Solomos

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points to how an intrinsic connection has developed between immigration and black immigration and how “successive governments have attempted to regulate and eventually halt the arrival of black immigrants through immigration legislation and other means.”¹

immediately after the second World War most migration to Britain was temporal from Europe encouraged by government.² “even at this early stage black migration and settlement was perceived differently from European migration. Privately the government was considering the most desirable method of discouraging or preventing the arrival of 'coloured' British citizens from the colonies.”³ points to the fact that they had the legal right to enter Britain, confirmed in the British Nationality Act of 1948.⁴

“Throughout the period [1950s] an increasingly racialised debate on immigration took place, focusing on the supposed social problems of having too many black immigrants and the question of how they could be stopped from entering.”⁵

“from 1948 to 1962 the state was involved in a complex political and ideological racialisation of immigrantion policy.”⁶ “By 1952 Labour and Conservative governments had instituted a number of convert and sometimes illegal administrative measures to discourage black immigration.”⁷ “before and after the riots [1958] the question of control was integrated into the policy agenda.”⁸ sees this as the period in which the argument for the need of state intervention to slow down black immigration and the “social problems” it caused gained force.⁹

“the debates on black immigration during the 1950s reinforced a racialised construction of Britishness that excluded or included people on the ground of race, defined by colour”¹⁰

despite 1958 riots in Nottingham and Notting Hill being attacks on blacks they nonetheless used as examples of the dangers of “unrestricted immigration”.¹¹

racialisation of immigration done through a “coded language”¹²

rather than seeing the state as responding either to pressure from public opinion or “the economic interests of the capitalist class” defends that the state had an active role in shaping the racialisation of the immigration debate.¹³

interprets the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrans act as designed to target black immigration.¹⁴ points to the fact that the Labour Party did not sustain its opposition to the act and when in power produced an even stricter “white paper on immigration” which is seen as the convergance of Conservative and Labour views on the subject.¹⁵

Significant episodes 1) victory of an anti-Immigration Conservative candidate Peter Griffiths, in Smethwick in 1964.¹⁶ 2) the arrival of East African Asians from Kenya and Uganda and the Labour 1968 Act deliberately target at them.¹⁷ Powell –significant for the defence of compulsory repatriation and construction of the image of “white Britains becoming 'strangers' in their 'own country'¹⁸

1J Solomos, Race and Racism in Britain, Third Edition, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan 2003, 48.

2J Solomos, Race and Racism in Britain, Third Edition, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan 2003, 49–51.

3J Solomos, Race and Racism in Britain, Third Edition, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan 2003, 51.

4J Solomos, Race and Racism in Britain, Third Edition, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan 2003, 51.

5J Solomos, Race and Racism in Britain, Third Edition, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan 2003, 52.

6J Solomos, Race and Racism in Britain, Third Edition, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan 2003, 52.

7J Solomos, Race and Racism in Britain, Third Edition, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan 2003, 52–53.

8J Solomos, Race and Racism in Britain, Third Edition, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan 2003, 53.

9J Solomos, Race and Racism in Britain, Third Edition, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan 2003, 53.

10J Solomos, Race and Racism in Britain, Third Edition, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan 2003, 54.

11J Solomos, Race and Racism in Britain, Third Edition, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan 2003, 54.

12J Solomos, Race and Racism in Britain, Third Edition, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan 2003, 56.

13J Solomos, Race and Racism in Britain, Third Edition, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan 2003, 56–57.

14J Solomos, Race and Racism in Britain, Third Edition, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan 2003, 57–59.

15J Solomos, Race and Racism in Britain, Third Edition, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan 2003, 59.

16J Solomos, Race and Racism in Britain, Third Edition, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan 2003, 59–60.

17J Solomos, Race and Racism in Britain, Third Edition, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan 2003, 60–61.

18J Solomos, Race and Racism in Britain, Third Edition, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan 2003, 61.