Migration to the North East; an unfinished story

The British historian David Feldman has argued that there are limits to the validity of any approach that treats mobility in terms of numeric laws, that asks simply who arrived where, when, and in what figures. According to Feldman, such statistical approaches have frequently contained the assumption that the main task facing migrants has been to adapt to an existing 'host' culture, which is assumed to exist a timeless constant. 'This emphasis on adaptation further illustrates the influence of natural science on histories of migration.' Feldman continues, 'For the concept of adaptation is necessarily predicated on concepts of what is "normal" and what is "deviant" whose origins lie in nineteenth-century physiology.' What alternative is there? 'Instead of regarding migration as a natural event, we can ask to what extent political circumstances and cultural practices shaped the pattern of migrants, and we can also ask how far the social and political relations within the city itself shaped the opportunities open to migrants.' This paper develops such an approach, through the prism of international migration to the North East of England since 1945. The interest of the paper lies not primarily with the question of who moved, but rather with the changing experiences of state and especially popular responses to migration.

The North East and the idea of welcome

For much of our period, the North East was identified as an unusually generous, welcoming host. The lack of racial hostility was presented as a source of regional pride. So, following the Notting Hill Race Riots in London in 1958, Philip Rawsthorne told the readers of the Shields Gazette that the North East was different from London, 'It has neither given the Moslems special favours nor treated them unfairly. They have received the attention given to all other citizens and have been expected to share the town's lean times as well as their good.' Rawsthorne's conclusion was unmistakeably upbeat, 'In no other part of the country has the problem been handled so well.' Indeed Philip Rawsthorne was not the only writer to draw this conclusion. David Bean told the Guardian in March 1962 that despite the rebuilding of the town, the old traditions of racial harmony were being retained. In his words, 'Shields is a study in integration; a place where colour prejudice died years ago. You can see it best in the children; the way they stream out of school together like a human rainbow and play together on demolition sites oblivious to colour.'

As a press story, the idea of a tolerant North East continued well into the 1960s. An unnamed Nigerian wrote a 1965 piece for the Newcastle Journal that concluded 'the farther North you go the stronger the beer becomes and the weaker the racial prejudice.' Another Journal article compared Newcastle to the Midlands, 'We start with no strong democratic traditions which have no room for racialism. And there is on Tyneside an excellent approach to social and economic planning.'

By August 1967, the comparison was no longer with London or Birmingham but with riot-torn cities overseas. According to the Newcastle Evening Chronicle, 'Those who have fought for freedom in South Shields have been stunned by the dreadful racial violence which has recently been sweeping many American towns and cities. They are continually shocked to hear that all over the American continent white and black people cannot get along peacefully together, for all corporation officials at South Shields report "no trouble" with the mixed races.'

In different forms, the claim for North East exceptionalism continued. Peter Gillander wrote that Shields was 'an example to all race-torn communities'. Seven months later, the Sunday Express sent their journalist Gordon Hughes to Shields:

Behind the maroon-painted shop front, rows of slim figures chat cosily over plates of fierce chicken curry and cups of tea. Rich Tyneside accents talk over the day's racing and the Government Bill to curb the immigration of Asians from Kenya. Yet, strangely, in this case where the conversation is as Geordie as you can hear, half the customers were dark-skinned. For this is a town that is a study in racial integration. A seaport that was among Britain's earliest immigrant settlements. A multi-racial place where prejudice died years ago.

Maureen Knight of the Newcastle Journal asked how Shields had 'by-passed all the racial problems, the prejudice, discrimination and violent reaction' found elsewhere? 'The answer could be that South Shields is unique; that it has always been a seafaring community accustomed to and hospitable to strangers. The town has also absorbed numbers of Scandinavians, Latvians, Poles and Estonians. Making their home in the town today are people from almost every country in the world.'

From this last argument, it follows that the North East's reputation for open-mindedness did not begin in the 1950s or 1960s, but was in fact deep-rooted. It took in an even wider set of peoples than those that Knight listed in her article. In the mid-nineteenth century, the North East was known throughout England for the backing it gave to the national movements of stateless peoples, including the Poles (a Newcastle society was formed to support them after 1832) and the Italians, whose champion Garibaldi made a triumphant tour of the region. Writing in 1917, in a similar vein, J. P. O'Connor MP, an advocate of Irish Home Rule was fulsome in his praise of the welcome that nineteenth century Newcastle afforded to Irish migrants: 'Of the many asylums to which the Irish fled after the great exodus of the forties, there was none in which, owing to many circumstances, they were able ultimately to find more favourable circumstances than the Tyneside.' The implied contrast was with Scotland, where Irish Catholics had suffered from extreme sectarianism, and with other English cities, such as Manchester, Liverpool and Scotland. Arguments like O'Connor must also have reinforced the popular self-conception of the 'Geordies' as an independent and tolerant group, suspicious of the rich but friendly to the poor, kind people with a natural sympathy for their fellow underdog.

