White is a series of documentaries shown in March 2008 on BBC 2 dealing with issues of race and the changing nature of the white working class in Britain. [2] The series alleged that some white working class Britons felt marginalised and poses the question, "Is white working class Britain becoming invisible?" [2]
This documentary by Henry Singer looks at a working men's club, Wibsey Working Men's Club, in Bradford and the way in which it feels threatened by immigration which has increased the local Asian populations as well as allegations that they are prioritised for services. [3]
It also examines the effect that the government ban on smoking in public places and the availability of cheap alcohol in urban pubs have had on the viability of the club. The documentary highlights the alienation which these working class voters feel from the Labour Party. [3]
This documentary looks at Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech on the 40th anniversary of its delivery. The documentary charts sacking from the Cabinet of Edward Heath after the controversial speech which predicted violence on the streets of Britain and which quoted Roman poet Virgil's prophecy: "I see the Tiber foaming with much blood". [4]
The documentary also examines the effect of the speech on Britain's immigration policy. [4]
This drama by Abi Morgan is about an eleven-year-old English girl who becomes interested in Islam. The drama centres on a culture clash when a working class family from Leeds move to an otherwise all-Asian neighbourhood in Bradford. 11-year-old Leah (Holly Kenny) and mum Debbie (Maxwell Martin) move after a family relationship breaks down.
Leah becomes friends with an Asian girl, Yasmin. However, rows begin when Leah comes home one day wearing a hijab. [5]
This documentary by Tim Samuels looks at the attitudes of working class Britain's to their recent East European arrivals. The documentary is set in Peterborough and looks at the strain on public services and the effect on the local economy of thousands of new immigrants.
The documentary contrasts the positive attitude employers have to the Polish immigrants to that of working class youths who accuse the new arrivals of taking their employment.
The effect on Eastern Europe itself is also examined. It is revealed that Poland is struggling to build stadiums for the Euro 2012 Championship because of the skills drain.
Despite the programme's title, it is not only Poles who have migrated to the city in large numbers in recent years, and the documentary shows that foreigners from other Eastern European countries, along with Asian immigrants, have swelled the population of that formerly small city. In parts of Peterborough, including Millfield, English people are the minority. The documentary included scenes at a primary school at which only one pupil spoke English as his first language – the vast majority of the children were Eastern Europeans and Asians.
This documentary is on Welford Primary School in Handsworth, Birmingham, which has pupils from 17 different nationalities.
Head teacher Chris Smith attempts to make pupils aware of the many different nationalities and cultures. [6]
This documentary by Marc Isaacs is on the area of Barking and Dagenham, in outer East London, which has recently seen some of the highest levels of immigration in the United Kingdom, and, as a result, is the borough with the highest number of BNP councillors in the UK. The activities of an activist for the British National Party are also analysed. [7]
One of the people featured was a middle-aged white man, originally from Bow but who had moved a few miles east to Barking, who was horrified that many of his English neighbours had been recently replaced by various foreigners, and that his daughter had a child by a very violent Nigerian immigrant. The father and his daughter explained how she and her child have to live in protected, secure housing, as it is the only way to escape the Nigerian and his savagery. At the end of the documentary, the Englishman moves to (the much whiter) Canvey Island, Essex.
Allegations of racism emerged after the trailer for the series was shown where a white face was covered in writing until it disappeared under a mass of ink. It read 'Britain is changing' in many different languages.
In an interview the BBC 2 controller Roly Keating responded:
"I absolutely refute that it is at all racist. It's clearly arresting. It denotes to audiences that they will find certain elements of this season challenging. Part of the point of the BBC is to stimulate public debate." [8]
The series also gained criticism for the portrayal it gave to white working class Britons. Sarah Mukherjee, an environment correspondent at the BBC, argued that the series reinforced stereotypes that the white working class were violent, racist and lived on benefits. [9]
The BBC's commissioning editor, Richard Klein, stated that the commissioning of the series was in response to a report which showed that white working class voices rarely made it onto TV, and that when they were shown, they were portrayed as "chavs" and "white trash". [1]
Xenophobia is the fear or dislike of anything which is perceived as being foreign or strange. It is an expression which is based on the perception that a conflict exists between an in-group and an out-group and it may manifest itself in suspicion of one group's activities by members of the other group, a desire to eliminate the presence of the group which is the target of suspicion, and fear of losing a national, ethnic, or racial identity.
The White Australia Policy was a set of racist historical policies that aimed to forbid people of non-European ethnic origins – especially Asians and Pacific Islanders – from immigrating to Australia, starting in 1901, in order to create an Anglo-Celtic ideal. The policy also affected immigrants from Germany, Italy, and other European countries, especially in wartime. Governments progressively dismantled such policies between 1949 and 1973.
The "Rivers of Blood" speech was made by British Member of Parliament (MP) Enoch Powell on 20 April 1968, to a meeting of the Conservative Political Centre in Birmingham, England. His speech made various discriminatory remarks, which included strong criticism of significant Commonwealth immigration to the United Kingdom and the proposed Race Relations Act, which made it illegal to refuse housing, employment, or public services to a person on the grounds of colour, race, ethnic or national origins in the country. It became known as the "Rivers of Blood" speech, although Powell always referred to it as "the Birmingham speech". The former name alludes to a prophecy from Virgil's Aeneid which Powell, a former classical scholar, quoted:
As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see 'the River Tiber foaming with much blood'.
