Abstract
The war against Nazism graphically highlighted the danger of mixing science and politics. Facing Nazi racial violence, Britain’s scientific conservatives had often felt driven to retract, revise and refocus their analysis of the concept of race in recognition that ideas, not too distant from their own, had been corrupted into the state religion of the most terrible of regimes. But in the emerging Cold War atmosphere of post-bellum Europe, it was not only the scientific right that was forced onto the defensive. Britain’s leftist scientists were soon similarly cowed, faced with the brutality of the Stalin regime, the onset of the Cold War, and specifically with Soviet championing of the agronomist Trofim Lysenko.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
For details of Lysenko’s career see V. Soyfer (trans. L. Gruliow and R. Gruliow), Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994)
D. Joravsky, The Lysenko Affair (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1970), Werskey, The Visible College, pp. 205–10, McGucken, Scientists, Society and the State, pp. 282–4 and
Z. Medvedev, The Rise and Fall of TD Lysenko ( New York: Columbia, 1969 ).
For Lysenko’s scientific ideas see T. Lysenko (trans. T. Dobzhansky), Heredity and its Variability ( New York: Kings Crown Press, 1946 ).
For the interaction between Stalin and Lysenko see K. Rossianov, ‘Editing Nature: Joseph Stalin and the “New” Soviet Biology’, ISIS (1993), 84: 4, 728–45.
J. Huxley, ‘JBS Haldane’, Encounter (1965), 65: 4, 60.
M. Banton, The International Politics of Race ( Cambridge: Polity, 2002 ), p. 28.
Cited in UNESCO, Statement on Race: an Annotated Elaboration and Exposition of the Four Statements on Race Issued by the UNESCO ( New York: OUP, 1972 ), p. 1. This publication was the annotated third edition of the UNESCO race statements. The ‘annotated elaboration’ was written by Ashley Montagu.
UNESCO Second Statement, Article 5. A belief in the existence of small racial mental differences is also evident in other UNESCO publications in this period. See G. Morant, The Significance of Racial Differences ( Paris: UNESCO, 1952 ), pp. 34–43.
The book finally appeared as C. Bibby, Race, Prejudice and Education ( London: Heinemann, 1959 ). There is evidence that UNESCO forced Heinemann to delay the publication ostensibly over issues of permission. See Huxley MSS, Box 27, Bibby to Huxley, 10/10/58.
See S. Truman (ed.), To Secure These Rights: the Report of Harry S. Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights ( Boston and New York: Bedford/St Martins, 2004 ), pp. 111–13. Call for the elimination of segregation, p. 179.
See J.P. Jackson, ‘The Scientific Attack on Brown v. Board of Education, 1954–1964’, American Psychologist (2004), 59: 6, 530–7, 530.
Also I. Newby, Challenge to the Court: Social Scientists and the Defense of Segregation 1954–1966 ( Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1967 ), pp. 19–61.
See C. Bibby, T.H. Huxley: Scientist, Humanist and Educator ( London: Watts, 1959 )
C. Bibby, Scientist Extraordinary: the Life and Scientific Work of Thomas Henry Huxley 1825–95 ( New York: St Martins Press, 1972 ).
Huxley’s lecture was published as: J. Huxley, Man’s New Vision of Himself ( Natal: EP and Commercial Printing, 1960 ).
The 1962 Galton Lecture. Published as J. Huxley, ‘Eugenics in Evolutionary Perspective’, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine (1962), 6: 2, 155–87, 165.
Comas contributed to both of the first two UNESCO statements on race and wrote a pamphlet on the subject for the organisation. See J. Comas, Racial Myths ( Paris: UNESCO, 1951 ). The article under discussion here was
J. Comas, ‘“Scientific” Racism Again?’, Current Anthropology (1961), 2: 4, 303–40.
D. Purves, ‘The Evolutionary Basis of Race Consciousness’, the Mankind Quarterly (1960), 1: 1, 51–4.
For example, see R. Hall, ‘Zoological Subspecies of Man’, the Mankind Quarterly (1960), 1: 2, 118–19
S.D. Porteus, ‘Ethnic Group Differences’, the Mankind Quarterly (1961), 1: 3, 187–200
H. Garrett, ‘The Equalitarian Dogma’, the Mankind Quarterly (1961), 1: 4, 253–7.
For the Quarterly’s attitude to South Africa see R. Gayre, ‘The Bantu Homelands of the Northern Transvaal’, the Mankind Quarterly (1962), 3: 2, 98–112.