The regretted present

By the end of our period, however, the 'story' had altered, in two ways. First, the optimism that had once surrounded the history of Shields had been modified, as a result of successive news stories, reporting racist attacks there. In April 1994, Helena Abdulla of Hazel Grove reported one incident to the Shields Gazette. Gangs of yobs had surrounded her house at night, hurling abuse and throwing bricks. 'We keep ourselves to ourselves', she said, 'We just want to be left alone.' In 1999, the same paper reported the case of Abdul Chowdrie Shapla the owner of a takeaway in Market Square. His restaurant was broken up by thieves, who sprayed on the walls 'C18', the insignia of one of Britain's most extreme far-right groups. 'Racist slogans were daubed across the walls', the paper reported, 'the restaurant was deliberately flooded with water, and gas allowed to leaf from a cooker as the thugs escaped with just £30.' In 2000, two self-declared 'white supremacists' from Shields were sentenced to jail after attacking a disabled man in the street. They cut his throat and left him to die. The two attackers were caught 'laughing and joking' in the area of the attack. 'When the police asked the pair why they had attacked the defenceless Mr Thompson, they said they disliked him because he was disabled.' Arsonists set fire to the Al Hazar mosque in South Shields following the events of 11 September 2001. The police sent out dual signals, warning that such incidents 'would not be tolerated', but describing it inopportunely as a 'revenge attack'.

Second, following the previous reputation of Shields as a bastion of successful diversity, the press evolved an opposite story. The city of Sunderland now acquired a reputation as one of the least welcoming places in Britain. This impression took root following the British National Party's relative success in elections in the North East in 2002, in which the party achieved its third-best showing after Burnley and Oldham. The story grew in momentum following the killing of an Iranian man, Peyman Bahmani, in August 2002. According to the Independent, this was not the first attack on asylum seekers living in the city. 'An Iranian refugee had his face and back slashed after confronting two robbers in a city subway eighteen months ago and swastikas have been sprayed on Asians' vehicles in the city in the past few months ... Figures released by Northumbria Police have shown that Sunderland Central, which covers Hendon, had the largest number of racist incidents between April and the end of May 2002.' When the BNP stood again in local elections in May 2003, the fear was that they would achieve some breakthrough. Terry Deary, the Sunderland-based author of the Horrible Histories told the Echo. 'When I travel round the country', he said, 'and people ask me where I'm from, I always tell them about Sunderland and how proud I am to be from here. It's very painful for me to say this, but if the BNP wins a seat, I will stop saying I am from Sunderland.' As it was, the BNP failed to win a seat, but with 13,652 votes across the city, the far right closed on a second goal, that of displacing the Conservatives as Sunderland's second party.

Who came? Who was here?

To place these two press stories in context, it is useful to remind ourselves of the main patterns of international migration to this region. First, before 1920, the region was a major centre of migration from Scotland and Ireland. David Byrne estimates that as many as 37 per cent of the 1911 population of the North East was foreign-born, or the children of migrants. Second, Tyneside was unusual in the sense that some significant black migration predated 1945. The arrivals were the thousand or so Yemeni and Asian sailors who settled in South Shields. Third, in the immediate post-war period, levels of Commonwealth migration to the North East were lower than in other areas. In 1961, for example, the total New Commonwealth population of the 'North' (including Cumbria as well as County Durham) was 3,023, lower than any other English region. Fourth, the relative levels of black and Asian migration were and remained skewed towards the latter. The same survey found only 732 West Indian migrants in the North. By comparison, the equivalent figure for the South East was 101,385. At this time, West Indians made up four-fifths of the total New-Commonwealth settlers in Britain. Fifth, the post-1990 period has witnessed a certain refugee migration to the North East, with asylum seekers being dispersed to the region in rough proportion to the national averages. In December 2001, for example, the National Asylum Support Service was responsible for 4,835 refugees in the North East a 'median' figure halfway between the extreme cases of London (19,380) and Northern Ireland (80). Refugee migration has made the North East appear more diverse. One 2000 survey for example found that Newcastle possessed communities of people whose first language was Farsi, Kurdish, Afghani, Albanian, French, Russian, Czech, Turkish, Somali, Arabic, Spanish, Turkish, Gujerati, Sinhalese, Tamil and Serbo-Croat. Sixth, despite such refugee migration, the 2001 census found that the North East remained an unusually mono-cultural region: only 86.99 percent of English respondents defined themselves as 'White British', compared to 96.43 percent of people living in the North East.

