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Racial segregation in the United Kingdom

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Rear face of a Holborn Trades Council leaflet promoting a 1943 anti-discrimination meeting, and citing the cases of Amelia King and Learie Constantine (transcription)

In the United Kingdom, racial segregation occurred in pubs, workplaces, shops and other commercial premises, which operated a colour bar where non-white customers were banned from using certain rooms and facilities.[1] Segregation also operated in the 20th century in certain professions,[2] in housing[3] and even at Buckingham Palace.[4] There were no British laws requiring racial segregation but until 1965, there were no laws prohibiting racial segregation either.[5]

The colour bar, according to author Sathnam Sanghera, was an import from the British Empire, where people living under British rule would be segregated depending on their race and colour.[6]

The colour bar in pubs was deemed illegal by the Race Relations Act 1965, but other institutions such as members' clubs could still bar people because of their race until a few years later. Some resisted the law such as in the Dartmouth Arms in Forest Hill or the George in Lambeth which still refused to serve non-white people on the grounds of colour.[7][8]

The colour bar was experienced by segregated African-American allied troops stationed in the UK during the Second World War who were ordered by their superiors to not visit various pubs and social facilities.[9] Some British pubs refused to comply with this segregation, such as in Bamber Bridge. Non-white British troops also faced a colour bar, with instances of members of the Home Guard being refused entry to establishments even when wearing uniform.[10]

The employment colour bar

Many people were denied employment in 20th-century Britain due to racism. For instance, in 1975, in Liverpool, only 20% of black people were successful in finding a job.[6]

Institutions such as the armed forces, transport companies and a royal palace operated policies of excluding people from employment based on their race.[citation needed]

Women's Land Army

In 1943, during the Second World War, Amelia King was refused work with the Women's Land Army on the basis of her colour. The decision was overturned after being raised in the House of Commons by her MP, Walter Edwards.[11][12]

British Rail

The Euston colour bar was brought to light in 1966 by Dominica-born Asquith Xavier who was refused a job as a guard by British Rail, after receiving a letter telling him that he had been rejected for a job at Euston because there was a "ban on coloured men".[13][14] He later became the first non-white train guard at Euston railway station. Trevor Phillips, when chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, said in 2006: "Asquith's stand against discrimination brought to light the inadequacy of early race discrimination laws and persistent widespread discrimination faced by ethnic minorities.[15]" A plaque at the station commemorates his achievement.[16]

In 1956, the BBC current affairs series Panorama focused on the colour bar on the railway featuring interviews at Smithfield depot. A manager defended a policy of not employing non-white workers.[17]

Buckingham Palace

Non-white members of staff were banned from taking clerical roles at Buckingham Palace until at least the latter part of the 1960s.[4] In 1968, the Queen’s chief financial manager, Charles Tryon, 2nd Baron Tryon, sought to secure an exemption from proposed amendments to the Race Relations Act. He stated that it was policy to only allow people of colour to work as domestic servants at the Palace.[4][18]

When the Act passed it included an exemption specified that if a member of Palace staff complained about racial discrimination then the case would be heard by the Home Secretary rather than the law courts.[18] This exemption still applies today.[19]

The date the colour bar at Buckingham Palace ended has not been revealed but it is claimed that records have shown that people of colour have been employed since the 1990s.[4]

Bristol Omnibus Company

A four-month boycott of the city's bus services occurred in 1963 when the Bristol Omnibus Company refused to employ non-white crews.[20] Campaigners included Paul Stephenson, Roy Hackett, Owen Henry, Audley Evans and Prince Brown.[21]

Manchester Transportation Department

A fixed quota of non-white bus drivers and conductors was reported to the Manchester and District Council for African Affairs in 1954 despite a shortage of employees in those positions.[22]

Walter Slingsby and Co

White workers at an engineering firm in Keighley, West Yorkshire, went on strike after two men of Pakistani origin were employed. They returned to work when the management introduced a colour bar by agreeing that only white workers would be employed in skilled jobs.[23]

Hair salons

Hilary Alderson worked in at a Co-operative hairdressers salon in Leeds, West Yorkshire, in the late 1950s where her manager, a Mr Raymond, would not employ people of colour as hairdressers.[24] When the workers protested the salon manager told Alderson that the salon's customers would object if he did employ non-white hairdressers.[24]

Barnbow

In the munitions factory near Leeds that made tanks, Alford Gardner was repeatedly turned down for work in the late 1940s because he was not allowed to join the company's union.[24] A labour officer at Barnbow eventually revealed there was a colour bar which meant Kingston, Jamaica-born Gardner could not be employed.[24]

