Introduction

Negroes in Britain was first published two years after the ending of World War II. At that time the problems of race relations in Britain were of interest only to those people who experienced harm because of their “race”, and those who had moral or political interests in race relations. Little’s pioneering study—a major contribution to the urban studies of a community passing through economic and social change and stagnation—introduced the dimension of change into studies where before it was missing, and utilized the anthropological analysis of society in terms of its structure and the functions it subserves into a topic in which it had barely begun to be seen as relevant.