Race and Party Competition in Britain

Few subjects in the postwar period have raised as many important questions about the condition of British society as the issue of race. Yet since its emergence as a salient public concern in the 1950s, party political discussion of race has been rare. This book focuses on the politics of race in Britain since 1958. Messina links the Conservative and Labour parties' neglect of race to the requirements and patterns of party interaction engendered by the postwar political consensus, examines the bipartisan efforts to keep race off the political agenda, and the public protests these moves generated. He also considers the renewal of party competition on race in the 1980s and its implications for nonwhite political representation in the years to come.