Coming of Age : 1976 and the Road to Anti-Racism

Anxieties
concerning
class, public
health, moral
codes and
above all,
national
identity were
projected onto
immigrants and
minorities
Despite the existence of such legislation, the possession
of an empire led not to an inclusive, but to an exclusive notion of
British national identity. According to Colley, the feeling of dominance
over subject peoples permeated throughout metropolitan
British society.12 In her influential essay on “Britishness and
Otherness Colley described this feeling succinctly “… we usually
decide who we are by reference to who and what we are not.13
At times, Britishness was equated with possessing a white skin.
During the seaport riots distinctions were frequently drawn between
the rights of “British” on the one hand and black or more often “coloured”,
sailors on the other. These distinctions were made by individuals
across the social spectrum including white rioters, members of the
police forces in the riot ports, trades unionists, magistrates and lawyers
during riot trials and also in the press. Britishness was “colour” coded,
and only grudgingly and infrequently were the rights of black British
subjects recognised and considered, usually in the lip service paid to the
notion of “white Britishers first, next, black Britishers, last of all aliens.”
A study conducted in 1918 revealed strong “race” prejudice
within British society. This prejudice was not based on hostility as
a result of personal contact with black British colonial subjects but
from the broad process of imperialism which brought the prejudices
of colonial administrators and travellers back to the metropole.14
Hence, British feelings of superiority over subject peoples were already
well established by the time of the 1919 seaport riots. However,
the recent experience of the First World War brought many
native white people into first or extended contact with black colonial
British subjects who came to Britain in their many thousands as
workers, soldiers and sailors. The presence of black British troops
and workers failed to alter popular one-dimensional perceptions of
Britishness. Rose has made the point that “British identity” became
more sharply defined in times of war. “War exaggerates the significance
of the nation as a source and object of identity.”15 Kushner and
Ceserani have also noted that anti-alien sentiment was exacerbated
by participation in war. “Anxieties concerning class, public health,
moral codes and above all, national identity were projected onto immigrants
and minorities.”16 Into the mid-twentieth century similar
arguments about Britishness and national identity were rehearsed
during the August 1947 riots in which British Jewish populations were
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