“Our Hitherto Racially Peaceful Streets”: British Conceptions of American Race Relations

Following the end of the Second World War, concerns over immigration and race relations filled British newspaper editorials and Parliamentary debates. By analyzing media, particularly newspaper editorials, this paper focuses on ways in which British people examined their own race relations in comparison to American race relations. Typically, Americans’ approach to race represented a negative example best avoided. This view of America as a problematic model contributed to evolving constructions of British society. This paper analyzes how different sides of immigration and integration debates wielded the American example to argue a variety of positions and policies. As American attitudes and policies came to represent a model to avoid and surpass, members of the British public refined their beliefs on immigration, integration, and the future of the nation. This paper contributes to the growing exploration of British attitudes towards race, immigration, and integration in the era of decolonization while also showing the way that America, despite its superpower status during the Cold War, came to represent a nightmarish image rather than a democratic ideal. Around those fears and with a keen need to rise above, Britons formed their own distinct racial ideals and practices. This paper will be of interest not only to historians of postwar Britain, but also to scholars of race relations, transnational political history, and media studies.