Multicultural Britain: A People’s History

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Hurst Publishers, Aug 15, 2024 - Social Science - 368 pages


Between the end of the Second World War and the early twenty-first century, Britain became multicultural. This vivid book tells that remarkable story. Kieran Connell, an historian of Irish and German heritage who grew up in Balsall Heath, inner-city Birmingham, takes readers into multicultural communities across Britain at key moments in their development.

Journeying far beyond London, Multicultural Britain explores the messy contradictions of the country’s transition into today’s diverse society. It reveals the ordinary people who have forged Britain’s multiculturalism; skewers public leaders, from Enoch Powell to Harold Wilson to Margaret Thatcher, who have too often weaponised race for their own political ends; and shines a light on the shifting nature of British racism, revealing its enduring day-to-day impact on ethnic-minority groups.

Between postcolonial reckonings and immigration anxieties, how people live together in Brexit Britain remains an urgent question for our time. Connell’s fresh, thought-provoking book unveils British multiculturalism not as a problematic idea, but as a rich and complex lived reality.

 

Contents

List of Illustrations
1940s Cardiff
1950s Nottingham
1960s Balsall Heath
1980s Bradford
1990s Balsall Heath
Epilogue
Select Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Copyright

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About the author (2024)

Kieran Connell is a writer and historian based at Queen’s University Belfast. His first book, Black Handsworth: Race in 1980s Britain, was shortlisted for the Whitfield Book Prize.

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