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 born in 1965 but lived in Somerset so not much immigration happening there. I don't remember any non-Caucasians anywhere let alone in school but when I went to secondary school in the late 70s there were some black girls but it was a private school and they tended to be the daughters of foreign diplomats who boarded rather than local people.

Mother no offence meant.

I am trying to define race and nationality. For the sake of the article I am classing Indian/Bengali/Pakistani as a nationality and not a race.

We also had a high number of italians living in our area due to a Prisoner of War camp, many of those people also stayed here and brought their families over after the war.

Although according to the dictionary, Caucasian covers Indian people...

cau·ca·sian/kôˈkāZHən/
Adjective: Of or relating to one of the traditional divisions of humankind, covering a broad group of peoples from Europe, western Asia, and parts of India and North Africa.
Noun: A Caucasian person.

Will establish labels....!

Lady there's a good book by Sukhdev Sandhu called "London Calling" taking black and Asian writers thoughts/experiences of immigration (London-specific though). Again, I know you are seeking more than literary references but what about Hanif Kureishi's writings (non-fiction as well as Buddha of Suburbia).

This website is terrific too:
www.movinghere.org.uk/

Bssh, yes I'm just reading through the website "migration history".

Brilliant! Thanks :)

I started school in 1959 in what was then Essex and is now considered East London.
The large infants/junior school I went to was 100% white.
By the time I left we had a couple of mixed-race South African children who had come to the UK to escape apartheid.
And the same situation at Secondary really. I suppose by the time I left the mix had started to change lower down the school, but as I was so wrapped up in O-levels it pretty much passed me by.

Did you notice a rise in foreign food restaurants, or even different fruit and vegetables available at markets?

No. This was Norwich. Garlic was regarded as dangerously outre.

Someone spotted a mango, once. And occasionally green coriander could be bought.

The National Front, however, managed to whip up a storm a bit later about Immigrants...

Looking at a group that have emigrated to Britain in 2 different eras, I would say the Poles that arrived in the 50s knew they were coming permanently whereas the Poles who arrived in the 2000s knew it was for a short time only, then would return to Poland.

Perhaps this is why Polish shops sprang up in the 2000s to supply those migrants with goods they wanted, whereas in the 50s Poles would have used local shops and got themelves used to local goods as they were intedning to become locals?
Obviously the ease of export/import these days would have somehting to do with that too.

I grew up in a town that had an enormous Polish and Ukranian community, but the nearest 'Polish' shop was 10 miles away (in another town also with a very large Polish community).

Born early 60's so don't have much memory of those times! In the west coast of Scotland there were very few non-indigenous people. Work was scarcer up here so I suppose there was little to attract people in. As a child all my classmates were white, this continued all through secondary school (to the end of the 70's). I believe there was one non-white (Arabic) pupil out of almost 1,000 pupils in that school.

But similar to what has been mentioned earlier in the thread, there were lots of Italian immigrants (ran most of the chippies and ice cream parlours) who I would assume moved here predominantly post-war. Most Scots-Italians of my age were 2nd and 3rd generation.

Thanks for all this information, it's really interesting!

There's a poet called Jackie Kay who is mixed race (White & Black/British & Nigerian) who was adopted by a white family in Scotland...her poetry "The Adoption Papers" reflect on how she was treated by the predom. white population of the time. Makes really interesting reading.

I went to school at the end of the 60's in a large deprived inner city area. My teacher was Indian and when I look at my first class photo about a third of the children look Asian.

I was too young to be aware of any impact. I know my parents thought the teacher was great - she was very strict but fair.

I also remember that my best friend was a little Asian girl. One day I remember wanting to put trousers on as well as a skirt and being told by my mum that was wrong you don't wear both items together. I said but x does (sorry I can't remember her name now). I remember my mum being hugely embarassed and saying that it was different for my friend. I don't know why my mum was embarassed though.

But sorry i was too young to be aware of anything else that might be helpful.