‘Mixing of the unmixables’

Standard accounts of postwar race relations in the UK begin with the arrival of Jamaican immigrants on the Empire Windrush in 1948, while the anti-black riots of 1958 in Notting Hill (in London) and Nottingham are said to be the first postwar ‘race riots’. But this account of postwar immigrant Jamaican workers (many pre-dating the Windrush), who were housed in the wartime hostels of the National Service Hostels Corporation, reveals an earlier history of conflict, often with European and Irish migrant workers. Drawn from archival sources, it shows the early trend of postwar government policy in attempting to limit numbers of black workers in the hostels, keep them apart from others and blame them for attacks instigated by others. In this, it foreshadowed a more fully fledged ‘commonsense’ racism that posited the numbers of black workers as the problem, rather than any lack of social provision. And it hints that the contours of black settlement, taken for granted today in places such as Brixton and Birmingham, may have been initially determined by the location of those early hostels and labour exchanges.