POST-WAR POLITICAL AND LEGAL RESPONSES : We start with the general political response to immigration in the 1950s and 1960s. In this first extract, Solomos explains successive governments’ policy of linking integration to immigration control. In the second extract, Lester and Bindman observe that such a policy is fundamentally absurd.

doi:10.4324/9781843145585-11

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ABSTRACT

From the 1950s the question of what to do to counter racial discrimination emerged as a major dilemma in debates about immigration and race relations. Even in the early stages of black immigration there was an awareness that in the longer term the question of racial discrimination was likely to become a volatile political issue. In the early stages of post-war black immigration, political debates about race were centred upon the question of immigration controls. However, an underlying concern, even at that stage, was the future of race relations. The notion that the arrival of too many black immigrants would lead to problems in relation to housing, employment and social services was already widely articulated ...