Abstract
Early studies of the politics of race in Britain, including those of the author of this chapter, were criticised for focusing on the attitudes and behaviour of the white electorate and white politicians rather than exploring the views of non-white immigrants and leaders. From an empirical viewpoint, the major problem in analysing mass nonwhite attitudes was that the numbers of non-whites in any mass survey were too small for extensive analysis.1 Census data did not enumerate ethnic groups, and small area surveys were likely to be unrepresentative of broader populations.2 On the elite level, nonwhite leaders were often self-selected, with minimal followings and little political impact. Although these problems have not disappeared, there now exists a sufficient base of data, at least on the mass level, to draw conclusions about countrywide non-white political behaviour with greater confidence. This paper will use these data in order to examine non-white political participation and policy preferences over approximately the last decade in British politics. Of course, one cannot discuss the politics of race without making some references to the views of the overwhelmingly dominant white majority population (95 %) and the even more overwhelmingly dominant white politicians (100 % in the House of Commons).
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D. Butler and D. Stokes, Political Change in Britain, 2nd edn (St. Martin’s Press, 1974); I. Crewe and B. Sarlvik, 'Popular Attitudes and Electoral Strategy' in Z. Layton-Henry (ed.), Conservative Party Politics (Macmillan, 1980). Throughout the chapter, the following terminology will be employed: blacks = AfroCaribbeans; browns = Asians; non-whites = blacks & browns.
2. D. T. Studlar, 'The Ethnic Vote, 1983: Problems of Analysis and Interpretation', New Community, II (1983) pp.92-100. In delineating these various dimensions of race-related problems, I do not mean to suggest that the connections among them are necessarily manifest to politicians or the public. Factor analysis of public opinion during election campaigns show immigration and race relations issues to be highly associated with foreign aid questions in the public mind (Crewe and Sarlvik, op. cit. 1980). Such analyses are dependent, however, on what questions are asked, as well as how they are asked. The other three dimensions of race presented here have rarely been utilised in public opinion surveys, but they do appear to be important analytically.
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© 1986 Zig Layton-Henry and Paul B. Rich
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Studlar, D.T. (1986). Non-White Policy Preferences, Political Participation and the Political Agenda in Britain. In: Layton-Henry, Z., Rich, P.B. (eds) Race, Government and Politics in Britain. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18395-1_7
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