Whitewashing Britain: Race and Citizenship in the Postwar Era (Of Religion)
This work offers an exhaustively researched account of the development of British immigration policy in the post-war period. In a break with the conventional assessment of British policy, Paul (history, Univ. of South Florida) finds that government ministers and civil servants were the driving force behind opposition to immigrants from Commonwealth nations in Africa, South Asia, and the Caribbean, rather than "racist" popular opinion. She neatly summarizes her thesis in the opening pages: "Facing the fact that successive governments did not want them and tried to reclassify them as something other than British, British subjects of color still have to fight to identify themselves as British. They do so within a domestic community many of whose members, thanks to successive legislative acts, have come to understand race as a natural divider and nationality as an accidental commonality." The author revisits postwar policy-making in part to cast fresh light on contemporary debates over nationality and citizenship. This robust work of scholarship should find readers in British and Commonwealth studies as well as migration and citizenship studies. Recommended for academic libraries.?Kent Worcester, Social Science Research Council, New YorkCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.