Composite Culture in a Multicultural Society

3

Britishness out of Immigration and Anti-Racism¹

Tariq Modood

Introduction

A feature of contemporary Britain, critical to all forms of nation-building and national decomposition, is the presence of non-white ethnic groups. From a fraction of 1 per cent in the 1950s, they constitute 9 per cent of the British population today—much larger than the total population in Wales and nearly as large as Scotland²—and are projected to become a majority in several English cities in the first quarter of the twenty-first century, including in by far the most populous city of Europe, London. Out of an immigration process consisting primarily of the importing of (temporary) labour for jobs in the British economy which white people did not wish to do, there have ...