Brought race into the societal divide and changes in the 1980s through his book ‘There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack’ ; he highlighted how black youth cultures represented cultural solutions to collectively experienced problems of racism and poverty

Racial Otherness

• His book highlights the anxieties of regarding immigrant behaviour in the post war period.
• He suggests the that the public’s association of the immigrants which the living conditions produced a series of racial representations.
• `Media Stories began associating the black community with assaults, muggings, and violence during the 1980s and 70s
• Such representations stigmatised the immigrant black community – constructing them as a racial ‘other’ in the predominantly white world of 1950s Britain

Legacy of the British Empire and Identity

We live in ‘morbid culture of a once-imperial nation that has not been able to accept its inevitable loss of prestige’ – After Empire, 2004 – Gilroy

• Gilroy argues that the British are undergoing a national identity crisis as a result of the fall of the British Empire
• The immigrant population has become a symbol that constantly reminds the UK of its loss of global power – they are a visual representation of what Britain once was and once had