Harold Wilson sought a solution by negotiating
with the Rhodesian premier Ian Smith, a former
battle of Britain pilot, who enjoyed considerable
public support in Britain, not least because what
was happening in the Congo and Uganda was a
bad advertisement for black rule. The British gov-
ernment had neither the will nor the backing to
use force to topple Smith and impose majority
rule. Instead, economic sanctions were adopted,
but they proved leaky, with oil and other supplies
reaching Rhodesia through South Africa and
Portuguese Mozambique. Smith was able to hold
out until 1979: the issue was decided in Africa
and not in London. Britain, once at the centre of
imperial power, had moved to the sidelines.
What is surprising to foreign observers is the
equanimity with which the majority of the British
people accepted the loss of empire. To the serving
British soldier direct experience of the squalor and
poverty of what became known as the Third
World was a reality that replaced the romantic
simple patriotism of a bygone age. Only a minor-
ity who had directly benefited mourned the
passing of the Raj. Realistic Conservatives did not
reverse Labour policies after 1951, as might have
been expected if Churchill had been taken seri-
ously, but extended and hastened the process of
granting independence. To the man in the street
setting former colonials free did not solve the
problem: they emigrated to Britain, making use
of their rights as subjects of the Crown to settle
in the home country, though only a small pro-
portion of the population of the empire did so.
There was nothing new in the experience of
accepting immigrants – Russian and, later,
German Jews and, during the Second World War,
foreign allies from many nations, had settled in
Britain. Large numbers of Poles, some 157,000,
who had fought with the British refused after the
war to return to their country, now dominated by
the Soviet Union. The Polish miners of Mansfield
with their own social club, the German refugees
in Swiss Cottage, and other nationals elsewhere
in Britain exhibiting different cultures were
accepted with tolerance and good humour. Their
British-educated children were soon indistin-
guishable from the rest. Although immigration
aroused some contemporary argument, the assim-
ilation of more than 300,000 immigrants pre-
sented no long-term problems, and their early
concentration within certain areas gave way
within a generation to their spreading out and
absorption throughout the British Isles. These
were the white immigrants.
The problem of immigration from the former
colonies and the new Commonwealth countries
proved different. Immigration of West Indians
and Asians did not begin in the 1940s and 1950s- in London, and in seaports such as Cardiff and
Liverpool, sizeable black communities had already
settled, attracted by the prospect of work. The
essential features of the problem revealed them-
selves from the start. There is a natural tendency
among all immigrants to concentrate in particular
towns among their own peoples with similar cul-
tural backgrounds. Here they are more protected
and can expect some assistance. Discrimination
by whites meant that immigrants obtained only
labouring jobs, and not even those when employ-
ment became scarce. Moreover, the assumption
of racial superiority and acts of prejudice drove
an increasingly impoverished black commu-
nity back in on itself. Violence in what became
virtually ghetto areas fed on discrimination and
resentment. In 1919 there occurred serious riots
in Cardiff, Newport and London. In Liverpool
people of Carribean or African descent were
attacked by a mob.
The assimilation of black immigrants has not
proceeded as quickly and smoothly as that of the
whites. Communities of Asian people and people
of African descent take pride in their own culture
and distinctiveness, frequently reinforced by their
own religious observances. West Indians, the
black people from the colonies and Indians
had all been welcomed as fighting men during
the war, and after 1945 West Indian labour was
encouraged to come to Britain to fill jobs for
which there were not sufficient whites. London
Transport, for instance, recruited 4,000 workers
in the Caribbean, and the National Health Service
could not have functioned without cleaners
and nurses from overseas. Need reduced preju-
dice. Increasingly doctors from India and the
Commonwealth entered the Health Service too,
540 THE RECOVERY OF WESTERN EUROPE IN THE 1950s AND 1960s