Know more about the 1950's onwards.
The Black population in the northeast maintained a small but present Black community after the war. Attitudes that were never totally accepting of immigrants from former colonies grew combined with increasing racism.
The North Shields Black community decreased after the war. In the interwar years it had been a vibrant community, aided by Charles Udor Minto.
Minto, a boxer, had moved to North Shields in 1932 from Nigeria and helped to run Colonial House in North Shields. This had been a community hub for North Shield’s Black community and others. It offered concerts, Christmas events etc. Minto also set up the International Coloured Mutual Association. This led education initiatives and tackled workers’ rights on behalf of individuals in the area.[1] For more information on this please head to the excellent website by Dr Vanessa Mongey on this (and other areas of the region’s Black communities) Paths Across Waters.
Colonial House ran through World War Two. Minto was awarded an MBE for his services in 1949. However, Colonial House closed in 1950. Minto continued with his community work.
This hidden history has come to the fore with the work of Dr Beverley Prevatt Goldstein and others in the past few years. So much so that in October 2023 a blue heritage plaque was placed outside the location of Colonial House, which is now an estate agent.[2]
In a rather cold study published in 1957, Coloured Minorities in Britain by S Collins paints a picture of post-World War Two Tyneside.[3] It studies various people and communities in ‘the Estate’ and Edward Square among other areas of Newcastle. Pre-war numbers of Black people were there, but small, rising after the war. The study states most Black people were there due to helping with the war effort, working as sailors (and as such lived close to the River Tyne). It states that in comparison to other working-class people in the area the Black residents were on a similar social standing in terms of education, employment etc. However, of note is the assumption that there were no problems of discrimination or segregation while noting several instances of overt racism. A child having to ‘use his fist’ on a boy following a racial slur.[4] Other instances of being denied accommodation, or white people threatening to leave if Black people were to move in.[5] It is a bleak picture of a rundown area. Unemployment blights the Black community to a greater degree than the white. Racism in the workplace is noted, employers not accepting Black candidates from the Labour Exchange for fear of white employees not wanting to work with Black workers. Education seems slightly better, with a few anecdotal stories of scholarships and caring teachers.
In 1967 Newcastle Upon Tyne Planning Department published The Coloured Immigrant in Newcastle Upon Tyne by Sudha D. Telang. It looks at education, medical care, etc. It states that migration although present was minimal (interesting as a contemporary of the ‘rivers of blood speech’ claiming the exact opposite) It places Newcastle among other British port towns as being home to Black sailors in the 19th Century, while stating that others who had been enslaved had been in Britain before this. It states that West Indian migration in the 1950’s came from many who had already been to Britain during the world wars and intervening years, but came back because of The McCarran Act 1952.
and lack of economic opportunity in the West Indies.[6] For many 1950’s migrants, this was not their first time in Britain. They had been before in many different roles; in the services during the war, as sailors, as students etc. The McCarran Act limited migration into the United States in the early years of the Cold War in an attempt to stop a perceived tide of communists.
The report has interesting information on those from India and Pakistan.
It notes that West Indian immigrants, because of already close links with Britain and America, expected assimilation to be easy. (These links will be numerous - cultural, historic, language, previous migration. The people interviewed are ‘sometimes disappointed.’)
In another blow to what many see post World War Two immigration as, the main causes of immigration are listed as better job/standard of living, to save money and return home, or for education. It does not note that immigration was a pull factor of jobs rebuilding Britain as is often claimed. Poverty, lack of educational opportunities and natural disasters were amongst the main push factors in post-War migration, more than a pull towards the ‘Mother-country. Although there is no doubt that so many, once in Britain, aided it’s rebuilt, added immensely to its prosperity and culture and are an integral part of ‘Britishness.’
The report does not suggest that jobs in aid of rebuilding Britain, the ‘mother-country’ of the empire, was a pull factor driving migration. Poverty, lack of educational opportunities, natural disasters, and the chance to start afresh in a prosperous nation were among the main push factors in post-war migration.
Between the 1951 and 1961 census it notes an increase in Black people from Africa and Caribbean countries; the numbers are still small, (from the Caribbean 62 in 1951 to 160 in 1961) but states they will rise.
