ABSTRACT

Anti-racism, as this book implicitly suggests, is by definition a transnational movement. Political cultures differ greatly, however. Anti-racism within each Western European country has a separate if interconnected history, moulded and often channelled by the various aspects of a specific country’s political culture and colonial legacies. One important intellectual task to undertake within the contemporary anti-racist project is therefore to rethink the wider political contexts within which anti-racism has had to work in the past. A similar process of historicisation thus needs to be undertaken for anti-racism as has been undertaken for racism (Birnbaum 1993; Taguieff 1990; Balibar 1992). Consequently, this chapter adopts a historical focus, looking to the lessons to be learnt for anti-racism today from both the inter-war period (1919–39) and the way in which anti-racism changed in the period of decolonisation (1945–62) to become more inclusive.