Education

In the 1960s, following concerns about segregation within the education system, Asian children were "bussed" to predominantly white suburban schools to promote integration.[25] In the 1970s, Bernard Coard wrote How the West Indian Child is Made Educationally Sub-normal in the British School System, exposing the segregation of students from the British Afro-Caribbean community into "educationally subnormal" schools.[26]

Immigration

Various pieces of legislation in the 1950s and 1960s sought to ban non-whites migrating to the UK, with The Economist describing Labour's 1968 Commonwealth Immigration Act as "restricting the entry of many holders of British passports, simply and solely because they are brown".[27]

Housing

Across the country non-white citizens were barred from rental properties by a number of landlords and landladies because of their colour. The Bishop of Portsmouth spoke out about the practice in 1958[28] and it was common for properties to be advertised for Europeans only.[29] In Aberdeen, 50% of student accommodation advertisements in 1954 barred people who were described as colonials.[30]

New town development in the postwar period was implicated in the racial segregation of the population.[31]

Public houses

The colour bar operated around the UK until the law prohibited the discrimination of customers based on their race, colour or country of birth.[32] It meant that landlords could split public houses into white areas and "coloured" rooms. The publicans defended their actions by claiming it was a "poverty bar" but there's evidence that teachers and doctors of colour were banned from their "white rooms"[33] It took co-ordinated action to break the colour bar in pubs[34] with anti-racism activists peacefully protesting against discrimination and Malcolm X even visited Smethwick to see how bad the racism was.[35]

London

The mayor of Lewisham was tipped off about a colour bar that operated in the Dartmouth Arms in Forest Hill and visited the pub in January 1965 with Melbourne Goode of the Brockley International Friendship Association.[36] He was refused service by the landlord Harold Hawes who still refused to change his racist policy despite anti-racists staging a sit-in at the pub. In Brixton, men from the West Indies were barred from attending local dance clubs in Brixton and Streatham without a partner and many pubs operated a colour bar where 'there was a large coloured population in Brixton and Jamaicans were not popular in the public houses’.[37] The George in Brixton operated a colour bar with the landlord saying "I am making sure the blacks don't take over this area"[38] with a judge ruling that protestors weren't threatening staff and that the colour bar was in operation.[39]

Bristol

The Bay Horse pub in 1964 refused to serve Paul Stephenson, who had a West African father and mixed-heritage mother. After refusing to leave the premises he was eventually arrested by eight members of police. Stephenson was held overnight and his subsequent trial became national news.[40]

East Anglia

The publican of the Tickell Arms in Whittlesford, Cambridgeshire, was reported to the Race Relations Board in 1969 for refusing to serve a Trinidadian who was with a white girl.[41]

The Midlands

Smethwick was a key battleground for anti-racism campaigners breaking the colour bar which operated in the town's pubs run by Mitchells and Butlers brewery. The campaign was run by the Indian Workers Association and one of its members Avtar Singh Jouhl[42] introduced Malcolm X to one of the town's pubs, the Blue Gates.[43]

In 1969, a Wolverhampton pub denied entry to Abe Tapper, of Indian origin, when we wanted to use the Ash Tree's telephone.[44]

In 1983, a West Bromwich wine bar banned Sikh youth leader, Dal Singh, from entering the premises because he was wearing a turban.[45]

The North

Manchester police were called to the Old Abbey Taphouse pub on the Greenheys estate between Hulme and Moss Side on September 30, 1953, and black boxer Len Johnson and his friends were all thrown out after being refused service because of the colour of his skin. Johnson was angered by this and enlisted the help of the then Lord Mayor of Manchester, and the Bishop of Manchester, and more than 200 people to take part in a demonstration outside.[46] Also in Manchester, in 1954, two publicans lost their licences for operating a colour bar in the Whitworth Hotel and the Paragon Inn after they refused to serve Samuel Edoo, a Manchester University graduate.[47]

Private members' clubs

A loophole existed that allowed private members' clubs to operate a colour bar until at least 1974[48] and that year protests took place in Blackpool against Club and Institute Union clubs operating a colour bar, which had been defended by the Law Lords.[49] In 1968, the colour bar was in operation in the Bilston, near Wolverhampton, with the United Club barring comedian Benny Nightingale for performing, with the union Equity informed of his plight.[50] Clubs in Coventry barred non-whites, arguing they would get on committees and steer clubs they had no part in establishing.[51]

In 1968, Peggy Apparicio was barred from a General Post Office telephonists Christmas party in a Wolverhampton working men's club.[52] Apparicio and her husband were told that no non-white people were allowed by club officials despite their invitations.[52]

In 1969, Amarjit Shah, 27, a postal and telegraph worker, complained to the Conservative Party leader, Edward Heath, that he was refused membership of a London Conservative Club.[53] Shah was a party worker for East Ham Conservative Party but resigned from the party after he was refused entry due to his colour.[53]

