Enoch Powell’s 1968 Rivers of Blood address in Birmingham denounced U.K. immigration. Commonwealth nations. Powell was divisive and controversial, especially among Conservative Party colleagues, but his speech’s enormous public acceptance showed the country’s migratory attitude at the time. Powell never dreamed that 55 years later, conservative Indian politician Rishi Sunak would be prime minister and Muslim Pakistani Humza Yousaf would be Scottish National Party leader and First Minister of Scotland.
These historically significant have drawn more interest outside the U.K. than in a nation equally absorbed by its diversity and unhappy with its colonial misdeeds. I think this shows that racial and ethnic minorities seek to shape society as much as white majority.
Integration despite prejudice. That their identity is heavily influenced by British imperialism. Rishi Sunak and Humza Yousaf have South Asian and African roots. Nasar Meer, a sociology professor at Edinburgh University’s Department of Social and Political Science, informs EL PAíS that Sadiq Khan’s father was part of a generation recruited to work in public transit in the homeland.
“However, most top Conservative Party politicians refuse to accept the kinds of institutional racism that plague the lives of Black and other ethnic minorities in the U.K.,” he says.
A new generation of British politicians has changed the political landscape, but analysts say the next general election will be the true public test.
An independent assessment on London’s Metropolitan Police found systemic racism, sexism, and homophobia, as well as bullying and humiliation of female and ethnic minority officers. Sunak’s hardline administration has proposed a U.K. asylum legislation to deter immigrants. via tiny boats over the English Channel or other illicit ways from ever officially settling in the nation, a plan heavily denounced by NGOs and public figures.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman, a London-born politician from Mauritius and Kenya, oversees both issues. Her parents are Indian. Kemi Badenoch, Secretary of State for Commerce and Trade, is the daughter of Nigerian immigrants, while Kwasi Kwarteng, former Chancellor under Liz Truss, is Ghanaian. Boris Johnson’s government was Britain’s most diverse.
“I selected Kwasi Kwarteng and Suella Braverman. “In both situations, I can not remember a single face among those present that was not white,” says Robert Hayward, a former Conservative MP and now a member of the House of Lords and a notable pollster and political commentator in the UK. “About 550 members were there as Kwarteng fell into tears upon learning of his victory.
Prejudices are gone. “I’m not sure he’s typical of this demographic,” which was another way of suggesting he wasn’t white, doesn’t even come up in private discussions anymore.”
These politicians share a British-style life and education. Several, like Sunak and Kwarteng, attended renowned academic institutions. “I think we are more international than other nations, but certainly, you’re not going to climb up the ladder if you haven’t been educated in the U.K., giving you a British accent and so eliminating that barrier that still puts a lot of people off,” says Hayward.
Britain has always embraced diversity more than other countries, and many Brits reject manifestations of racism in public institutions.
We have integrated racial minorities better than France, a country I know well, where the strategy is to deny that ethnic minorities have different status and life perspectives. Hence, they cannot act. “Employment discrimination, for example, seems to be a larger problem there than it is here,” says historian John Sumption, one of Britain’s most accomplished attorneys and a former Supreme Court judge who understands the conservative mindset of many Brits. There remain biases, but I think we have adapted effectively by world standards. Discrimination is largely based on socioeconomic status or education, not ethnicity.”
Sunak, Khan, Yousaf, Savid Javid, Kwarteng, Badenoch, Nadhim Zahawi—the political landscape is full of names defining a new British identity, but some argue that this opening up has been top-down. British people did not vote for Yousaf or Sunak. Their parties selected them. We don’t know if voters like political variety. Parveen Akhtar, deputy dean of the Department of Politics, History, and International Relations at Aston University in Birmingham, thinks the next general election will be the test.
The UK’s global, modern, and multicultural capital, London, has 55% non-British inhabitants. In another Britain, 81% of the population is white (74.4% of whom are white British), while 5.5 million Asians and 2.4 million Blacks have merged into the U.K. Some see Iraqi, Syrian, Afghan, and Albanian migrants, among others, coming in the U.K.