Rageh Omaar is a Somali-born British journalist and writer. He was a BBC world affairs correspondent, where he made his name reporting from Iraq. In September 2006, he moved to a new post at Al Jazeera English, where he presented the nightly weekday documentary series Witness until January 2010. The Rageh Omaar Report, first aired February 2010, is a one-hour, monthly investigative documentary in which he reports on international current affairs stories. From January 2013, he became a special correspondent and presenter for ITV News, reporting on a broad range of news stories, as well as producing special in-depth reports from all around the UK and further afield. A year after his appointment, Omaar was promoted to International Affairs Editor for ITV News. Since October 2015, alongside his duties as International Affairs Editor, he has been a Deputy Newscaster of ITV News at Ten. Since September 2017 Omaar has occasionally presented the ITV Lunchtime News including the ITV News London Lunchtime Bulletin and the ITV Evening News.
British Chinese, also known as Chinese British or Chinese Britons, are people of Chinese – particularly Han Chinese – ancestry who reside in the United Kingdom, constituting the second-largest group of Overseas Chinese in Western Europe after France.
White power skinheads, also known as racist skinheads and neo-Nazi skinheads, are members of a neo-Nazi, white supremacist and antisemitic offshoot of the skinhead subculture. Many of them are affiliated with white nationalist organizations and some of them are members of prison gangs. The movement emerged in the United Kingdom between the late 1960s and the late 1970s, before spreading across Eurasia and North America in the 1980–1990s.
British Asians are British citizens of Asian descent. They constitute a significant and growing minority of the people living in the United Kingdom, with 6.9% of the population identifying as Asian/Asian British in the 2011 United Kingdom census. This represented a national demographic increase from a 4.4% share of UK population in 2001.
Black British people are a multi-ethnic group of British citizens of either African or Afro-Caribbean descent. The term Black British developed in the 1950s, referring to the Black British West Indian people from the former Caribbean British colonies in the West Indies sometimes referred to as the Windrush Generation and people from Africa, who are residents of the United Kingdom and are British citizens.
British Afro-Caribbean people are an ethnic group in the United Kingdom. They are British citizens whose recent ancestors originate from the Caribbean, and further trace their ancestry back to Africa or they are nationals of the Caribbean who reside in the UK. There are some self-identified Afro-Caribbean people who are multi-racial. The most common and traditional use of the term African-Caribbean community is in reference to groups of residents continuing aspects of Caribbean culture, customs and traditions in the UK.
Sarfraz Manzoor is a British journalist, documentary maker, broadcaster, and screenwriter of Pakistani origin. He is a regular contributor to The Guardian, presenter of documentaries on BBC Radio 4, and a cultural commentator who appears on programmes such as Newsnight Review and Saturday Review. His first book, Greetings from Bury Park was published in 2007.
British Indians are citizens of the United Kingdom (UK) whose ancestral roots are from India. Currently, the British Indian population exceeds 1.8 million people in the UK, making them the single largest visible ethnic minority population in the country. They make up the largest subgroup of British Asians and are one of the largest Indian communities in the Indian diaspora, mainly due to the Indian–British relations. The British Indian community is the sixth largest in the Indian diaspora, behind the Indian communities in the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia and Nepal. The majority of British Indians are of Punjabi and Gujarati origin with various other smaller communities from different parts of India including Kerala, West Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
Comics Britannia is a three-part documentary series from BBC Four which started on 10 September 2007. It was then repeated on BBC Two starting on 19 July 2008.
The Story of India is a BBC documentary series, written and presented by historian Michael Wood about the history of India. It originally aired on BBC Two in six episodes in August and September 2007 as part of the BBC season "India and Pakistan 07", which marked the 60 year independence of India and Pakistan. An accompanying text to the series, titled Michael Wood: The Story of India, was published by BBC Books on 16 August 2007.
Vietnamese people in the United Kingdom or Vietnamese Britons include British citizens and non-citizen immigrants and expatriates of full or partial Vietnamese ancestry living in the United Kingdom. They form a part of the worldwide Vietnamese diaspora.
Raymond Honeyford was a British head teacher, writer, and critic of the failures of multiculturalism.
Ross Andrew Parker, from Peterborough, England, was a seventeen-year-old white English male murdered in an unprovoked racially motivated crime. He bled to death after being stabbed, beaten with a hammer and repeatedly kicked by a gang of British Pakistani men. The incident occurred in Millfield, Peterborough, ten days after the September 11 attacks.
Racism in the United Kingdom refers to negative attitudes and views on race or ethnicity within the viewpoints of groups or individuals or existing systemically in the United Kingdom. The extent and the targets of racist attitudes in the United Kingdom have varied over time. It has resulted in cases of discrimination, riots and racially motivated murders. Racism was uncommon in the attitudes and norms of the British class system during the 19th century, in which race mattered less than social distinction: an African tribal chief was unquestionably superior to an English costermonger. Use of the word "racism" became more widespread after 1936, although the term "race hatred" was used in the late 1920s by sociologist Frederick Hertz. Laws were passed in the 1960s that specifically prohibited racial segregation.
Paki is a derogatory ethnic slur originating from the United Kingdom, typically directed towards people of Pakistani descent.
There have been incidents of racism in the Conservative Party since at least 1964. Conservative shadow defence minister Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech in 1968 was both influential and widely regarded as anti-immigrant with racist overtones; the party's leader at the time, Edward Heath, condemned it, although some Conservative MPs defended Powell's speech. Since then, accusations have been made about several leading members of the party and its policies; these have related to prejudice against non-white people.
White people in the United Kingdom are a multi-ethnic group of UK residents who identify as and are perceived to be 'white people'. White people constitute the historical and current majority of the people living in the United Kingdom, with 87.2% of the population identifying as white in the 2011 United Kingdom census.