Chapter 23 - Post Colonial Ties

Question 1

What were the post colonial political ties?

Answer 1

• Politically, Britain maintained strong tied with its former colonies. Britain soothed its loss of world power status by proclaiming pride about creating new ‘nation-states’ with their representative institutions and practices
• In former colonies, parliaments, ministries, wigged judges and British style legal systems were all legacies of the British Empire
• In new states, former colonial officials stayed on as advisers in some key positions
• The growth and development of the Commonwealth, with emphasis on shared political tradition, helped maintain political ties
• Regular Commonwealth conferences, attended by prime ministers or presidents, took place at least once every two years and there was a major Commonwealth Economic Conference in 1952. All meetings except one took place in London, reinforcing that Britain dominated the Commonwealth, like it had in the Empire
• Britain’s aims in creating the Commonwealth was to bolster its international position in the post-colonial world and ensuring its membership of key international bodies
• Britain’s place on the United Nations Security Council can be seen as a reflection of residual British status acquired through empire and maintained through Britain’s world-wide influence
• Britain continued to maintain a military with ‘global reach’ and recruited citizens from Commonwealth nations, all of whom remained eligible to serve in the British forces. Britain even retained a part of the old Indian Army in the Gurkhas brigade
• The Queen remained a symbol of the Commonwealth and personally reinforced the connections through regular visits to all member countries. She held regular meetings with Head of Governments from Commonwealth countries
• The establishment of a Commonwealth Secretary general in 1965 permitted the co-ordination of many Commonwealth activities
• ## Citizens of the Commonwealth remained eligible for British honours and many listened to the monarch’s Christmas Day message

Question 2

What were the post colonial economic ties?

Answer 2

• A legacy of Empire was Britain’s status as a globalised economy.
• The city of London remained one of the world’s major financial centres, the headquarters of banking, insurance and investment companies
• The conventions of international trade and law were created during the years of imperial rule and Britain’s imperial connections gave rise to multi-national companies with branches around the world
• Britain was able to ensure its emergence from empire with a vast overseas investment portfolio and trading links that continued to be of major importance - particularly given Britain’s exclusion from the EEC until 1973
• The British government made the effort to keep ex-colonies within the Sterling area, and it could be said the ‘formal’ empire was replaced with a return to the old ‘informal’ one of trading links and economic ties

Question 3

Why did people emigrate from Britain to the Empire and Commonwealth in the post-colonial era?

Answer 3

• The experiences of war, the continuation of rationing until as late as 1954, and the increasing demand for labour in countries like Australia, Canada and New Zealand which offered better prospects, encouraged a strong post-war increase in emigration from Britain
• Between 1946 and 1957, 1 million people left Britain for the Dominions. This intensified the contacts between ordinary British people and Canada, Aus, and NZ. Around 25% of the population of Britain were in contact with relatives in the Dominions
• This informal contact between Britain and the Dominions had some impact on Briton’s understanding of empire, in extending their knowledge of the specific countries which their friends and relatives had gone
• There continued to be a flow of administrators, civil servants and senior army officers who left Britain to experience Empire first hand.
• Of those lower down, the only groups likely to encounter Empire and Commonwealth first hand were men who were required to do National service (military service up to 18 months) and could become involved in one of the late colonial wars in e.g. Kenya, Malaya or at Suez
• By the late 1950s, improved living standards and full employment within Britain reduced the numbers of people migrating to the dominions, and their governments increasingly looked to other sources of skilled labour around the world, although the racial hierarchies introduced during the imperial era often persisted, for example in Australia where the ‘White Australia’ policy barring immigration by non-white people continued until 1973
• Back in Britain, the National Service ended in 1960 and as decolonisation gathered pace, the movement of British people tended to be from the Empire and ex-Empire to Britain, as colonial servants and soldiers were repatriated
• By the late 1960s, direct personal experience of Empire among the British had become rarer

Question 4

Why did people immigrate from the Empire and Commonwealth to Britain in the post-colonial era?