In particular, two articles considering ‘The Jewish Role in the American Elite’ kept an anti-Semitic agenda present in the journal. See N. Weyl, ‘The Jewish Role in the American Elite’, the Mankind Quarterly (1962), 3: 1, 26–36
N. Weyl, ‘The Ethnic and National Characteristics of the US Elite’, the Mankind Quarterly (1961), 1: 4, 242–52.
Analyses which address this immigration are too prevalent to cite. Major works include P. Fryer, Staying Power: the History of Black People in Britain (London: Pluto, 1984)
E. Rose et al., Colour and Citizenship: a Report on British Race Relations (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), Miles, Racism and Migrant Labour
T. and M. Phillips, Windrush: the Irresistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain (London: HarperCollins, 1998), Paul, Whitewashing Britain
C. Peach, West Indian Migration to Britain: a Social Geography (London: Oxford University Press, 1968)
I. Spencer, British Immigration Policy since 1939 ( London: Routledge, 1997 )
R. Hansen, Citizenship and Immigration in Post War Britain: the Institutional Origins of a Multi-Cultural Nation ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000 ).
For the rise of sociology in British universities in this period see A. Halsey, A History of Sociology in Britain: Science, Literature and Society ( Oxford: OUP, 2004 ), pp. 70–112.
See R. Miles, Racism after ‘Race’ Relations ( London and New York: Routledge, 1993 ), p. 111.
See Little, Negroes in Britain, R. Glass, Newcomers: the West Indians in London (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1960)
S. Patterson, Dark Strangers: A Study of West Indians in London (London: Penguin, 1965), Richmond, Colour Prejudice in Britain
A. Richmond, The Colour Problem (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955)
M. Banton, The Coloured Quarter: Negro Immigrants in an English City ( London: Jonathan Cape, 1955 )
M. Banton, White and Coloured: the Behaviour of British People towards Coloured Immigrants ( London: Jonathan Cape, 1959 ).
See King, Race Culture, pp. 21–48, V. Williams, The Social Sciences and Theories of Race (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006), pp. 120–6, Jackson, Gunnar Myrdal, pp. 272–311
J. Jackson, ‘The Scientific Attack on Brown v. Board of Education, 1954–1964’, American Psychologist (2004), 59: 6, 530–7, 530.
For the influence of American social science on Richmond and Little see M. Clapson, ‘The American Contribution to the Urban Sociology of Race Relations in Britain from the 1940s to the early 1970s’, Urban History (2006), 33: 2, 253–73, 256–9. Also see Rose et al., Colour and Citizenship which claimed that it had taken its inspiration from Gunnar Myrdal’s US study, pp. 1–2.
K. Little, ‘Behind the Colour Bar’, Current Affairs (1950), 118, 1–19, 17.
P. Mason, Race Relations: a Field of Study Comes of Age ( London: Lucas and Co, 1968 ), p. 5.
N. MacKenzie (ed.), C. Senior and D. Manley, The West Indian in Britain ( London: Fabian Colonial Bureau, 1956 ), p. 7. For analysis of the Senior and Manley report see Rich, Race and Empire, pp. 180–1.
M. Banton, Race Relations ( London: Tavistock, 1967 ), p. 385.
See E. Pilkington, Beyond the Mother Country: West Indians and the Notting Hill White Riots ( London: Tauris, 1988 ), pp. 92–4. Also see Hampshire, Citizenship and Belonging, pp. 135–8.
Paul has argued: ‘Skin colour was considered to be an unmodifiable racial characteristic’, in Paul, Whitewashing Britain, p. 129. Also see Carter, Realism and Racism, p. 117 H. Goulbourne, Ethnicity and Nationalism in Post Imperial Britain ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991 ), pp. 122–5.
A. Sivanandan, A Different Hunger: Writings on Black Resistance ( London: Pluto Press, 1982 ), p. 108.
. Solomos, Race and Racism in Britain ( Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989 ), pp. 40–3.
A. Dummett and M. Dummett, ‘The Role of Government in Britain’s Racial Crisis’ in C. Husband (ed.), Race in Britain: Continuity and Change ( London: Hutchison, 1982 ), p. 102.
See Paul, Whitewashing Britain, L. Curtis, Nothing but the Same Old Story, in R. Swift and S. Gilley (eds), The Irish in the Victorian City ( London: Croom Helm, 1985 )
M. Hickman, Religion, Class and Identity: the State, the Catholic Church and the Education of the Irish in Britain ( Aldershot: Avebury, 1995 ), pp. 3–16.
See M. Freeman and S. Spencer, ‘Immigration Control, Black Workers and the Economy’, British Journal of Law and Society (1979), 6: 1, 53–81.
Copyright information
© 2008 Gavin Schaffer
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Schaffer, G. (2008). Race on the Retreat? The 1950s and 1960s. In: Racial Science and British Society, 1930–62. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230582446_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230582446_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-28435-1
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-58244-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)