Meanwhile, the arrivals were not joining a static region. At the end of the world war, the North East regarded itself as a bastion of industry. There were still more than 20,00 shipbuilding and engineering workers living in Newcastle. As late as 1951, the North East produced one-sixth of the world's merchant shipping fleet. Yet the local boom petered out early, to be replaced by cuts. There were 127 Durham collieries in 1947, and just 38 by 1969. The number of coal-berths on the Tyne fell from 34 in 1946 to just 16, two decades later. Between 1975 and 1980, the docks at Tees and Hartlepool were shut to commercial traffic, five of the region's thirteen shipyards were closed, and the Consett Steel Works stopped operation. The patterns of employment were transformed. In the twenty years between the 1971 and 1991 census, the number of industrial jobs in Tyne and Wear County fell from 320,000 to 146,000, a decline of more than half. Male full-time employment fell from 305,000 to 200,000. Female full-time employment rose marginally from 100,000 to 130,000. The largest rise was in female part-time employment from 60,000 to 100,000. More jobs were part-time, temporary and precarious. There were more signs of working poverty. In 1997, around one-fifth of all North East households received a weekly income of less than £100 - the national average was one-eighth.

As well as the arrival of Commonwealth migrants, other processes of mobility have transformed the region. A national scheme was introduced in 1927 to encourage migration away from areas of unemployment, especially the colliery areas. Between 1927 and 1938, 280,000 people moved under the terms of this project, a large share of them being Geordies departing for the South East. In total around 750,000 people moved between counties over the same years. One survey from 1970-1 found that the average Briton was likely to move house between seven and eleven times in their life, with six to ten of these movements taking place within the region, and one or two between regions, or outside. The people of the North East people were no exception to this pattern. The population of the region in fact fell by around 70,000 in the 1950s, as a result of people leaving for other areas of Britain or departing the country altogether. Popular destinations included Newcastle and Whyalla in Australia, centres of steel and shipbuilding.

Key players

Both local and national players have shaped the reception of migrants to the North East. Among the former processes, we can count the role played by national politicians, in introducing tougher immigration controls in 1948, 1962, 1965, 1968, 1969, 1971, 1976, 1981, 1988, 1999 and more recently, the involvement of police forces in managing arrivals, the part played by the national press in shaping public attitudes towards migration. At times, North East figures have contributed to the creation of a national consensus. By and large, though, their role seems to have been to moderate the trends towards increased state hostility. In the mid-1960s, for example, the Voice of North East Industry argued within business circles for a more liberal policy of allowing greater numbers of arrivals. 'If the North East's plans for continued economic growth are [to be] realised then it can be expected that greater numbers of immigrants will make their way here.' In 1968 Arthur Bottomley, the MP for Middlesbrough, became the first Chairman of House of Commons Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration. The reports of the Committee argued against racist myths, such as the involvement of black people in crime.

Where the policies of local organisations were determined by national events, their response was again generally liberal. In the aftermath of the Macpherson report, which studied the perceived failure of the police to prosecute effectively the killers of the South London student Stephen Lawrence, the police forces of the whole UK have come under pressure to reform their policing of racial incidents. The North East forces in particular seem to have made energetic efforts to take on board criticism. In 1999-2000, across England as a whole, African or Afro-Caribbeans in England were four-times more likely to be stopped and searched by police than whites. In Durham and Northumbria, by contrast, the ratio of black to white searches (respective 18 to 9,237 and 42 to 35,099) conformed much more closely to the minority share of the local populations. We should just state two qualifications. Northumbria police recorded more of the people it sopped as being of 'unknown' ethnic origin (2102) than any other police force in England, except London's. It is possible that officers were recording people as 'ethnicity: unknown' as a means of disguising a real practice of discrimination. Plus, in both cases, the low levels of the minority population mean that any real comparison would be forced.

Local media

Consistently since 1945, the popular British press has gone out of its way to treat immigrants as the people responsible for everything wrong with modern Britain. Similar reporting can easily be found in the North East press, but if we are looking for a representative sample of newspaper opinion, then it is striking how much more nuanced the local stories have been. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the general emphasis was upbeat, as we have already seen. Later, however, a tone of concern developed, but any anxieties were expressed within an argument for welcome. The North East press remained far more open-minded than its London counterparts.

One long piece typical of the new emphasis appeared in the Journal on 3 November 1964. Problems were raised, but each was described as something that could be managed. One concern was bad housing. The trouble rose apparently when Commonwealth immigrants 'let parts of a house to several families without making the sanitary provisions demanded by law. Bad accommodation is taken by bad tenants, and a fast, vicious circle of deterioration is started.' Despite such problems, the author remained optimistic. The problem was not really the fault of migrants. It predated their arrival in the city centre and could only be solved by a determined policy of slum clearance. Members of the immigrant population kept themselves aloof and did not mix with local people. 'In Newcastle, the reluctance of the less well educated Commonwealth immigrants to mix with the local people has both good and bad results. On the one hand, it preserves their strong sense of community and avoids possible clashes over colour. On the other, it means that many immigrants are forgoing, through ignorance, the political rights, health services and general assistance to which they were entitled.' Different trends were at work. A Pakistan League had been established and it was successfully campaigning to make local services more accessible to Asian people. As this happened, so greater integration was taking place. The tenor of the piece remained determinedly optimistic. The few minor local difficulties could easily be reversed.

