To ask if any of you were around in the 1950/60s?

[LadyOfTheManor]

Just wondering if any of you are old enough to remember this era? Care to shine some light on how it was growing up in mass immigration...is it different to the mass immigration that is/has going/gone on today?

Sorry for the lecture, trying to complete an article and have read every national archive I can find, I'm looking for people who were there and saw it!

I was probably too young to notice the effects of immigration in the 1950s but when visiting London in the 1960s I do remember the appalling "No Dogs, No Irish, No Coloureds" signs in places offering rooms to rent. Where I lived in sleepy Sussex, we had so few visible immigrants that I can't say that there was any great effect. Some people, were, I'm afraid to say, casually racist though. Despite most immigrants doing jobs that the English thought were above them.

Did you have any children in your school (estimating your age) who were anything but Caucasian?

PS. When talking about "mass immigration" you cannot compare the societal issues that pertained in the 1950s to those that exist today. The effects of World War Two and the need to rebuild the country cannot be underestimated.

I'm not a very good example, so far as schools are concerned, LadyOfTheManor. I was privately educated and when at boarding school there were always children in my school who were not Caucasian. Not because they were immigrants but often because they were the relatives of the rulers of despotic states! Or the children of foreign ambassadors.

Did you have any children in your school (estimating your age) who were anything but Caucasian?

i started school mid/late 60s and there were one or two non-white kids - I remember one, Olo his name was - Olo Polo we called him :)

Not me, but my mum grew up in the post-war years and worked in the cotton mills in the North West. Lots of indian and pakistani workers came over to work in the mills, and she says there was a lot of racism at times, and they were treated poorly by the mill owners.

We needed these people though, as our workforce was depleted by the men (and women) we had lost in the war.

There were no paid government benefits to be gained by coming here, you had to work, but there was plenty of work too, which is the big difference between the mass immigration then and now.

Yes, I realise that it was the need for workers after WWII.

I'm trying to focus more on the effect on culture-on both sides, how the immigrants found themselves settling in, and how the nationals reacted to them being there.

I can only read up reviews, which I think can be tainted by clever literary tools!

I grew up in the 60's, we didn't have any mass immigration in rural Wales. Not one non-white child in my primary school - definitely not multi-cultural. I still remember the excitement when the first chinese takeaway opened in the early 70's - was soooo exotic.

Yes.
I was part of it. My parents moved here from Ireland and I was born here early 60s.

We lived in north London which was a mass of new imigrants from Greece, turkey, west indes, India and Pakistan.
My school was very mixed in terms of ethnicity and religion.
As children we didn't really notice as we were all in the same situation - children of parents trying to get work and establish small businesses.

Of course pejudice existed but actually I think there was less tension around ethnicity as there was less fear of saying the wrong thing. It was fine for our parents to all be interested in each others customs and habits without any fear of offence.

i wasn't born until the 1960's but my mother came over in 48 as the child of a british father and anglo indian mother.
Her father promptly pissed off and left them and her mother ending up with a rented room and the children placed in church ophanages. No benefits or attempts to keep the family together just a low paid job for a woman who had no idea of how to fend for herself or earn her own living and the children looked after via the charity of the church.

My parents came to London in the 1960s from India but they came as middle class professionals (dad was an accountant and mum was a newly qualified doctor). Jobswise, they had no problem and were extremely respected by their bosses and colleagues and their skills, especially my mum's, were seen as much needed. They experience alot of racism in their everyday lives - just name calling and people ignoring them and naive questions about their culture ("Did you live in a mud hut?" - "No," my mum said, "I lived in a big house and we had servants." !!) but my parents simply ignored them as they went about the business of building up their lives here. They settled here very well and so did all their middle class, professional Indian friends.

Sorry I can't give you more personal anecdotes though. My own experiences of growing up in 1970s Kent are very interesting, but I'm saving my anecdotes for a book (and you're not interested in this era anyway) .

I'm 34 and when I was at school there were only caucasion kids, including at the big secondary school I went to. Infact in the town I grew up in there was only one black family.

When I was in my early 20s and in the bigger city up the road I got a Kenyan lodger and people used to stare at us if we went to the supermarket together - it was that unusual to see a black person. This was about 12-14 years ago. I do live in a rather backward area though.

There are only caucasion kids in DD's primary school. I live in a village of 5000 people and there is one Indian family and thats it ethnic minority wise.

Angela Carter described herself as a "poor product of an advanced industrial, post imperialist culture in decline".

Do any of you who have replied (those without British parents) feel the same?

Viva, would you say that it's fair to say that immigrants tend to live where there may be more of the same culture or community? (ie; somewhere multi-ethnic like London?)

I grew up in the 50s/60s in a midlands market town which was multicultural but not particularly white/black/brown but more transglobal.

I remember that it made my teens/early twenties much more interesting than most of my life since although I now live in London in a white/black/brown community.

