ABSTRACT
Paul Gilroy’s There Aint no Black in the Union Jack is a relentless and exhaustive account of what the term ‘race’ has come to mean in contemporary British society. The axis along which the argument is presented locates racism, on the one hand, as deeply impregnated into the fabric of British life-including, surprisingly perhaps, the field of vision occupied by several leading left-wing intellectuals. On the other hand, racism is a response to, and therefore a recognition of, the powerful expressive culture which is the product of black resistance and protest, and which has also come to serve as the major political arena for black people. Despite a tendency to leave unanswered a few key questions, Gilroy’s account is one of the most impressive to date. The first section embraces, from the viewpoint of race, a head-on confrontation with Marxist and neo-Marxist readings of class, a blistering attack on those who talk positively of the ‘national popular’ without considering its imperialist and post-imperialist connotations, and a sophisticated, critical decoding of the (now abolished) GLC anti-racist poster campaign.