Another piece from the Evening Chronicle commented again on poor housing especially in Newcastle's West End. 'All too often it is the only area where an immigrant can find a home. In other parts of the City the doors are firmly closed.' One Pakistani man was quoted, 'I ring up a number and the people say come look at the flat. I know I am the first to knock at the door, but when they see me they say "Sorry it has just gone." What am I to do? ... I will have to stay in my one room for ever.' Yet the journal continued, 'despite what the prejudiced have to say there is no real war between coloured and white. I have seen people on both sides of what is generally considered to be the colour barrier living together in a friendship that takes no regard of pigment. I have also seen many whites who regard each other with mutual hatred ... The problems breed wherever slums are to be found.'

More issues were soon coming up for discussion, not just housing, but employment as well. Fears were not set merely by the news of conflict in London or Birmingham. They also thrived in local conditions of industrial decline. Another Journal piece made the connection. 'Bad feeling based on a misunderstanding of the present will be a poor preparation for the future when the men of the North East, alongside others of many colours and nations will have to work together to realise the expansion and revitalisation of the region which we all so earnestly hope for.'

Another article, from April 1968, was titled 'When you go to school in a strange land.' There were hints of conflict. The headmaster of Slatyford comprehensive described conditions his school. It was the only one in Newcastle with a large immigrant population. '"The only instances of discrimination have been caused by a small undesirable element among English children," Mr. Hackett said. He is upset that the only incident in which two sides came to blows - white against coloured - was given race riot publicity.' The journalist also observed that students did not seem to mix. 'Like the bus crews at the Corporation depot where British, Indian, Sikh, Pakistani and Jamaican employees take their tea breaks in five separate groups, most of the children at Slatyford prefer to make friends among their own nationality.' The piece suggested that mini-ghettoes were forming in Elswick and Rye Hill in particular. The children seemed to be adopting Western styles of life. Their choice of English languages and lifestyles was surely to be commended, the journalist indicated. Yet a further doubt was raised, for the successful integration of this British-born generation into wider society might only result in a new set of problems. 'When they leave schools with their "O" and "A" levels and the same hopes and ambitions as their white school friends, they will not settle for the second class citizenship that their parents have gratefully accepted. It is then that the North East (and Britain's) proclaimed beliefs in racial equality will be put to the test.'

Local government, community relations

From the mid-1960s, many councils awoke to the fact that Commonwealth migrants were likely to remain in their area. From then on, an increasing number of councils began to employ definite groups of people in community relations commissions, minority rights departments, and the like. The reasons for action were many. By the end of the 1960s, as we have just seen, press articles had already begun to raise the possibility of what might happen if the councils failed to promote integration. Local government workers, social workers and town councillors must have read such reports anxiously. The local papers had already developed two opposed narratives of international migration. There were the happy sailors of South Shields, integrated into Geordie society, speaking in local dialect, and adopted by the local community. There were also the more numerous and potentially more radical immigrants of Newcastle's West End. News from outside the region would have raised a wider gamut of fears. The late 1960s witnessed Black Power movements in the United States, and in Britain, the prominent Conservative MP Enoch Powell was warning of 'rivers of blood' ahead, if the angry British people were forced to accept continued mass immigration. One product of this period was a 'Commonwealth Immigrants Working Group', which met in Newcastle between 1966 and 1968.

Following its demise, other agencies came to the fore. One such was the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Community Relations Commission (CRC), set up in co-operation between the council and the CRC in London. Chris Mullard, the full-time officer for the Newcastle Commission was a committed advocate of black rights. When the London CRC first learned of the Commission's intention to appoint Mullard to the post - in 1969 - the parent body responded by withdrawing funding. This decision was only reversed after an eighteen-month campaign. On the side of moderation were a number of respectable figures, including several Tory councillors (still smarting at criticism of their links with South Africa), the Very Reverend Alfred Jowett who became Deputy Chair of the London Commission in 1971, and several police officers who seem to have conducted an ongoing vendetta against Mullard's work. This whole incident may serve to remind us that policies of racial 'tolerance', 'liberalism' or 'moderation' were designed to manage migration without tension. They were not supposed to result in that root-and-branch equality that Mullard sought.

