A SHARED STRUGGLE

While the precise context may have been different, Britain’s own fight for equality drew inspiration from events across the pond

- DANNY BIRD

The struggle for civil rights resonated beyond the United States, including in the United Kingdom. But Dr Kennetta Hammond Perry, honorary senior research fellow and founding director of the Stephen Lawrence Research Centre at De Montfort University, stresses that we should always be mindful of the "specificities of the context of disenfranchisement" when looking at echoes of the US movement around the world. Rather than being the result of legally enforced segregation, the British campaign arose during the period when European imperialism was in retreat and postwar British governments were encouraging mass migration from Britain's colonies.

Indeed, throughout the late 1940s and 1950s, immigrants from across the British empire and Commonwealth were answering the call to fill vacancies in the job market. But this sudden change in Britain's demographic makeup provoked racial violence and discrimination in major cities like London, Birmingham and Nottingham. Skilled workers from Britain's overseas territories found their prospects limited by racist attitudes and often had to settle for careers that squandered their experience. And later, when the British economy fell into decline, black workers were disproportionately affected by job losses and unequal pay.

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