The Economic and Social Position of Negro Immigrants in Britain (original) (raw)

1953, The Sociological Review

letween the wars the small Negro population of the United Kingdom consisted chiefly of groups of West African and West Indian seamen living in the dockland areas of some English sea-ports.T hey were a marginal group as far as employment in the shipping industry was concerned, and, like some of their fellows in the United States, they found themselves 'last hired and first ifired'. After 1918 when the shipping trade contracted and the ex-servicemen returned home, the coloured men were the objects of street brawls and widespread disturbances in Liverpool, Cardiff, Newport, South Shields, Glasgow, Stepney, Canning Town and, apparently, almost everywhere where their numbers were appreciable. The incidents which provoked these outbreaks were varied and inconsequent, but the background was one of competition for jobs and the effects in this sphere were significant. According to one newspaper, writing of the Liverpool disturbances: 'Last week more than 100 black men were at work, but in consequence of the disturbances, none is now employed, and they are thrown on unemployment allowance.** After these incidents several hundred of the stranded seamen were repatriated to West Africa,.but the majority preferred to remain in the hopes of an improvement in the situation. They were over-optimistic, for later years only brought further disadvantages of which the worst was the incorrect application to them by the authorities in some of the ports of the Aliens Order of 1925. In the eyes of the Cardiff Police at least, this Order automatically made an alien of every coloured seaman in the port and the men were forced to deliver up their passports or other evidence of their British nationality and accept Aliens Cards instead.' Their economic disabilities brought attendant troubles and these groups came increasingly to be regarded as a 'social problem*. The terms in which writers of the 1920's and 30's describe them are such as to suggest that at this time English attitudes towards Negro immigrants were more unfavourable than at any time before, or since. Not