Dual legacies

Between state and popular responses to migration, the memory of different historical moments intervened. Such large cities as Newcastle, Durham and Sunderland, had long identified with the values of Liberalism or Radicalism, before Labourism. There was a certain acceptance of the idea that African or Asian peoples should be treated with sympathy and care. The problem was that sympathy could go in either direction, towards fraternity or pity. History played a tough hand. The British Empire had long been justified as the 'white man's burden'. Even Liberals understood imperialism to mean the task of bringing civilisation to 'the natives'. The historic relationship between the regions and the areas of future migration was complex. The tone was well intentioned, but was a philanthropic relationship capable of recognising a basic equality? Even when the citizens of the North East attempted to understand the lives of toiling Africans, they interacted with these people most often as if they were primitives or slaves. Christian priests conducted missionary work in Africa and Asia, while their North East contemporaries proselytised against slavery. A few entrepreneurs looked for opportunities to profit. The idea that African or Asian people would migrate to Britain and be treated as equals seemed distant.

Yet other values also existed. Sam Watson, a local Labour Party activist and town councillor possessed a copy of a 'Draft for Rules' for a local branch of the British Asian Socialist Fellowship. In June 1950, Councillor Edward Cane flew to Lagos, from where he wrote back to describe the growing desire for independence. W. N. Davis a councillor in Bishop Auckland was photographed with a group of African journalists visiting Newton Aycliffe in September 1959. Seventeen years later, Durham Trades Council took part in a local Anti-Apartheid Group and joined demonstrations against the importation of South African coal at Seaham Dock.

Through the 1920 and 1930s, as Nigel Todd has shown, the North East had been integrated loosely into a national pattern of racial disturbances. From his ancestral home in Alnwick Castle, the Duke of Northumberland founded an anti-Semitic, proto-fascist paper, The Patriot, which acted as a staging post between radicalised Conservatives and complete fascists. The British Fascisti organised rallies in Newcastle's Conservative Club. The leader of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), Oswald Mosley, toured the country holding major rallies speaking of the threat posed to Britain by the Jews. One estimate places the level of local BUF support at 500, including inactive members. Yet between spring and winter 1934, this support was worn away by a series of anti-fascist mobilisations. Trade unionists turned out to protest against British fascism. Employers, churchmen and politicians spoke together on platforms of the danger posed to Britain by Hitler.

Moments of conflict (1)

Into the postwar period, different historic values continued to play a part. Autumn 1947 witnessed significant anti-Semitic riots in Manchester and Liverpool. These riots had a certain echo in the North East. The outer door of Leazes Park Road synagogue was kicked by in, four shop windows were damaged, and the Jewish college in Gateshead was also attacked. 'Death to the Jews' was written on back doors in Queen's Road in Jesmond and 'Down with Jews' was chalked on a bridge in South Shields. The local Jewish paper, the Watchman, played down these events and stressed that the 'North-East, it must be said to its credit, has always been free from undignified organised anti-Semitism'. Young Jewish ex-servicemen took a more militant attitude. A dozen or so of them, all in their twenties, formed a 'Newcastle Anti-Defamation Group' to oppose anti-Semitism. Yet the main problem facing the group after 1947 was finding something to do. According to Nigel Copsey, 'In 1948, such was the lack of fascist strength in Newcastle that the nearest Union Movement public speaker appears to have been John Stoves, not a Novocastrian but a resident of Trimdon Colliery in south Durham.' No fascist candidates stood in the 1949 municipal elections, and such branches of the British Union of Fascists as there had been in the region before 1939 largely failed to reappear after 1945. The Anti-Defamation Group disbanded of its own accord.

This episode set a pattern for the next thirty years. Again and again racism would reappear, but each time the official representatives of the anti-racist traditions would insist that there was no evidence of any return to the troubles of the 1930s and before. In some ways they had a point. Post-war England saw no disturbances of the same scale of the Kristallnacht. There was no burning of books. Nothing in the North East could be compared to the mass lynchings seen in the American South or the Tsarist pogroms. In the absence of such catastrophe, community leaders argued that the relationship between host and migrant was sound. If individuals warned that something dangerous was afoot, then they were quickly dismissed as irresponsible. Such a pattern would affect several of the migrant communities.

Regional values

Moving away from the occasional 'moments' of crisis, and looking for the general picture, the few pieces of evidence we have seem to show that racism was a minority experience. In July 1969, the Newcastle Chronicle published an optimistic report based on figures form the Race Relations Board. This found that of all regions where complaints had been received, the North East had come third-bottom. There were far less complaints over employment and unfair dismissal. The Chronicle sent a journalist to interview Mrs. Jessie Scott-Batey, chair of the Northern Conciliation Committee at the Board's Newcastle headquarters. She was less upbeat. One reason why the figures were so low was the low number of immigrants in the region. There were also other factors that tended to inhibit people form making complaints. Local anti-racist institutions had only recently been established, and were not yet seen by many immigrants as the best place to lodge any criticism. How about South Shields? There, the situation was different, Scott-Batey acknowledged. High levels of inter-marriage had tended to diminish discrimination. Plus the concentration of Shields immigrants in unskilled, manual working-class jobs tended to diminish any feeling that the arrivals were getting above themselves. The message of the interview was that those migrants who adopted white values would be welcomed.

