Brotherhood and the brothers: Responses to ‘coloured’ immigration in the British Labour Party c. 1951–1965

Abstract

This article attempts to explain the variegated response of British Labour Party members to post‐war ‘coloured’ Commonwealth immigration. Most accounts consider that, by the early 1960s, Labour had abandoned its ‘principled’ support for unrestricted entry for electoral reasons, something which betrayed an inherent ‘racism’. This view has some merit, but it oversimplifies a matter which exposed a deep‐set uncertainty about Labour's ultimate purpose, one shared by other parties of the European Left. Was Labour—as its revisionist leaders and left‐wing activists believed—the bearer of progressive, universal values? Or was it simply the agent for the material improvement of manual workers, a majority of whom viewed coloured immigrants as a threat to their own well‐being? Thus, this article contends, Labour members’ reaction to coloured immigration can only be fully understood with reference to the contested nature of ‘Labourism’.