ABSTRACT
After 1945, the very presence of Black immigrants in Britain meant that American racial news would whet fears of the importation of United States issues into England. Such fears would be exacerbated by two types of concomitant events on each side of the Atlantic. “America” served discrete purposes to varied political or academic actors on the British racial scene. Some among the progressive elite had travelled to or studied in the United States to make sense of the “race relations” situation on the ground. Elizabeth Buettner is right to underline that the Smethwick elections were “far more than simply a footnote to Powellism”. The 1964–1965 Smethwick affair also borrowed aplenty from racial issues in the United States. Laconic references to how America's racial weather was very likely to come to England if “nothing is done” are very frequent discursive tropes, particularly in fairly short, undocumented letters by mainstream Powellites.