Two Labour MPs in 1969 resigned from the Plumstead Working Men's Radical Club because it decided to bar all non-whites from membership.[54]

A working men's club in Old Fletton, Peterborough, was discovered to have banned all people of foreign origin after Mario Pignatiello, who had lived in England since 1953, was asked to leave in 1969.[55]

Hotels

Proprietors would often eject or ban black and Asian members of the public that wanted rooms. The most famous case was of the West Indian cricketer, Learie Constantine, who was told to leave the Imperial Hotel in Russell Square, London, in 1943.[56] In 1937, the Scottish Heavyweight boxer, Manuel Abrew, nearly cancelled his fight with Jack London in London after being turned away from four hotels in the city and one in Windsor where he was told to find a boarding house instead.[57] Other sportspeople who suffered from the hotel colour bar include the entire Indian table tennis team in 1935 causing the world table tennis championship organisers to force the owners of a London hotel to change their mind by threatening to remove all competitors from the premises.[58]

A colour bar operated throughout the UK and well into the 1980s; for example a Scottish hotel tried to ban two brothers Omar and David Dafalla from a disco in March 1986 after they had admitted their white mother.[59]

Restaurants

In Edinburgh a colour bar was in place in some restaurants and dancehalls during the 1920s which banned Indian students.[60]

Dance halls

George Roberts, aged 31, was refused entry twice to a Liverpool dance hall in 1944 because of his colour; once in civilian clothes and then when he returned in his Home Guard uniform.[61] He was taken to court because after the racist incident he refused to go on Home Guard parades claiming he was being insulted while wearing the uniform. The West Indian cricketer Learie Constantine gave evidence on his behalf.[10]

Sport

Boxing

Boxers, like Len Johnson, were barred from competition from 1911 until 1948. Due to then Home Secretary Winston Churchill's decision in 1911 to support a colour bar, he was banned from competing at both the Royal Albert Hall and National Sporting Club. The British Boxing Board of Control argued that boxers in that period could compete for Empire titles but it did bar boxers who were 'not of pure European descent'.[62]

Cricket

Cricket clubs with players from black or Asian origin have a long history of not being allowed to compete in cricket leagues, such as Queen's Road Muslims cricket club being excluded from the Halifax cricket league.[63]

Football

Crawley Town manager John Yems left his position at the club after being accused of racism and segregation.[64] It was alleged in 2022 that he racially segregated the dressing room telling white footballers to avoid getting changed with the black members of the team.[64]

References

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  2. ^ "What was behind the Bristol bus boycott?". BBC News. 26 August 2013. Retrieved 9 March 2022.
  3. ^ "3. Settling In". Reading Museum. 4 June 2020. Retrieved 10 March 2022.
  4. ^ a b c d Pegg, David; Evans, Rob (2 June 2021). "Buckingham Palace banned ethnic minorities from office roles, papers reveal". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 March 2022.
  5. ^ Wild, Rosalind Eleanor (August 2008). 'Black was the colour of our fight.' Black Power in Britain, 1955-1976 (PDF) (Thesis). p. 54.
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  8. ^ "'Coloured Men Were Refused Service in Saloon Bar'". South London Press. 15 September 1964. pp. P1.
  9. ^ ""They treated us royally"? The experiences of black Americans in Britain during the Second World War". Imperial War Museums. Retrieved 10 March 2022.
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  23. ^ "'Colour bar' strikers to go back". Belfast Telegraph -. 27 July 1961. p. 1.
  24. ^ a b c d Grant, Colin (2019). Homecoming : voices of the Windrush generation. London. ISBN 978-1-78733-105-1. OCLC 1112379470.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
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  26. ^ Coard, Bernard (1971). How the West Indian Child is Made Educationally Subnormal in the British School System: The Scandal of the Black Child in Schools in Britain. New Beacon for the Caribbean Education and Community Workers' Association.
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  28. ^ "Bishop Denounces Portsmouth Colour Bar". Hampshire Telegraph. 7 November 1958. p. 4.
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  33. ^ 1905-, Prem, Dhani R. (1966). The parliamentary leper : colour & British politics. Prem. OCLC 9125739. {{cite book}}: |last= has numeric name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
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  60. ^ "The 'Colour Bar'". The Scotsman. 4 June 1927. p. 11.
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  63. ^ Stone, Duncan (2022). Different Class The Untold Story of English Cricket. Watkins Media. ISBN 978-1-913462-81-9. OCLC 1290484986.
  64. ^ a b "John Yems leaves Crawley Town after allegations of racist behaviour". The Guardian. 6 May 2022. Retrieved 7 May 2022.
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