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3 - Rivers of Blood

The Ugandan Asians

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2021

Becky Taylor
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
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Summary

Britain in 1972 was different in many ways to the Britain of 1956. The post-war years of full employment were gone; poverty had been ‘rediscovered’; unemployment was rising; the 1960s had simultaneously seen the emergence of ‘affluence’ and countercultural challenges to it; racism and anti-immigration sentiments were a visible and endemic part of daily life and were slipping into the political mainstream; and Britain had lost most of its empire. And yet the anti-racist politics and radicalism of the 1960s and Britain’s increasingly established Black and Asian populations were showing that there were new ways of being British. This chapter explores how these shifts affected the reception and resettlement of the Ugandan Asians. It shows that the expellees – sometimes treated as ‘refugees’, sometimes as ‘immigrants’ – while welcomed by the government-led Ugandan Resettlement Board and a diverse and energetic voluntary initiative, often faced a Britain experienced by its poorest inhabitants. A place of slum housing, rack-renting landlords, a byzantine welfare system and low pay, intensified for the expellees by institutionalised and casual racism. At the same time grassroots activists, race relations workers and the sustained efforts of the expellees themselves to establish new lives in Britain demonstrated that Britain was also being re-worked from within.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • Rivers of Blood
  • Becky Taylor, University of East Anglia
  • Book: Refugees in Twentieth-Century Britain
  • Online publication: 23 April 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316946299.004
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  • Rivers of Blood
  • Becky Taylor, University of East Anglia
  • Book: Refugees in Twentieth-Century Britain
  • Online publication: 23 April 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316946299.004
Available formats
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Rivers of Blood
  • Becky Taylor, University of East Anglia
  • Book: Refugees in Twentieth-Century Britain
  • Online publication: 23 April 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316946299.004
Available formats
×