Competition or culture? Anti-migrant hostility and industrial decline: the case of West Yorkshire, 1962–1981

ABSTRACT

Many of the arguments around hostility towards immigrants are presented in terms of their adverse economic impact on the settled population. From immigration from the ‘New Commonwealth’ after 1945 through to the arrival of large numbers of people from the expanded European Union after 2004, both calls for the limitation of immigrant numbers, and explanations of local resentment, are framed in terms of economic and material factors. Yet in the textile towns of West Yorkshire during the 1960s and 1970s, there was no competition for work or immigrant suppression of wages, nor much competition for housing or access to state welfare. Yet this absence of competition and lack of genuine material grievances did not prevent the settled population from reacting with hostility towards their new neighbours. Significantly, these resentments were usually expressed in the language of cultural difference and complaints around different ways of living. This article examines why hostility to immigrants remained despite the absence of competition, and why concerns around immigration were usually expressed in cultural rather than material terms. It draws on oral histories, press reports and local council records, and highlights both the absence of competition and the presence of ‘cultural’ resentments against recent immigrants. Ultimately it argues that the reception of South Asian immigrants in West Yorkshire should be understood not through competition, but through the lens of industrial and imperial decline at home and abroad.

KEYWORDS:

• West Yorkshire
• South Asian immigrants
• Pakistani immigration
• reactions to immigration
• textiles
• working class

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 LHASC: European Immigration 1965: ‘Immigration – Draft Paragraphs for First Secretary of State, 9th April 1965’.

2 As argued by John Barr as early as 1964. See John Barr (1964). Low pressure on housing confirmed by oral testimonies (see, for example, Respondent A. 0089, interview date unknown); archival evidence (documents in WYAS, Calderdale Library, Halifax: NCW 23–27 (National Council of Women), and LHASC European Immigration 1965); and Foot, Immigration and Race in British Politics, 163.

3 WYAS, Bradford: 28D94/1, ‘Asian immigration – slum clearance, 1968’.

4 WYAS, Bradford: BBD1/7/T15401, Commonwealth Immigrants.

5 WYAS, Bradford: BBD 1/7/T16150.

6 Bradford: BDP 74/14/2/7: ‘Bradford Diocesan Education Committee Annual Visit, 7th May 1971’.

7 WYAS, Bradford: BBD 1/7/T14923.