K. L. Little - Negroes in Britain

The International Library of Sociology

NEGROES IN BRITAIN

The International Library of Sociology

CLASS, RACE AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE

In 21 Volumes

NEGROES IN BRITAIN

A Study of Racial Relations in English Society

by

KENNETH LITTLE

Revised Edition with a new Introduction by

LEONARD BLOOM

First published in 1948 by

Routledge

Reprinted 1998, 2000, 2002

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Transferred to Digital Printing 2007

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

1972 K. L. Little

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Negroes in Britain

ISBN 0-415-17630-1

Class, Race and Social Structure: 21 Volumes

ISBN 0-415-17826-6

The International Library of Sociology: 274 Volumes

ISBN 0-415-17838-X

Publishers Note

The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent

PREFACE

In my original preface to Negroes in Britain I endeavoured to draw anthropological and sociological attention to race relations in this country and to urban problems in the then colonial countries. In the meantime, a good deal of research has been carried out in both those fields, and so this present preface takes the form mainly of a few personal reminiscences. I offer them in order to link the past with the present, because my field work in Cardiff was undertaken about a quarter of a century ago, and it was, in fact, entirely fortuitous that I ever studied racial problems at all. Before going up to Cambridge I had never met a person of African descent and had never given a single thought to Africa. Also, my first visit to Cardiff was made on the strength of my physical anthropology paper in the Archaeology and Anthropology Tripos. In other words, the original intention was not to examine relationships between white and black, but to measure the heads of the latters children. What I immediately experienced in Cardiff was a slice of the reality about which my African friends in Cambridge had told me, and so I decided to pursue my research in a sociological form. The main reason was that the Tiger Bay community offered, in a sense, a challenge that I was unable to resist. Consequently, although still interested in physical anthropology, I changed my coat and became instead a social anthropologist.

A further point is that, as Leonard Blooms Introduction declares, there was in those days very little interest indeed in race relations: race relations was the Colour Problem at the Ports. One could write, lecture and predict, but it was exceedingly difficult to persuade people that a racial situation such as existed in Cardiff might have wider repercussions. This apparent apathy obtained even in those quarters of the Government most intimately concerned with the then Colonial peoples because, instead of treating the existence of colour bars as urgent, the tendency was to brush the whole troublesome business under the carpet. A particular experience in this connection illustrates the last point rather strikingly, because on one occasion a number of African and West Indian spokesmen and I called on a high official in order to ask if something could be done to censor film stereotypes of the American Negro. In those days Hollywood invariably depicted coloured people in the United States solely as servants, pugilists, or as eyeball-rolling coons. We argued, therefore, that it was in the interest of good relations between the Mother Country and her Colonial subjects for people of colour to be represented in a more dignified way. Possibly this was to the Colonial Office a novel idea because it obviously provoked a good deal of thought. However, the answer eventually came, and when it did the explanation was not concerned with the difficulties of curbing a major industry. It merely announced in somewhat solemn language that, American Negroes not being British subjects, there was nothing that H.M.G. could do about it.