One eye opening thing that happened in my early twenties was taking part in a play (Am Dram) and being asked by the Director if I "minded" kissing a black boy. It had never occurred to me to "mind", as far as I was concerned he was just an attractive boy. The Director told me when I said that I didn't mind that "some people would". It was my first indication of the prejudice I had been oblivious to in the people around me.

Viva, would you say that it's fair to say that immigrants tend to live where there may be more of the same culture or community? (ie; somewhere multi-ethnic like London?)

I know this is directed at Viva, but my parents moved out of London as soon as they could because they wanted a bigger house, more rural space and what they determined to be better schooling for me so they moved to a village in Kent where we were the only non-white people for years and years. It didn't bother them that they were not in a multi-cultural neighbourhood. In fact it didn't even occur to them. They were simply building a good life for themselves and me. besides, in Kent we were only an hour away from London and the Indian community there.

My parents were only bothered about actively mixing with their own ethnic group - not bothered much about other ethnicities because they were too busy and Kent at the time didn't have many "other ethnicities".

My DD is half-Indian (my DH is white) and one of the reasons I want to stay living in London is because of the ethnic diversity. But that is because I am informed about the value of multiculturalism - multiculturalism wasn't on my parents' radars in the 1960s and 1970s so they weren't bothered.

I went to primary school in the mid-sixties in a Lincolnshire village. Two Indian girls turned up to school one term - we were very excited. The older one invited my sisters to visit so they could see how she put on a sari - I tagged along. The father wouldn't let us in, sadly. I know there was massive disapproval from our headmaster because the father would not let the girls come to school for a full day - he said they should help their mother in the mornings. Anyway, they disappeared one day as suddenly as they arrived. I have always wondered about them!

I think so, yes. I would imagine thats why there's hardly any black or Asian people round here. And if you look at cities like Leicester or Bradford it does suggest that when people came here they went to where similar ethnic groups had already settled.

What we do have in our city is a lot of recent Polish/latvian/Lithuanian immigrants and they all seem to settle in the same area of the city. One ward in the city I would say is about 70% eastern european and its not just because thats where there's cheap housing. There are other areas of cheap housing where there aren't teh same numbers.

Most immigrants go where the jobs are - although I realise this is a hugely sweeping statement. A lot of multi-ethnic communities have been created by the need to fill jobs in specific industries - Luton is a classic example here.

But immigrants will often arrive and join communities which are supportive precisely because they consist of people from similar cultures or who are relatives. This was the case, in reverse, in my family who emigrated to Australia from Ireland in the 1850s. When my grandmother married my grandfather in 1918 and went back with him as a war bride she found herself living in an Irish community. Which seems to have been a surprise only to her!

What slant you are trying to put on this article though? And where will it appear?

Lady, I'm confused a little because you are writing an article about immigration experiences (both sides) in 1950s and 60s yet are asking questions/soliciting examples/getting examples from all eras. You'll get such a diverse response this way.

What's the theme of your article, the title and when can we read it ?

Lady, ignore my previous post, just re-read your OP and can see you also asked: "is it different to the mass immigration that is/has going/gone on today?".

'Did you have any children in your school (estimating your age) who were anything but Caucasian?'

I have to say I find the term 'Caucasian' quite objectionable: if you mean 'white', well, I have white skin but my mother is Indian, and there was another family from India. Norwich. 1960s. V insular place. But as I say, I look totally white so would not be perceived as a 'visible minority' despite my Indian family.

Indians are considered "caucasian" too (if you go in for defining racial types in this way). I must admit I paused when I read that term in the OP too....

would you say that it's fair to say that immigrants tend to live where there may be more of the same culture or community?

I would certainly say that this was definately the "norm" in the 50's and 60's.

In my hometown this was the case, and my parents grew up in Bolton, which had a high number of asians then due to the cotton and paper mills, and they did live in the same area, and have stayed there too. In the current day, those parts of Bolton are now inhabited by more people of indian/pakistani origin than caucasian and the shops in those areas reflect the culture of the residents.

Article is about multi culturalism: now and then.

I've just finished reading White Teeth for the second time, preparing myself for research...basically it follows 3 generations of Jamaicans, Bengalis and British all living Britain from ex war heroes to the produce 3 generations later.

I was born in 86, so I just about made one of the influxes of racial prejudice, but wondered what it was like for people living in the 1950s when the first influx came in.

I can refer to every decade from the 1950s to now if I wish but I was originally going to focus on the 50s/60s and 90s/00s. Makes such interesting reading, have picked my mother's brains, she was born in Manchester in 56, and my dad is from North Africa, where I was born, so there's diversity there, but I missed the original wave of immigrants. I would have thought it would have been culturally enriching, but the archives I've pulled up and the statements from the Trade Unions around that time indicate otherwise.