Citizenship and Immigration in Post-war Britain

"This book is an extremely impressive summary by a Canadian political scientist of the politics of immigration, particularly from 1948 to 1962. A lot of this field is dominated by a rather simplistic leftism that sees the immigrant as a modern hero with Britain as implacably and peculiarly racist. Of course there was and is racism in Britain, but it’s often exaggerated, or it fails to explain why certain minority groups do so much better than other groups if Britain is such a racist cesspit. Randall Hansen is a liberal but he rejects the idea that Britain was this monstrous place. He is arguing that we ended up with large scale immigration sort of in a fit of absentmindedness. It flowed from the 1948 British Nationality Act, and it is him who saw that not a single politician at the time raised the possibility that the ordinary people of Commonwealth countries could use it to come to Britain. The great national project was to show that just as we ran an empire, now we could show the world how a multicultural society should be run. No we didn’t. Or we did so very patchily. Initially multiculturalism was promoted in a very decent and liberal form, but then when that was seen to have not worked for some groups it mutated into a more separatist form. It wasn’t that the theory was wrong, but there was a lot of prejudice and racism in Britain at that time, and some immigrants felt their relative failure was attributable to the system not bending sufficiently to their needs. I’m not fond of talking about values, because one of the points of a diverse society is that you have lots of different values. I think the debate is more about institutions, and forging common interests between people that give them the confidence to be different in their values, although obviously up to a point. I think to be British is to share an allegiance to a common way of life. That obviously includes accepting democracy, the rule of law and tolerance to others. But that is almost too basic, in a way. To work well, a multicultural society also requires a critical mass of people to be committed to a common way of life, in which you see your fellow citizens as special. His legacy has been a powerful one in many ways. He made it very difficult to have a rational discussion about immigration. The Powellite heresy created a great fear at the top of both British political parties about raising the issue. A lot of people identified with him in the late sixties to seventies. He spoke for many millions of people who felt that their anxieties about immigration were not being recognised. He was also an extremely egotistical and slightly dotty politician. It was his famous “Rivers of Blood” speech, with its colourful and in some cases racist language, that created the problem. His legacy is that, while liberal Britain did win the argument, it was at the expense of having an open, clear discussion about it. Too many things were taboo. Imperial Britain created a very baggy and loose notion of British identity. When you’re an expanding imperial power you need to have a loose definition of who you are. Then the empire came home, and we continued to have a baggy, loose British identity – but now it was accommodating the minorities at home as opposed to the peoples abroad. You might say there are good things about that bagginess, rather like the multiculturalist idea of finding your own way to a hybrid identity. Capaciousness can work. But a lot of people – particularly low and middle income white Brits – felt that they hadn’t been consulted about this and weren’t in the game. No, indeed."