Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

This chapter sets out to explore the diversity of Britain's minority groups during a period when Britain was perceived as fundamentally monocultural and when the notion of Britishness was the very essence of Englishness, the image of the Englishman (never the Englishwoman) being either that of a cricket-playing, liberal, white Christian, honourable gentleman or a plain-speaking, brave, warm-beer-drinking, God-fearing, working man. The concept of a multicultural Britain, incorporating multilingualism and religious plurality, was, even as late as the outbreak of the Second World War, still almost half a century away. In spite of this, within mainland Britain in the years between 1900 and 1939, there was an impressive variety of minority groups. In 1901 the Decennial Census recorded 0.7 per cent of the total population as alien; by 1931, as second-generation British-born began to outnumber their immigrant parents, this figure had dropped to 0.4 per cent. (The advent of war made it impossible to carry out the next Decennial Census and therefore we have no records for 1941. It is probable that with the arrival of refugees from Nazism and a small number of others in the 1930s, the percentage would have increased.) However, before we can embark on a more detailed examination of the nature of that kaleidoscope of minority groups, we need to understand the categories within which they fall ... log in or subscribe to read full text