Answer 4

• Most of those who chose move to Britain before the 1950s were European (often fleeing persecution), thereafter there was a huge growth in the immigration of people from the colonies.
• Immigrants came especially from the Caribbean (wind rush) in the 1950s, from Pakistan and Indian in the 1960s and Kenya in 1967 as Kenyatta pressurised the Asian Kenyans to leave
• In recognition of the Empire’s war-time contribution, and with the hope that citizens of the Dominions would return to the ‘mother country’ and contribute to the economy, the British Nationality Act was passed in 1948, giving full British citizenship, including the right of free entry into Britain, to every inhabitant of the Empire and Commonwealth.
• What the British government did not expect as a result of this was extensive migration from the Caribbean and South Asia
• It was economic necessity that forced the British government to change its policy towards non-white migrants. As the economy recovered from war time, there was a shortage of workers
• There was successful recruitment drives to take up work in public transport and the National Health Service
• In 1956, London transport took on nearly 4000 new employees mostly from Barbados. Some of these put down roots in Britain while some returned to the Caribbean after earning enough to repay their passage
• There were plenty of jobs available, so no action was taken to limit immigration, although there was none taken to help migrants settle or find decent accommodation. Many were exploited by landlords or were discriminated against

Question 5

Who were the immigrants from the Caribbean immigrating to Britain?

Answer 5

• The first post-war immigrants to attract media interest were the 802 passengers from the Caribbean who arrived on the steamship Empire Windrush in East London in 1948
• The Labour government tried to block the ship from arriving
• Senior government figures discussed diverting the ship to east Africa
• MPs delivered a letter to Attlee warning, ‘an influx of coloured people would impair the harmony, strength and cohesion on out public and social life and cause discord and unhappiness’
• The attempts to block the ships arrival failed. These immigrants formed a nucleus of a immigrant community in Brixton

Question 6

What were the numbers of commonwealth immigrants in 1958?

Answer 6

Caribbean - 115000
India and Pakistan - 55000
West Africa - 25000 (a drift of mostly students which begun in the inter war years and accelerated after the war)
Cyprus - 10000 (most immigration was due to war. In 1959, 25000 Cypriots came to britain)

Question 7

What was the British reaction to the increased exposure of other races through immigration from Commonwealth/Empire to Britain?

Answer 7

• Indifference was more common than intolerance in the early fifties
• As the post war boom lessened, prejudice and anxieties grew
• There were worries about the dilution of British cultural and national identity
• There was a concern to protect houses and jobs and it was the Commonwealth immigrants who suffered the most job redundancies
• Immigrants found themselves in the poorest houses in the least desirable parts of towns. As these communities grow, they were seen as threatening by white residents
• 1958 saw gangs of white ‘Teddy boy’ youths attacking black people and violent riots broke out in Nottingham and Notting Hill.
• Oswald Mosely’s anti immigration Union movement increased its activities. He issued pamphlets featuring black people with spears entering Britain and racist slogans. He received 8.1% of the vote in the 1959 election in Kensington North, though his campaigns increased white extremism. In a survey in 1962, 90% of the British population supported legislation to curb immigration and 80% agreed there were too many immigrants in Britain
• Immigration ran at over 50000 per year between 1962 and 1965, by 1967, Britains black population was nearly 1 million
• There was some assimilation and interchange of culture - like Notting Hill Carnival, however more often the British turned their backs on the immigrant communities or actively campaigned against them
• Survey in North London 1965: 1/5 objected to working with black people or Asians and 9/10 were against racially mixed marriages
• There were also more extreme racists - characterised by Alf Garnett in a TV series Till Death do us Part from 1965. He constantly swore about immigrants and won a cult following
• A group of Conservative MPs pushed for political action, arguing unless something was done, Britain would cease to be a European nation and would become a mixed African-Asian society
• The 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act was an attempt by the Conservative government to appease the public and win political support by controlling non-white immigration. Free immigration for former colonial subjects was ended, even with a British passport. Instead, a work permit scheme was put in place. It didn’t discriminate against Black or Asian workers but had that effect as the Irish were exempt and most white immigrants were able to obtain permits. Unskilled poc applicants found it difficult to obtain permits and in the year following, only 34,500 arrived in Britain. The act received massive public support with 70% in favour.
• The act also meant immigrants were fearful they wouldn’t be able to return if they left Britain and had the effect of encouraging immigrants to put down roots in Britain and bring their families over
• Issues of immigration featured in the 1964 general election campaign. In Smethwick, which had the highest concentration of immigrants in any county borough, the Conservative leader, Peter Griffiths, won the seat from the Labour leader, by using a racist slogan. It was clear views like Grittiths’ appealed to meany British voters
• The 1965 Race relations Act attempted to reduce tensions which forbade discrimination in public places on the grounds of colour. However, discrimination in housing and employment were excluded
• Complaints could be made to a Race Relations Board which would confidante between the two sides, though many were dismissed to lack of evidence
• Immigration was met with fierce resistance and outright racism, however some assimilation was underway and turning Britain more multi-racial. Media representations of black people increased (TV dramas like Emergency ward 10 and Z cars). The apparent of Asian corner shops and Chinese take always began to transform British tastes.

