the Post-war Era: From Xenophobic Agitation to Multi-Ethnic Government

This essay retraces the history of immigration and ethnic minority politics in British cities in the post-war era. It shows that British cities evolved in that period from an attitude of indifference and/or hostility to immigrants in the late 1950s, to the creation of race-sensitive policies in the context of a bipartisan effort to depoliticize the issue at the national level in the 1960s, and finally to increasing participation of minorities in the politics of the Labour Party from the late 1970s onward.