Race, Discourse and Labourism

by Caroline Knowles

Race, Discourse and Labourism documents the Labour Party's construction of the concept of race in political discourse. Providing a critical analysis of labour's race politics and its conditions of emergence, Knowles comments on whether Labour is capable of giving political direction to anti-racism in the nineties.

Knowles details the historical conditions of the emergence of race through Labour's dealings with Indian independence negotiations and anti-semitism in the thirties. She illustrates how in these historical processes Labour construed a range of negative significations for black citizenship, multiculturalism, and black representation, which structured its involvement with race in the sixties and early seventies.

Race, Discourse and Labourism reveals that Labour has not only tolerated racial inequality, but has given it powerful political direction. Focusing on the interplay of official and unofficial labourism, this book provides an insightful political and theoretical analysis of how race was constructed and sustained as a category in post-war British politics.

220 pages, Hardcover

First published August 27, 1992