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Copyright: © FPG / Archive Photos / Getty Images

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Caribbean and Black experiences in postwar Britain

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Caribbean and Black experiences in postwar Britain

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In this article, Simon Peplow explores the lives and activism of Caribbean and Black people in postwar Britain.

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In this article, Simon Peplow explores the lives and activism of Caribbean and Black people in postwar Britain.

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To explore the sources in this article and more, see the 'Migration to Britain, 1900-1980' and 'Migration to Britain, 1900-1980: teaching resources'.

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After World War Two, people from the British colonies in the Caribbean moved to Britain and joined existing Black communities to help rebuild the country. Thousands who had supported Britain’s war effort migrated, with workers recruited for jobs in transport, construction, and the newly created National Health Service. Travelling from places like Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and other Caribbean countries, the 1971 Census estimated that just over 300,000 people born in the West Indies lived in Britain. The 1948 British Nationality Act introduced a new citizenship status that cemented the right of everyone from the United Kingdom and its colonies to live and work in Britain. However, this was an attempt to maintain Britain’s control over countries from its empire by formalising a specifically imperial identity and creating the illusion of equality for them, rather than being an expectation or acceptance of mass immigration to Britain.

Despite Black people from Caribbean colonies being legally British citizens, prevailing attitudes that Britain was an exclusively ‘White Country’, as reinforced by ideas of the British Empire, meant that many believed Black people were not British. In 1964, the government’s Commonwealth Immigrants Advisory Council recorded that, while all migrant groups faced hostility as ‘outsiders’, people of colour were ‘visibly distinguishable by the colour of their skins’.¹ Racist attitudes led to discrimination and violence, such as the 1958 riots, when Black people in Nottingham and London’s Notting Hill were viciously attacked.

Donald Hinds described people of Caribbean descent who travelled to Britain as having made a ‘journey to an illusion’. That people who felt and legally were British, often describing Britain as the ‘mother country’, faced racist hostility from White people. This challenged Caribbean people’s sense of their own national identities, adding to desires to create communities around experiences of living in Britain and developing a specific Black British identity. It also encouraged Caribbean people to self-organise and establish approaches to tackle structural racism and promote cultural empowerment, for example the pardner savings scheme.

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This included celebrating various festivals and a continuation of the Caribbean carnival tradition. Most famous is the Notting Hill Carnival, which began in 1959 as a ‘Caribbean Carnival’ in response to the 1958 riots. As it appeared that the police either could not or would not protect them, Black Britons organised in self-defence during the riots – one example of counterattacks on White assailants was dubbed the ‘siege of Blenheim-Crescent’ – and the Carnival emerged as a declaration of their right to belong.² Journalist and activist Claudia Jones (1915–1964) organised the first carnival for 30 January 1959 to bring communities together and celebrate African-Caribbean culture.

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Held by British Library. Shelfmark: Andrew Salkey Archive Dep 10310 Box 33. Copyright: We have been unable to locate the copyright holder for the West Indian Gazette or Claudia Jones. Please contact copyright@bl.uk with any information you have regarding this item. © Rael Brook (Group) LTD. © Atlantic Zeiser Ltd. © Mount Gay Distilleries Limited. 

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Claudia Jones' Caribbean Carnival Souvenir programme, 1960

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Claudia Jones' Caribbean Carnival Souvenir programme, 1960

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Illustrated with musicians and dancers, this souvenir programme was made for the Caribbean Carnival organised by Claudia Jones and held at Seymour Hall in London on 6 February 1960.

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A souvenir flyer or poster for 'Caribbean Carnival' with dates, price and additional text, illustrated by figures of dancers and a drummer.

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Jones’ carnival ran until her death in 1964, but an appetite for carnival remained. In 1966, Rhaune Laslett (1919–2002) worked with local artists to create an outdoor festival, aiming to ease racial tensions and promote cultural unity. Writer Mike Phillips (b. 1941) recorded that ‘in the same streets through which we’d been hunted by baying crowds, we assembled to dance and sing and to say that we were celebrating being alive and being here.’³ Today, Notting Hill Carnival is one of the largest street festivals in the world, with over two million people attending each year. Other Caribbean carnivals around Britain include those in Birmingham, Leicester, Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham, and Bristol.

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Claudia Jones and the West Indian Gazette 

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Claudia Jones and the West Indian Gazette 

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As one of its founders, Jones is commonly called the ‘the mother of the Notting Hill Carnival’. Born in Trinidad, her family emigrated to New York where they experienced hardship and poverty, influencing Jones to become a lifelong communist, feminist and anti-racist activist. During the anti-communism era, Jones was arrested for so-called ‘un-American activities’ and deported in 1955. After arriving in Britain, she continued her activism and focused on the African-Caribbean community. Jones established the first Black national newspaper in Britain, the West Indian Gazette, which she ran from above a barber’s shop in Brixton.

