Scientific 'race' thinking and migration : Blacks and Jews in Britain, 1918-62

Abstract

This thesis provides a comparative analysis of the impact of scientific ‘racial’ thinking on attitudes and policy towards Jewish and Black immigrants and monitories in Britain between 1918 and 1962.  It offers an original assessment of the relationship between immigration policy and ‘race’ theory by highlighting the importance of ‘racial’ ideologies and scientific thinking in informing societal attitudes towards minority groups.  It explores the relationship between science and society arguing that a symbiotic connection existed between scientific research on ‘race’ and wider social and political thought.  The comparative approach within the thesis is utilised to illuminate a clearer picture regarding the role of ‘race’ thinking in setting responses to immigrants and minorities.  It enables an exploration both of the role of traditional ‘racial’ discourses in the formation of popular, governmental and scientific attitudes towards Blacks and Jews and of the importance of ‘colour’ prejudice and anti-Semitism in shaping responses towards these minorities in Britain.

The thesis begins with a discussion of the role of ‘racial’ theory and ideology in shaping majority-minority relations.  It discusses the validity of Black/Jewish Study and explores traditional British images of Blacks and Jews from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century.  The following three chapters chronologically consider changing British scientific and societal attitudes towards ‘race’ and assess how ‘racial’ theory and thinking affected Black and Jewish immigrants and minorities across three different time periods.  The first of these chapters considers the interwar period, focusing on anti-alienism in the wake of the First World War and on the role of ‘racial’ discourses in setting attitudes towards Jewish and Black immigrants, especially Jewish refugees from Nazism.  The next chapter addresses British wartime ‘race’ thinking, analysing attitudes towards the increased Black solider and volunteer presence in wartime Britain and the enlarged Jewish community, focusing on issues of internment and rescue.  The final chapter considers post-1945 British society, probing the role of ‘race’ thinking in post-war immigration policy and in the passing of the Commonwealth Immigration Act in 1962.

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