Beyond the Race Relations survey published in 1969, there have been few comparative tests of popular responses to race in general. Such surveys as exist suffer from two key defects. First, the figures have not been differentiated by region. Second, the questions they have asked have tended to shape the outcome. In 1968, the Home Office commissioned a survey of 2041 people from across Britain, who were asked whether employers, council and private landlords should have the right to discriminate against coloured immigrants. In each case, majority sentiment was against (by 77 per cent to 17, 68 to 23 and 58 to 23). In general, the survey seems to indicate a certain hostility to racial discrimination. Yet the most interesting finding was really the differentiation between distinct institutions. Perhaps people felt that private landlords should have a right to choose the tenants they wanted. Alternatively, it may be that racism in private housing was still so familiar, from signs such as 'no dogs, no Irish, no coloureds', that people treated it as usual.

In 1983, the British Social Attitudes survey asked people across the United Kingdom, 'How would you describe yourself?' Just 4.4 per cent answered 'very prejudiced', while 63.7 per cent said 'not at all'. The problems with such a question are self-evident. Any process of social investigation places the person asking questions in authority. The task of the respondent is to reply as if they were a person of good education, to answer according to what it says in the papers, without being 'caught out' by reporting any selfish or illiberal opinions.

Another survey was perhaps more revealing (although still UK-wide). In the same year, people were asked what they thought of controls on immigration. The question was simply, 'Should there be more settlement?' It was asked twice, with reference to Australians, people from New Zealand and Canada, and then again, with reference to Indians and West Indians. While 15.7 per cent approved of allowing more Anzacs into Britain, the figure fell to 1.9 per cent for black migration. Two-thirds of people called for a halt to black migration. A pessimistic might identify them as prejudiced. An optimist might reply that when the press coverage was totted up, more than two-thirds of the articles in the press that gave an opinion demanded tightened immigration controls. Set against that measure, the striking figure was perhaps the unwillingness of a large minority to accept press racism.

Crime as an indicator

If the utility of surveys is limited, one alternative is to look at what people do, instead of what they say. The evidence of crime figures can be used to highlight regional differences. The problem here is that the mandatory ethnic monitoring of crime, including the identity of the perpetrators and victims, began only in 1995/6. We also have the additional problem that in some areas the ethnic minority populations are just so scarce, that offences against them barely register in the police figures.

Racist incidents and offences recorded by police

Cleveland 62 (1994/5) 204 (1999/2000)

Durham 26 178

Northumbria 508 1159

England + Wales 11,878 47,814

The absolute figures are low, the trend of increase is no sharper than the average. Then again, the levels are consistent with the ethnic minority population of the England resident in the North East (roughly 2 per cent), or even slightly higher.

One narrative of black and Asian migration has emphasised the problems caused by mass mobility, the lack of sufficient services to deal with the needs of the host community, let alone any new arrivals. It followed that immigrants had themselves been partly responsible for the fears they have roused. If they had not come in such large numbers, then surely the problems would have been less. This sort of explanation appeared in a 1968 article from the Newcastle Journal. 'When immigrants group together in one district, as they do in the Elswick and Rye Hill areas of Newcastle, their problems increase. Integration becomes much harder and their numbers provoke prejudice. Race relations are worse in Newcastle's West End, where coloured immigrants make up eight per cent of the population, than in better residential areas like Jesmond which has just the city average.'

A similar argument appeared in a parliamentary report co-authored by Sunderland MP Chris Mullin in May 2003. The document dealt with recent rises in asylum applications. 'If allowed to continue unchecked', the asylum process 'could overwhelm the capacity of the receiving countries to cope, leading inevitability to social unrest. It could also, and there are signs this may already be happening, lead to a growing political backlash, which will in turn lead to the election of extremist parties with extremist solutions.' If we look closely at the words of Mullin's report, they seem to contain more than a hint of threat. Either the foreigners themselves will stop arriving in Britain, or they will be the ones to suffer.

Moments of conflict (2)

At certain moments in our period, the risk of what Mullin termed a 'backlash' has seemed urgent. In August 1961, Middlesbrough witnessed a spate of violent attacks. Asians and West Indian people were targeted. The Daily Mail reported that a mob of five hundred white people attacked Pakistani businesses. Forty-six people were eventually charged. Forty years later, the Chinese population of Newcastle experienced its greatest challenge when East Asian restaurants were linked to Britain's Foot and Mouth outbreak. The Times carried an article 'Farmer's bid to save 41p may have started outbreak', reporting that 'Ministry of Agricultural officials are convinced that the outbreak can be traced to a Northumberland farm where sows were fed on reprocessed restaurant waste rather than formulated feed.' The article introduced the individual who supplied swill to the farm where the outbreak first discovered, then reported Nick Brown, the Minister for Agriculture, blaming 'restaurants in Newcastle's Chinatown'. Later, the same article reported that 'Inspectors at Northumberland County Council confirmed they were investigating contaminated meat smuggled in from Asia as the outbreak's source.'