This played a crucial role in organising the Black British population in campaigns for equal rights, as well as raising levels of Black consciousness and political engagement. Jones described the newspaper as a ‘major effort designed to stimulate political and social thinking’.⁴ The West Indian Gazette gave Black Britons a voice, and other newspapers followed, such as the West Indian World and Caribbean Times, and later The Voice.

Through these and other activities and publications, Black people actively resisted the racism they faced in Britain. Daily experiences of racial discrimination, hostility, and outright violence were worsened by increased postwar competition for housing, employment, and education. Black Britons faced prejudice when finding somewhere to live, because many White property-owners either did not want them as neighbours or feared that property prices would decrease if houses were rented or sold to people of colour. In many areas, committees were even established to make sure that local houses were sold only to White buyers. These advertisements from Flamingo show how such prejudice led Black communities to establish businesses, including mortgage brokers and hairdressers, to cater to their own needs.

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Held by British Library. Shelfmark: P.P.5109.bq. Copyright: Public domain

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Selection of adverts from Flamingo, 1964 

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Selection of adverts from Flamingo, 1964 

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These advertisements in black lifestyle magazine Flamingo - for a mortgage broker, bakery and hairdresser - give a window into the consumer habits and everyday lives of post-war Black migrants settled in Britain.

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A newspaper advertisement for 'West Indian Bakeries & Grocers'.

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A newspaper advertisement for 'W.K Lawton& Co.' a real estate  manager, offering free advice.

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A newspaper advertisement for 'West Indian Bakeries & Grocers'.

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A newspaper advertisement for 'Carlem' hairdressers and cosmetics.

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Black communities and collective activism 

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Black communities and collective activism 

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Alongside establishing businesses, Black communities organised themselves to oppose racial discrimination. In 1963, the Black community in Bristol was inspired by anti-racist protests in America to lead a successful non-violent boycott of a local bus company. The Bristol Omnibus Company refused to employ people of colour, due to beliefs that the public and White staff would be afraid or hostile towards them. Led by local youth officer, Paul Stephenson (1937–2024), after a potential employee, Guy Bailey, was denied a job interview purely because he was Black, the boycott lasted four months and effectively ended the company’s racist policy.

Similarly, Caribbean parents organised themselves when their children faced prejudices in British schools. A controversial local government policy in the 1960s and 1970s, known as ‘bussing’, meant that thousands of children of colour were literally sent by bus to schools far from where they lived. Minister of Education, Edward Boyle (1923–1981), declared that ‘it is desirable on educational grounds that no one school should have more than about 30 percent of immigrants’.⁵ The justification for this policy was to create school environments within which children of migrants could supposedly ‘integrate’ more easily into British society, but children ‘bussed’ to faraway schools said it made them feel isolated.

Despite usually speaking the same language, Caribbean accents and dialects unfamiliar to teachers in Britain created some communication issues. These were often simply dismissed by teachers as reflecting children’s ignorance or ‘stupidity’. Combined with other expressions of racism and discrimination, this resulted in high numbers of children of Caribbean descent being labelled ‘educationally subnormal’. Attempts were made to resolve racism in schools, such as Bernard Coard’s (b. 1944) extremely influential book from 1971.⁶ Written specifically for Black parents, the Grenadian author demonstrated how the British school system reproduced inequalities and implicit discrimination.

To combat inequalities, parents of Black pupils launched the Black Supplementary Schools Movement to provide spaces on evenings and weekends where Black children could learn maths, English, and science. This aimed to combat the impact of racial discrimination by teaching things they were supposed to be learning at school. Many supplementary schools also educated children in Black culture and Black history, topics missing from traditional school curriculums in Britain.

This was just one of many anti-racist campaigns that emerged to collectively organise and protest everyday racism. In the 1970s and 1980s, several Black feminist organisations also emerged, including the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD) and Brixton Black Women’s Group (BWG). Through community organising and collective activism, these organisations established anti-racism campaigns and sought to empower Black and South Asian women.

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Racist stereotypes, shaped by ideologies that attempted to justify the inequalities and discrimination of the British Empire, influenced many people to believe that Black people were ‘naturally’ more likely to be criminals. These prejudiced attitudes affected the police’s actions, including their investigations of racial violence. When a group of White men murdered Antiguan-born carpenter Kelso Cochrane (1926–1959) in London, police arrested the suspects but released them hours later. Many were angered that the police and media seemed more focused on claiming there was no racial motive for the attack than on catching the murderers. Cochrane’s murder and other instances, such as the 1981 New Cross fire, meant many Black communities felt continually failed by the police.

Other police actions shaped by prejudiced attitudes include officers stopping and searching anyone they thought was acting suspiciously or posing a threat to ‘law and order’. A highly disproportionate number of young Black men were targeted by police use of stop and search, or “sus” laws, causing massive amounts of frustration, anger, and distrust of the police. Black activists and community members organised themselves to combat racism within the police, with an article in the Black Dimension from 1969 demonstrating how communities built support systems.

