For some, Britain is a glowing example of multiculturalism that continues to embrace cultures and races from across the globe.
For others, it is a fallen giant of a bygone colonial age, lacking direction, and struggling to retain an identity as the very notion of “Britishness” remains diluted.
It is against this confused and at times volatile background that more than sixty million Britons live, five million of whom hail from an ethnic minority background.
So, what is Britain? A society we want to emulate or a powder keg of racism, waiting to ignite.
Much of the controversy boils down to two key points – what does it mean to be British, and even more importantly, how “British” should those who live on the island nation be.
Should a Briton be able to speak English, recite the words to the national anthem, and cook fish and chips? Should people with British passports be required by law to know all of Henry VIII’s wives, have an in depth knowledge of maypole dancing and retain a friendly yet slightly arrogant view of citizens of the United States?
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair said that "blood alone" could not define a Briton because the nation’s people were a "rich mix of all different ethnic and religious origins."
Queen Elizabeth II echoed this sentiment during her jubilee speech to Parliament, referring to "our richly multicultural and multi-faith society."
With such luminaries praising the ethnic diversity of Britain, where is the problem?
The problems do not find their roots in the palaces and corridors of power – no one is legislating racial tension or disharmony. No, racism breeds on the streets, in backstreet pubs, on broken down housing estates and wherever there are people who are looking for someone to blame.
The story of Britain is one of conquest, colonization and change.
For several thousand years, people have arrived in Britain from across the world. From the Celts to the Romans, the Saxons, Vikings and the Normans, new peoples with different cultures have continued to conquer, change, and leave a lasting mark.
The British Empire brought new blood to the British Isles. Even after losing its prized America, at one point in the 19th Century, one tiny island controlled almost a third of the globe – India, much of Africa and the Middle East, the Australia’s and beyond.
Inevitably, such widespread tentacles attracted a new wave of colonial visitors – some as servants, some as skilled workers and others simply because they could. The most significant wave of immigration in the modern era came after the Second World War – started by what is referred to as the Windrush generation. When the Empire Windrush docked at the port of Tilbury, close to London, on June 22, 1948 a few hundred men stepped off the boat, and as they did so, changed Britain forever.
The Second World War left Britain in dire shortages of skilled and unskilled labor and it was to the colonies that it would turn. Those who arrived on the Empire Windrush were the first of many millions of black, Indian and Asian people to settle in England over a period of mass expansion.
At this time, the British Government imposed few restrictions on colonial subjects’ arrival, and for two decades, immigrants came in huge numbers. In 1945, the non-white population of Britain was in the low thousands, but a quarter of a century later in 1970, this number was nearly 1.5 million, 500,000 of whom were second generation, born in the United Kingdom.
This huge change inevitably caused friction in many quarters of the population, particularly amongst the ill educated and impoverished working classes, many still living in an age of austerity after the war. Riots broke out in many cities, particularly west London, Birmingham and Nottingham where residents wanted to show their opposition to mass immigration, largely fueled by misinformation and misunderstanding circulated by the far right.
In the 1970s, the Government began to change its policy on immigration, implementing rules that made it harder to move to Britain from the colonies and immigration numbers began to fall, but continued.
The 1981 riots in Brixton, a suburb of south London with a particularly high African Caribbean population and one of the first places that black people settled in Britain, was one of the most notable flashpoints in British race history. Time Magazine dubbed the riot, “Bloody Saturday” as just an average April morning in south London soon spiraled out of control, hundreds were injured, millions of pounds of damage caused and race relations were firmly back on the political schedule.
Tensions had been running high in Brixton for many years. Many young black men felt that the white dominated government and the police were discriminating against them. A routine stop and search of a young black man by the police had sparked the incident, an over-reaction on a micro level, but indicative of a deep-rooted problem in society on a macro-level.
When the shop windows were replaced, the fires put out and the thousands of police returned to their usual beat – the problems that had caused this incident and similar outbreaks of violence in Bristol and Liverpool remained. Skin color, unemployment, lack of opportunity, and poverty seemed linked in the UK.
Many of the black people, whose father or father’s father had come to a land of opportunity in the 1950s, were now living in abject inner-city poverty – felt disenfranchised and without hope.
Brixton illustrated to a wider audience the issues that underlined race relations in Britain – misunderstanding, inequality and prejudice – and that it was something Britain could not sweep under the carpet any longer. The country had to tackle the problem before it spilled out across the country. The eighties saw a change in attitude towards ethnic minorities in Britain. It became increasingly unacceptable to hold racist views, and even more so to air them in a public forum.