These allegations caused a sudden drop in customers to Chinese restaurants and take away shops, a surge in the number of inspections carried out by environmental health officers, and many incidents of harassment, abuses and physical attacks to Chinese catering outlets were reported. Two public meetings were held, and a Chinese Civil Rights Action Group was formed with the task to investigate the allegation and to redress the damages inflicted on the community.

The end of our period also witnessed an unwelcome rise in electoral racism. Various attempts to launch far-right organisations in the North East, going back to the 1940s had largely failed. Following September 11, however, the British National Party was able to establish an electoral basis in Sunderland. The BNP's main anti-refugee arguments were received the endorsement of the tabloid press. The party was then further assisted by the success of Jean-Marie Le Pen in the first round of the French elections in May 2002, during which the FN came second, narrowly qualifying for the run-off phase. This success raised the profile of the BNP dramatically. National television and radio news programmes ran repeated interviews with representatives of the far right. The editor of Radio 4's Today programme instructed his presenters to give the party an easy ride. In the 2002 elections, the highest BNP tally was secured in Sunderland Town End Farm, with 381 votes and 28 per cent of the vote. Next (in percentage terms) was Southwick, 292 votes and 19.68 per cent. Over the subsequent year, the far right was rarely out of the local headlines. The greatest publicity accompanied a visit by BNP leader Nick Griffin to the North East. Starting from the Working Men's Club in Town End Farm, Griffin went canvassing with local candidates, met with journalists from Channel Four, and then attended a social event at a pub in Southwick.

The BNP's newsletter, The Sunderland Patriot, claimed that 'We all know that Sunderland has the unwelcome title of "Asylum Capital of the North"', before going on to insist that asylum seekers get colour televisions, new cookers, washing machines, fridges, freezers and kitchen utensils, as well as their gas and electricity bills paid. Yet as Morrison pointed out, Sunderland's asylum presence was then just 1,030, as against a total population of some 289,000. 'Far from it being the "Asylum Capital of the North", it has fewer than Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool, Salford, Leeds, Bradford and Sheffield ... As a Home Office spokesman points out, asylum seekers who qualify for state benefits get just 70 per cent of the standard benefits available for UK residents. As for colour televisions, he says "that's rubbish".'

Despite the attempts of such local journalists to puncture the BNP's bubble, larger forces were clearly tending to open up a space for the far right, including de-industrialisation, poverty, the electoral decline of the Conservative Party, and the long hegemony of Labour. As it happened, the BNP failed to win the 'multiple victories' in the region, which Nick Griffin had predicted. On a night when thirteen new BNP candidates were elected elsewhere, in the North West, the South East and in the West Midlands, it was something of a relief that the party did not do better in the North East. In the key target ward of Town End Farm the BNP's support rose only marginally from 28 to 29.6 per cent. Yet if in percentage terms, the votes represented consolidation, in actual vote terms, they were a breakthrough. In fifteen wards, the BNP achieved over 500 votes, only in one did they get less than 300. Nick Griffin told the press, 'People voting for the BNP know exactly what they are getting. Our absolute ideal is an all-white Britain.' He predicted that his would be 'the right wing party of the future'. In one evening, their success did more than anything to disappoint those who hoped that the North East would remain known for diversity.

Such episodes as the 2003 local elections tend to lead us away from the idea (found in the words of the Mullin report, in Scott-Batey and in other witnesses) that racism begins with the fact of immigration. Rather than focussing always on the arrivals, we need to look also at the values of the host. Such was the point of the quotation from David Feldman with which this paper opened.

The changing North East

The history of the North East has long been a story of industrialisation and its aftermath. The 'identity' of the region has been bound up with work. In a conference paper from 1996, the former Durham sociologist John Rex wrote that 'If we look at actual working-class history rather than at this ideal type, we find that the European working class has always drawn on the solidarity and strengths which come from regional cultures. In this sense we may say that the indigenous working class draws on its own ethnicity.' Indeed it is sometimes helpful to speak of the 'ethnicity' of white people. For if migrants have defined themselves in cultural terms, then so have white workers. Indeed of all Britain's working populations, few have possessed as strong a sense of regional identity as the people of the North East.

Bernard Crick lists some of the anxieties that exist beneath the national consciousness of the English, 'the loss of empire ... [the] desire to put the "great" back in to Great Britain; the need of the post-Falklands euphoria; the desire to get away from all that and live within our own skin; worries about losing our identity in Europe (or hopes for a better one); [and] related worries about a possible further break-up of the United Kingdom.' To this list, the sociologist Krishan Kumar adds the national and cultural rivalries between Scots, Welsh, Irish and English, the ambiguity of Britain as a national federation and a single state.