Olive Morris (1952–1979), a founding member of OWAAD and BWG, was an extremely vocal activist who protested injustices, including racism in policing. Born in Jamaica, Morris arrived in England in 1961, where she witnessed and experienced numerous instances of racism. Morris joined the youth division of the British Black Panther Movement and campaigned against racism in policing, including “sus” laws, until her death in 1979.

Alongside celebrating African-Caribbean culture, the Notting Hill Carnival became a significant vehicle for protest, such as anti-police demonstrations in 1976. An increased police presence at the 1976 Carnival angered many people and exacerbated existed tensions. Violence broke out after police confronted a group of alleged pickpockets, leading to multiple injuries and arrests. With Black and South Asian people increasingly targeted by police, the North Kensington Police Monitoring Group produced and distributed rights cards at carnival in the early 1980s, aiming to inform people of their rights and offer legal support.

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How did the British government tackle discrimination? 

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How did the British government tackle discrimination? 

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In post-war Britain, Black communities self-organised and established approaches that attempted to tackle racism. However, discrimination was deep-rooted, and the British government’s attempts to eradicate prejudice were limited. The Bristol Bus Boycott influenced the Labour Government to introduce the first law against racial discrimination in Britain, the 1965 Race Relations Act, which was followed by further acts in 1968 and 1976. However, anti-discrimination legislation was limited in its effectiveness, and arguably was only introduced to ‘balance’ increasingly strict immigration controls. Moving to Britain became more difficult with the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, which was portrayed as addressing fears about rising unemployment, but was exclusionary based on race. Other immigration laws redefined British national identity, effectively removing the link between Britain and countries that had historically been part of its empire. In practice, these immigration laws meant that people from what was known as the ‘White Commonwealth’ (countries like Canada or Australia), who had a so-called ‘substantial connection’ with Britain, often found it easier to migrate. However, people of Caribbean, African and South Asian heritage experienced increasing limitations on their ability to live and work in Britain.

Many believed that the most effective way to reduce racial tensions in Britain was by limiting the number of people of colour entering the country and creating laws against discrimination, thinking that this would make it easier for migrants to ‘integrate’. Linking immigration with racial tensions in this way characterised it as a ‘problem’ and, by extension, effectively portrayed all people of colour as themselves being a ‘problem’ for Britain. A feature in Flamingo highlights this, with Black and White men reacting to the passing of the 1962 Act. James Donnelly from 'Southern Ireland' comments 'I don't see why the Irish should be privileged above the other Commonwealth members', highlighting how it was the arrival of certain people, rather than overall immigration, that many saw as the ‘problem’. While Irish people and others did also face discrimination as perceived ‘outsiders’ in post-war Britain, people of colour particularly were linked with something of a crisis of national identity. Fears that Britain was in decline – such as its shrinking empire, economic performance and position compared with other countries – related to characterisations of people of colour as being a ‘threat’ to a ‘British’ (i.e. White) way of life. However, as the comments in Flamingo highlight, Britain had led a vast empire and was seen by many people around the world as the ‘mother country’ which they should be freely able to live in. Increased numbers of people of Caribbean heritage within Britain has had an enormous impact on redefining British national identity.

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¹ Commonwealth Immigrants Advisory Council, Second Report (London, 1964), p. 624.

² Kennetta Hammond Perry, London is the Place for me: Black Britons, Citizenship, and the Politics of Race (New York, 2015) p. 90.

³ Mike Phillips and Trevor Phillips, Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain (London, 1998) p. 383.

⁴ Carole Boyce Davies, Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones (Durham, 2008), p. 172.

⁵ HC Deb 27 November 1963 vol 685 cc439-440 (https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1963/nov/27/schools-racial-integration).

⁶ Bernard Coard, How the West Indian child is made educationally subnormal in the British school system: the scandal of the black child in schools in Britain (London, 1971).

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Dr Simon Peplow is Associate Professor in Modern British History at the University of Warwick. His research interests include modern British race, ethnicity, and migration histories, Black British political participation, the policing of marginalised communities, and the impact and limitations of the Macpherson Report. He is Education Officer for History UK, jointly running both the Pedagogy Forum and History in Practice, and is a Senior Fellow of Advance HE. He collaborated with the Modern Records Centre to create GCSE teaching resources and the 'History Head Start' course for the Warwick History department. His publications include Race and Riots in Thatcher's Britain (Manchester University Press, 2019).

The text in this article is available under the Creative Commons Licence.

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Discover more about Caribbean and Black communities and explore related collection items.

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Discover more about Caribbean and Black communities and explore related collection items.

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Learn more about migration to Britain between 1900 and 1980

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Learn more about migration to Britain between 1900 and 1980