The Commission for Racial Equality, founded in 1976, began to gain serious status in political and social debate. Legislation passed against discrimination, and a new generation began to grow up in an atmosphere of tolerance and understanding. In 1987, four non-white MPs were elected to the British Parliament at the same time, although still only a fraction of the 650 members of the House, this marked a significant change in public opinion.
The 1993 Stephen Lawrence murder drew attention back to the issue of race relations. Allegations of police brutality after the young black man died in custody led to a public inquiry in 1999, concluding that the Metropolitan Police (London’s police force) was “institutionally racist.” Despite this, the 1990s were a much calmer period in race relations than the decades that had preceded them.
The election of a New Labor government led by the young and energetic Tony Blair offered a hope of change – and for a time it looked as though it had arrived. Expansion of the European Union brought a new wave of immigration to the UK – this time not from former colonies but from Eastern Europe. Huge numbers of Polish, Czech, Bulgarians and Slovaks, amongst others, flooded into the country, and became a reason for the right-wing press to cause alarm.
In reality, this ‘invasion’ did not destroy the British way of life – if anything has enhanced it further by adding an extra dimension the already colorful ethnic landscape –that did not stop some elements from attempting to make political capital from the change. Especially when economics take a downturn, some groups always look to blame those who are ‘different.’
In recent years, there has been resurgence in far-right political movements at the polls in Britain, particularly the British National Party (BNP), led by Nick Griffin. Although he, and many senior officials of the party hide behind a veil of respectability with the public views they air today, a core idea behind these right-wing movements believes there is only two things that makes someone British, the color of their skin and their racial heritage – and nothing else.
A popular right-wing theory asserts that there is such a thing as an indigenous British people that have dwelt on the British Isles since the last ice age. Despite almost all scientific and historical evidence suggesting the contrary, they argue that only those that are fair of skin and can trace their lineage back thousands of years should be allowed to be called British.
Such is the danger of immigration to the UK, they would argue, that without immediate repatriation policies this indigenous white Briton is at threat of extinction, will soon be swallowed into a multicultural melting pot, thus losing the values that make our nation what it is.
Views like these are not widespread – and despite returning two European Members of Parliament and increased local political victories in recent years – most anecdotal evidence suggests the BNP’s core vote does not have such extreme tendencies, and instead support the party as a high profile protest against the establishment.
The BBC recently invited the BNP’s leader Nick Griffin onto their flagship political debate show, Question Time, usually reserved for politicians that are more moderate. The event caused a media storm and opened a fresh debate across the country as to whether Britain is a racist country and how to deal with those with extreme views within a society based on the principles of freedom of speech and expression.
Today, just over 60 million people call England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland home. Predominantly, their number is white, around 92 percent at the last census, however, that means that nearly 5 million Britons are from a non-white ethnic minority.
More than a million Britons consider themselves black or black British and have origins in the Caribbean or Africa. Nearly two and a half million people are from Asian decent, recognizing their original heritage as Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or another Asian country. In addition, there are nearly a quarter of a million Chinese and 700,000 of mixed race.
The Office for National Statistics, the UK government’s statistical agency, reports that in the ten years since the last census in the UK, the number of people from an ethnic minority background rose by 53 percent. An ICM poll concluded that over half of British people still consider Britain to be a racist society. The group agreeing with this statement in the largest proportion was black people, closely followed by white people, while only 40 percent of Asian people believed Britain was racist. The same poll revealed 44 percent of Briton’s believe that mass-immigration after the Second World War has left the country in a worse position than if it had remained largely homogenous. Seventy eight percent of those questioned believed that anyone who is not familiar with British language and culture should be forced to attend citizenship classes.
So is Britain a racist country? No.
Are there racists in Britain? Yes.
Britain is ethnically diverse and differences of culture, color and creed will sadly always lead to conflict, but it does appear that in reality these differences are becoming less every day. There was a time when not being seen as racist was the right thing to do; today it is a fact that more and more people are not racist, in fact, they are appalled by racism and outspoken towards those who vocalize it.
Racists exist, in the far right political movements, in the poorly educated backstreets and sometimes unfortunately sharing your seat on a London bus. The racists will never completely go away, but as long as there is education, common sense and hope – Britain will continue to flourish as a multicultural hub that its citizens can be proud to call home.