In the North East context, this sense of regional particularism becomes all the more important. Regional identity seems to rely on a series of positive choices: the self-identification as a Geordie, the use of regional dialect, a memory of a class culture formed by industry. There have also been a series of regional and sub-regional enmities, the North East against London, Newcastle against Sunderland, Middlesbrough on its own. The majority working-class population has a series of identities, coherent and common, but also fractured. If such a nebulous spirit as regional consciousness can be quantified, then through the last twenty years of our period, the importance of regional identity seem to have grown. Only at certain times have specific groups of migrants and black Britons been allowed to join.

Barry Carr's work on 'Black Geordies' endorses the argument that Yemeni sailors who arrived in South Shields were met (eventually) with welcome. Carr also accepts that later generations of migrants gained from a local spirit of welcome. 'The Bangladeshis, although separated physically and culturally from the Arabs, have benefited from the atmosphere of tolerance forged in the town by the Arabs.' Yet such support was not fixed. 'The prolonged social strains caused by the economic decline of the past thirty years must ultimately have some weakening effect on the identity of the North East. Perhaps the confidence that fosters racial tolerance may be one of the casualties?' Carr's account ends with the question left unanswered.

Who's exceptional now?

Returning to the status of Asian South Shields, it would seem that the success of these 'migrants' depended in part on their perceived willingness to adapt to an existing white ethnicity. A number of the newspaper articles cited already in this paper made reference to the Geordie dialect spoken by Shields Arabs. A typical Sunday Express feel-good story from March 1968 was titled 'We feel welcome here, hinney'. Other writers described the willingness of the Shields Arabs to adapt in such a way that they no longer had any separate existence. 'After a couple of generations of mixed marriages' wrote Maureen Knight, 'it is sometimes only a name, like Hassan, Salem, Kaid, Mohamed, that gives a clue to immigrant origin.' When asked to explain the town's racial success, Peter Gillander of the Evening Chronicle emphasised the complete 'integration' of black people into a local white culture:

For in the past 70 odd years since the Arab seamen settled in the 'Land of the Sandies' because of a recession in the shipping industry, the coloured people have integrated themselves. They have inter-married. They have got work in the area. They have bought their own homes and businesses. Their families are spread throughout the town in council houses and flats and their children mix freely in the borough's infant, junior and high schools. Since those early days the coloured fraternity has much expanded but the people never had to force themselves in their white neighbours. They have been gradually accepted for what they are - the new Tynesiders.

The story would seem to contain a negative moral. Any process of acceptance has depended on migrants adjusting themselves to the values of their hosts. If no traces of previous history, no alternative voices or cultures were heard - then all might turn out for the good. A migrant population, however, that continued to insist on keeping any of its old customs could not be guaranteed the same warm welcome. We find then, that there is a harsh underside even to the idea of 'tolerance'.

Conclusion

So has the North East been a welcoming region? The evidence of this paper would suggest that by and large it has. North East local government has played a less negative role than that of national agencies. There has been a local mood of welcome, rooted in the positive experiences of Irish migration to the mining areas and Arab settlement on the Tyneside coast. There have also been signs of a different and more hostile spirit, but these have been found more in recent years, and still in a few geographically distinct areas. The success of electoral racism witnessed on Wearside since 2001 cannot wipe out the memory of welcome in South Shields, complex and differentiated though that latter experience has been.

The subject of this paper has not merely been the North East, but Britain as well. For however tolerant we judge this region, the tests must be relative. The fact that the North East may have come out relatively well is no reason to assume that the standard elsewhere has been high. More than one indicator has suggested that national pressures are making this a more racist society. This of course a complex process. We find evidence of peaceful racial co-habitation alongside signs of increased tension. There are more black role models than before; yet the roles they are allowed to play in society are ever narrowed. Black culture has never been more fashionable with white kids; teenagers of any race have never been less popular with adults. Since 2000, the first black men and women have joined the cabinet. In August 2002, Peyman Bahmani became the first refugee to have been murdered in Sunderland. The figures for inter-racial marriages rise, but so do racist crimes.

Most importantly, in recent years, the rights of refugees and other new arrivals have tended to diminish. The relative ease with which fleeing people were able to claim asylum in the post-war period was the product of specific factors, including a feeling of guilt at the memory of Europe's failure to protect previous generations of refugees. In a different historical moment, the legal rights of refugees have diminished. Indeed, at the very end of our period, the most confident of new political forces have been those who would see not merely new migration ended, but the adoption of a state policy of deliberate removal and the creation of an 'all white Britain'. Looking beyond our period, if both state and popular racism are to remain unchallenged by popular movements, then the future could be bleak indeed.