race relations. A thorough survey of race relations in Britain would demand a history of the British Isles, since one of its persistent themes has been the interplay of the native peoples, the intervention of Romans, Saxons, Danes, and Normans, and the reception of Jews, Palatines, Huguenots, and, after the Second World War, citizens from the Commonwealth. It would also include a study of the rise and fall of the first and second British empires. Before the 20th cent., governments did not often intervene to protect newcomers or promote racial harmony. Cnut was anxious to hold a balance between his Danish and English subjects; Henry VIII in 1535 complained that ‘rude and ignorant’ people were stirring up ‘discord, division and murmur’ between his Welsh and English subjects; and James I took the earliest opportunity to recommend ‘mutual love’ between his Scottish and his new English subjects. Racial questions were usually complicated by other considerations, particularly religion and employment. French Huguenots in the 17th cent., because of their religion, were on the whole welcomed: Jews and Irish catholics less so. In its modern form, race relations developed mainly through the anti-slavery campaign in the late 18th and early 19th cents. Opponents of emancipation justified slavery on arguments of racial inferiority, offensively expressed by Thomas Carlyle in an essay on ‘The Nigger Question’ in Frazer's Magazine for 1849. Immigration from the Commonwealth in the 1950s and 1960s, particularly from India and the West Indies, placed the question on the political agenda. The 1965 Race Relations Act, passed by the Wilson government, prohibited discrimination in places of public resort, such as hotels or restaurants, made the promotion of hatred on grounds of ‘colour, race, or ethnic or national origins’ an offence, and established a Race Relations Board to hear complaints. The measure was extended by further Acts in 1968 and 1976, the last providing for a Race Relations Commission to promote ‘equality of opportunity and good relations’.

J. A. Cannon