Diane Frost

The ‘enemy within’? Asylum, racial violence and ‘race hate’ in Britain today

This paper examines the concept of ‘race hate’ that has emerged and flourished in British society in recent years. It will discuss a number of inter-related issues that constitute important causal factors in articulations of ‘race hate’ among sections of the white working class. Many of these issues relate to deep-seated structural factors like socio-economic marginalisation and perceived challenges to hegemonic white identity. The paper also considers a combination of developments that facilitate the particular form that ‘race hate’ takes in British society. Thus, dominant political discourses, as expressed and perpetuated within sections of the tabloid press and government policy surrounding immigration and asylum, ‘facilitate’ this form of racism in the presence of other causal factors.

Ethnic identity, transience and settlement: The Kru in Liverpool since the late nineteenth century

Kru migrants in Liverpool represent in several ways a unique group of immigrant workers. First, they were ‘twice migrants’, having migrated from their original homeland in eastern Liberia to Sierra Leone before coming to Liverpool. Secondly, they retained a transient status because, as seafarers their constant contact with Freetown meant they retained a firm grasp on the possibility of return even after they had settled. Kru transience manifest itself through the perpetuation of a Kru ethnic identity and through their relationships with local women. Continuing commitments to both their wives and home in Freetown meant that such relationships were often short‐term or common law. Those Kru who did make the shift in status from transient seamen to settlers perpetuated their Kru ethnic identity, since this served as a defence mechanism against their marginal status, and the hostility meted out by white society. Settlement in Liverpool bestowed on the Kru ‘dual membership’ of both British society, through the ...

Residents’ perspectives on defining neighbourhood: mental mapping as a tool for participatory neighbourhood research:

Definitions of neighbourhood in the Social Sciences are complex, varying in their characteristics (for example, perceived boundaries and content) and between residents of that neighbourhood (for example, by class and ethnicity). This study employs an under-utilised methodology offering strong potential for overcoming some of the difficulties associated with neighbourhood definitions. A mental mapping exercise involving local residents is showcased for an ethnically diverse working-class neighbourhood in south Liverpool. The results demonstrate distinctions between residents in the geographical demarcation of the area and the features included, with important implications for how neighbourhood is best measured and understood. We suggest that one size does not fit all in definitions of neighbourhood, and that mental mapping should form a more common part of a neighbourhood researcher’s toolkit.

Reflections on Racism, Class and the Racialized Outsider

Racism, Class and the Racialized Outsider offers a sympathetic yet critical and scholarly re-examination of historical working-class politics through a detailed analysis of ‘race’. It follows the historiographical and theoretical trail of previous radical scholars, like Nairn on English nationalism and the groundbreaking but ‘race-blind’ work of heavyweight socialist labour historians like Hobsbawm and Thompson. While there have been many seminal studies of the English working class, this book points to the failure of such histories to explore the significance of class as articulated through the lens of race. In revisiting and reworking these influential works, the book critically appraises the significant part played by racialized elements of the working class, including Irish Catholics and Jews who are shown to have occupied centre stage, forming the vanguard of early socialist movements and labour organizations. This was no accident and fed into subsequent multiracial and socialist internationalist movements.

Colonial Labour and Work Palaver: Labour Conflict in Britain and West Africa

This chapter aims to examine the role of West African migrant workers in the context of British colonial trade circa 1880–1960. In particular, it will explore the issue of labour conflict in the two port cities of Liverpool, in the UK, and Freetown, in West Africa. This occurred at two levels. First, it involved intra-class conflict, both in Britain, between white British labour and West African colonial labour, and in West Africa, between different ethnic groups fighting for control over seafaring and stevedoring work. Secondly, it involved confrontation between labour and capital, and again this occurred in both port cities. The main objectives will be to examine the broader structural factors within which such conflict occurred, and to consider the significance of ‘race’ for both class and intra-class relations. Empirical data presented here are based on a case-study of one particular ethnic group – the Kru – and its relationship with both the British colonial authorities and with other West African labour involved in shipping.