Research
White women and the politics of race in Britain
This project gives an innovative and groundbreaking reappraisal of white women’s role in upholding white supremacist politics in post-war Britain. Starting with Enoch Powell’s era-defining ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech in 1968 and concluding with the politically divisive Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act in 2002, it asks: What was the appeal of racism and nationalism to white women? What did it mean to be ‘white’ and how did this shape women’s political views? And why did they join far-right organisations and take part in racist protests? Building on letters to MPs, newspapers, social research data, far-right publications, and Black British writing, this timely project will give an incomparable account of how women shaped campaigns for white hegemony over marginalised groups in post-war Britain. The project engages with Critical Whiteness Theory to uncover the discursive repertoires that white women of different political factions, from Labour party members to ‘card-carrying’ fascists, deployed to communicate ideas of white supremacy. It argues that ‘whiteness’ – rather than a concept valorised by a fringe group of fascists - was a deeply powerful and significant identity around which diverse groups of women coalesced, exposing a much richer picture of racist ideologies in post-war Britain than has previously been offered. By homing in on women’s role in shaping and reshaping the contours of racist and anti-immigration sentiment in the late twentieth century, this project brings an urgently needed historical lens to the ongoing rise and spread of the radical right and its attraction to women.
Some of this research has been drafted into a chapter on white women's racism on council housing estates in Birmingham, titled '“Let Me Tell You How I See It…”: White Women, Race, and Welfare on Two Birmingham Council Estates in the 1980s' (available here), for an edited collection titled Everyday Welfare in Modern British History for the Palgrave Studies in the History of Experience Series.
Race, motherhood, and multiculturalism: the making of female identities in the British inner city, c. 1970-1993
My doctoral thesis examined Black women's lives and activism in Britain’s inner cities in the late twentieth century. In particular, it discussed Black women's experiences of motherhood, activism, multiculturalism, and policing, tracing how activist groups, public events, and creative expression enabled Black women to survive in a Britain that was hostile to their presence. It demonstrated how influential Black women were in creating change in their local area, from social housing improvements to training schemes for young Black people. Rather than peripheral actors in anti-racist and Black Power groups, Black women had their own social networks, protest methods, and vernacular built from their unique experiences as Black women living in Britain. In turn, the thesis reveals the pivotal role that Black women had in shaping post-war Black British activism. Some findings from this research have been published in The Historical Journal and Twentieth Century British History.
I am currently carrying out a small project titled 'History from the Attic', with Dr Jamie Banks (University of Loughborough) and Sarah Garrod (George Padmore Institute), cataloguing the periodicals that belonged to the activist John La Rose.