Kavita Puri's hidden histories: "Many are turning against prejudice. But we cannot be complacent"

The generation who came from the colonies (or who were once colonial subjects) invited to Britain after the Second World War to do the hard jobs – the worst shifts in the factories, or in the newly established National Health Service (NHS) – went through so much to be accepted.

They began the long and ongoing struggle for equality. Then their children, who were confronted by overt racism and violence, even murder – like that of teenager Gurdip Singh Chaggar, stabbed to death in Southall in 1976 – took to the streets, alongside black Britons and white anti-racists, to defy the National Front.

• Read more | “London is the place for me”: David Olusoga on the Windrush generation

I’m reminded of something one of my interviewees told me after riots that flared in 2001 in Oldham, where the British National Party and National Front were agitating among British south Asian communities. Abdul was a youth worker in Oldham whose family had come from Bangladesh in the 1970s. Back then, his dad had stood up to the National Front, and he himself had faced bitter racism at school in the 1980s.

“There’ve been times when we thought: should we up and go?” he told me. “But the question is: where do you go? This is your home. We fought for this country – my forefathers were in the British Merchant Navy during the Second World War. So we’ve got a stake in this country. We don’t just take – we give.”

When things flare up he experiences a familiar feeling. “Once again, you think about whether you’re welcome here, and about the anxiety and the stress that you have to go through,” he says. “And then you think: when is it going to end?”

There’ve been times when we thought: should we up and go? But the question is: where do you go? This is your home. We fought for this country – my forefathers were in the British Merchant Navy during the Second World War. So we’ve got a stake in this country. We don’t just take – we give.

Race riots have a long history. Some of the earliest and most significant occurred after the First World War, and were reported on in the national papers. In 1919, a series of violent riots in Glasgow, South Shields, Salford, London, Hull, Newport, Barry, Liverpool and Cardiff saw street fights and properties vandalised. Five people were reported dead.

Huge crowds of white working-class people in these towns and cities directed anger at postwar employment shortages towards black and minority ethnic communities, blaming colonial workers invited to Britain to meet wartime shipping needs.

Later, in 1958, race riots broke out in Notting Hill after 10 white youths committed serious assaults on six West Indian men in four incidents. They were part of wider unrest fuelled by resentment at the growth in the West Indian community in London. This came after the 1948 British Nationality Act created the status of Citizen of the UK and Colonies, smoothing the recruitment of workers from places such as the Caribbean. These riots, which lasted around a week, resulted in more than 100 arrests.

Yet though the recent events feel disheartening and regressive, seeing the thousands who took to the streets peacefully in anti-racist protests was both moving and hopeful. Many reports show a dramatic shift as people, across generations, turn against prejudice. But we cannot be complacent.

Perhaps if the longer history of empire and immigration was better understood, the people attacked – some of whom were born here, some from families who have lived here for three generations – would be recognised as being as British as the far-right attackers, even though their skin colour might not be the same. I hope there will be a time when the descendants of empire do not have to ask themselves: “When is it going to end?”

This article was first published in the November 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine