ABSTRACT
Caryl Phillips has queried the absence, in British fiction of the 1950s and 1960s, of black and brown people from the British Commonwealth who had migrated to the UK in highly significant numbers in this period. His lament echoes earlier observations by Paul Gilroy critiquing similar ‘strategic silences’ in the work of the widely recognized major figures in British Cultural Studies – Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams and E.P. Thompson. However, puzzlingly, Gilroy appears to exempt Stuart Hall from this critique, despite Hall’s exceptionally close connections to the three others. This article argues that, rather than being a matter for recriminations against individuals, the ‘strategic silences’ are part of a long and deep tradition in the serious analysis of Anglo-British culture. It is further claimed that this tradition continued in a different way even after the entry of ‘race’ and ethnicity into British Cultural Studies, and even after its later anti-essentialist manifestation. It is suggested that, throughout, a marked reluctance to engage with ordinary black and brown Britons as agentive speaking subjects is discernible. There has been some progress in resolving these problems by aligning the rich theoretical legacy of Hall, Gilroy and others on ‘race’ and ethnicity, with careful empirical work centring black and brown people as thinking social actors. However, these developments have been limited and slow to appear.