Employment is discussed with this telling comment, ‘The immigrant tends to take to any job which the English find tedious, hard, and boring; for example, the immigrant takes to shift work on public transport. He does not therefore deprive the host community of their employment opportunity.’[7] This is telling as it shows that this sort of anti-immigrant thought was in common use and had to be addressed.
These works are in Newcastle University Library. They are of use to anyone studying/teaching about immigration from many communities, gender, and local history. The library extends lending rights to students and other groups. Staff were welcoming and very helpful.
Despite the 1948 Act, welcome was all too often not there. Colour Bars, bans on Black and other minority groups, became common in Britain.
Professor Brian Ward in Martin Luther King in Newcastle Upon Tyne notes that as civil rights struggles in the USA had a focus on busses (with similar seen in the UK with the Bristol Bus Boycott) there was disgruntlement in white workers that Indians and Pakistanis, ‘were being hired ahead of ‘local men’.[8]
Racial tension was there, as can be seen above, but less obvious than in other parts of Britain where attacks on minority communities fired up. However, in Middlesborough in 1961 a three-day riot took place in Middlesbrough, when Indian communities were attacked by groups of up to five hundred white men.[9]
The 1948 act that in some ways welcomed people from Britain’s Caribbean colonies was now challenged with the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act.
The 1964 Race Relations Act outlawed discrimination and incitement of racial hatred. All the while racism was becoming more apparent in Britain.[10]
In 1968, Conservative shadow cabinet member Enoch Powell made his notorious Rivers of Blood speech, stating in racist terms that immigration was a mistake. It caused controversy. He was sacked from the shadow cabinet, and it opened a huge debate in Britain. In the northeast, Brian Ward notes a mixed response but one that showed a disturbing amount of support for Powell. Five hundred workers in a Dunlop factory in Gateshead walked out in support of Powell.
Despite these conditions, discrimination and violence, the rise of far-right groups like the British National Party and National Front, the northeast remained home to lots of diverse communities. There are lots of examples we could choose. For now, let’s have a look at a local member of parliament.
Chi Onwurah was born in Wallsend. Her father was a medical student from Nigeria. When little she lived in Nigeria, but returned to her home when civil war broke out. She attended Kenton school in Newcastle and later went to Imperial College, London and became an engineer. Chi Onwurah became an MP, representing Newcastle Upon Tyne Central since 2010.[11]
[1] Black British northeast (no date) Paths Across Waters. Available at: https://pathswaters.wixsite.com/tyne/spaces-of-solidarity (Accessed: 09 June 2024).
[2] (No date) Black rights activist honoured with blue plaque at ... Available at: https://www.pattinson.co.uk/news/black-rights-activist-honoured-with-blue-plaque-at-pattinsons-north-shields-branch (Accessed: 09 June 2024).
[3] Collins, S. (1972) Coloured minorities in Britain: Studies in British race relations based on African, West Indian, and Asiatic immigrants. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms.
[4] Collins Pg 69
[5] Collins pg 41
[6] Telang, S.D. (1967) The coloured immigrant in Newcastle upon Tyne: Research worker’s report and observations of the City Planning Officer. Newcastle upon Tyne: City of Newcastle upon Tyne. pg. 3.
[7] Telang pg. 12
[8] Ward, B. (2017) Martin Luther King in Newcastle upon Tyne: The African American Freedom Struggle and race relations in the Northeast of England. Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom: Tyne Bridge Publishing. Pg. 149
[9] Ward, B. (2017) Martin Luther King in Newcastle upon Tyne: The African American Freedom Struggle and race relations in the Northeast of England. Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom: Tyne Bridge Publishing. Pg. 157
[10] Olusoga, D. (2020) Black and British: A short essential history. London: Macmillan Children’s Books. Pg 512. Olusoga notes that in the same year a West Midlands, Conservative by-election candidate was openly using the n-word while campaigning.
[11] About me (2021) Chi Onwurah. Available at: https://chionwurahmp.com/about-me/ (Accessed: 09 June 2024).