「リベラル・アワー」再考-=英国における一九六五-一九六八年の移民政策及び人種関係政策をめぐる議論を中心に-

冷戦の終焉と六〇年代性

抄録

This paper examines British race relations policies during the so-called “liberal hours” between 1965 and 1968 when the legal and policy framework in the field was established. Thirty-five years have passed since the first Race Relations Act was enacted in 1965. A recently published report on race relations in Britain, the largest of this kind under the present Labour government, nonetheless still found that racism is prevalent. It even claimed that Britishness has unspoken, racial connotations, and thus has to be redefined in a multi-ethnic way.
My study claims that the race relations policies during the “liberal hours” contributed to today's confusion of what Britishness consists of and represents. It also argues that they reflected the then harsh international situation surrounding Britain, such as the decline of its political and economic power, decolonisation in Africa, and world-wide anti-racism movements. Given that the number of non-white immigrants to Britain increased since 1949, the pre-war Britishness, which disregarded the non-white British, was unsuitable by the 1960s.
With Britain's international status declining, the British government in the 1950s and the 60s wanted to maintain the link with the Commonwealth of its former colonies. Citizens of the Commonwealth countries had a legal right to enter into Britain freely and this arrangement signified the unity of the Commonwealth. Yet, at the same time, the government attributed a mounting social tension to the large-scale non-white immigration flows from the Commonwealth countries. In the face of a world-wide anti-racism movement, nonetheless, it had to avoid criticism of being racist and further damage Britain's international status by introducing immigration control. The promoters of the “liberal hours” thus established their race relations policies, which dealt with those non-white British already inside the country, in parallel with immigration policies, which aimed to stop non-white immigration flows.
The race relations policies then aimed at “integration”, by which both “equal opportunities” and “cultural diversity” were to be achieved. Accordingly, the ethnic minorities were allowed to maintain their own cultures in the “private” domain of the family and community as long as they observed a shared body of values and institutions in the “public” domain. Under this so-called two-domains thesis, it was unclear whether Britishness represents the public and private domains altogether or only the values and institutions in the public domain. Here, this paper points out, “cultural Englishness”, which should belong to the private domain, became confused with Britishness. The immigration act in 1968 accepted “belongers” in Britain only if they, or at least one of their parents or grandparents, were born, adopted, registered or naturalised in Britain. Since those “belongers” were predominantly white-British, however emphatically race relations policies denied the division of white and non-white British as the first and second citizens, their effects were greatly undermined.