| Summary: | Although the history of British ethnic politics, and indeed ethnic diversity more broadly, often begins with the arrival of the HMS Windrush in 1948, this post-war context demonstrates clear continuities with earlier demographic and political dynamics. Aside from the conceptual and intellectual, these are also institutional and personal, and reflecting in the continued involvement of the Colonial Office and colonial officers in making provisions for settled migrants from (former) colonies in the post-war period.<br/><br/> These bureaucratic and institutional continuities reflect the more general tendency in post-war Britain for “immigration” to be seen as “racial”, despite the large movements of European and Irish migrants to Britain for work in the period. Not only was immigration tightly related to “race”, but the statutory and voluntary welfare provisions made for new migrants, and the wider paradigm of “community relations” (a term often used interchangeably with “race relations”), focused largely on black and Asian immigrants, and did not incorporate white migrants.<br/><br/> From this early period, therefore, separate structures have existed in Britain through which ethnic minority communities have come into contact with the state. Early examples of such structures, such as community relations councils, offered little to ethnic minority participants. From the late 1970s, however, in line with legislative and wider political changes, local authorities, particularly those controlled by leftist Labour groups that regarded their politics as “anti-racist”, a wider array of resources became available for Black groups willing to do business with the state. This sharpened more longstanding dilemmas within ethnic minority communities regarding the question of co-option, as financial security often came at the price of depoliticization. However, even aside from its political and practical limitations, and largely negative aims, this form of municipal anti-racism, in its treatment of race as a separate sphere within government, occluded the significance of other forms of identity and encouraged, rather than obviating, inter- and intra-ethnic conflict.
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