Question 8

What was Notting Hill Carnival and how did it show assimilation of culture?

Answer 8

• After racial tensions of the 1950s, efforts were made to improve community relations and encourage groups to mix socially
• In 1964 a local festival, set up by Caribbean immigrants, provided the first Notting Hill carnival
• The festival developed in years to come with floats, steel drum bands, costumes, and dancing
• It had stalls serving typical Caribbean food

Question 9

What was the residual impact of empire and cultural ties?

Answer 9

• Familiarity with and interest in empire declined in Britain through the 1950s and 1960s as the British moved into the era of decolonisation
• Symbolically, Empire Day (24 May) was abolished in 1962. An amnesia about empire seemed to set in. Labour, finally in control in 1955, took little interest in imperial affairs.
• Still there remained, at least through the 1950s, a strong patriotic current that had been fostered by victory in the Second World War and the misguided belief that Britain had brought about Hitler’s defeat, when in fact Britain had received invaluable support from its colonies as well as its allies. This helped encourage support for some sort of imperial links, perhaps encouraging the nostalgic idea of the ‘family’ to be nurtured by the mother country
• The associations forged by imperial rule did not entirely disappear
• As the Commonwealth reinforced political and economic ties, it also became a medium for maintaining cultural links
• The Empire enabled a British spread of 10 million people around the world, who sometimes clustered in ex-patriate communities or maintained elements of British traditions and continued contacts with British family members or kin networks
• Furthermore the policies of Westernisation pursued in British colonial possessions meant that the peoples in post-colonial states often continued to use anglicised names, live in anglicised communities with British style churches and railway stations, and speak variants of the English language
• The Union Jack was retained in the corner of many flags, like Fiji and New Zealand
• The Anglican Church had more members in Africa than in Britain itself, while the Boy Scout movement maintained its ties across the former dominions in particular
• The residual impact of empire was in sport. Football, racket sports, snooker, croquet, were all exported across the Empire
• Rugby had been firmly established in countries such as New Zealand and South Africa and cricket in India and Australia. Colonial administrators ensured their spread.
• Sporting competitions and the Commonwealth games brought nations together in postcolonial competition every four years
• In Britain, reminders of the imperial past were obvious. Words like Bungalow and pyjamas (from India), safari and zombie (from Africa) had reminded strong in British public schools, the military and some professions.
• Royal pageantry preserved some of the traditions of the imperial past and the Empire still featured in honours and the awarding of the British Empire medal
• In 1965, Sir Malcolm Sargent established the tradition of using Britains imperial past for a rendering of patriotic British music in his ‘last night of the proms’.
• Edward Elgar: ‘Pomp and Circumstance March No.1’ featured ‘Land of Hope and Glory’
• Henry Wood’s ‘Fantasia on British Sea Songs’ contained Rule,Britannia and the British National anthem
• This demonstrated an imperial spirit

Question 10

What was popular culture like 1947-67?

Answer 10

• The collapse of empire weakened the appeal for imperial topics in the media
• Children’s stories and comics abandoned formerly popular imperial themes
• The ground breaking boy’s comic Eagle, 1950-1968, explicitly informed its writers that foreigners were not to be depicted as either enemies or villains, and at least one child in any group of children should be from an ethnic minority
• In the cinema, mass audiences no longer welcomes overly patriotic films in a post war Britain dealing with economic decline and decolonisation
• Fewer films used empire as a backdrop, though some still did like:
• North West Frontier (1959) concerned a British officer’s attempt to protect a Hindu prince from a murderous muslin uprising and strongly hinted Empire in India had been necessary to preserve order
• Guns at Batasi’s (1964) message was about the role the British saw themselves as playing in containing internal divisions within the colonies
• Lawrence of Arabia (1962) had a critical view of Empire
• Television replaced the radio as the main medium for the spread of popular culture in the post-war era. Documentaries allowed the public to become more aware of other countries and cultures, but there was some criticising of traditional imperial attitudes through the 1960s satire boom, like in ‘That was the week, that was’
• Race and immigration were the subject of 1960s comedy programmes, such as Til death do us part
• Comedians used popular music to ridicule immigrant communities. Much theatre and TV comedy freely used racist stereotypes and the Black and White Minstrels, in white white singers portrayed racially stereotypes African-American characters while wearing blackface makeup.
• It is fair to say British society became more open and less differential in the 1960s. There has been a link identified between changes in popular attitudes and the decline of empire