At first, racism was interpreted as xenophobia, a natural fear of strangers — with New Commonwealth immigrants representing the archetypal strangers, by virtue of their skin colour. Give it a little time, the thinking went, and all would be well. Familiarity would breed content. But it did not. By the mid-1960s, by which time Britain had experienced its first ‘race riots’ (1958) and the exploitation of racism as an electoral vote-getter — locally in places like Southall (west London) and nationally in Smethwick (West Midlands) — race theories became more sophisticated. And theorising left the confines of university anthropology departments and became tied up with government policies of ‘integration’.
