Bigotry In Britain


Dan Shewan finds the 2006 film This Is England, which depicts young skinheads in the early ’80s, an especially resonant portrayal of racism in his home country:


The bleak, fractured Britain depicted in Shane Meadows’ 2006 film This Is England is not unlike the one in which I grew up. We moved around a lot when I was young, but eventually settled in a depressing coastal town not entirely dissimilar to the one in which Shaun, the movie’s protagonist, lives. Meadows’ semi-autobiographical film reveals to us a glimpse of a Britain divided by racism — a nation where intolerance masquerades as pride, and one in which young minds are molded by fear. Growing up in a working class town, racial slurs such as “Paki” and “wog” were inextricably interwoven into the vernacular of the public schoolyards in which I played. Some children used them cruelly. Others simply didn’t know any better.


Although racism in Britain can be traced back to the slave trade, the legacy of hatred portrayed in This Is England is enduring.



A recent survey by market research firm OnePoll revealed that one in three Britons admitted to making racist remarks on a regular basis, or engaging in conversations that could be considered racist. More than one in ten people confessed to having been called a racist by someone close to them. Lastly, around forty percent of Britons polled had prefaced a comment with the classic refrain of “I’m not racist, but…” at some point or another. Perhaps most disconcerting is the fact that many of the two thousand adults surveyed by OnePoll claimed their feelings of racial prejudice had been passed down to them by older members of their family. In terms of demographics, individuals over the age of fifty-five were found to be the least racially tolerant, but young people aged between eighteen and twenty-four were close behind.


There’s a huge amount of tolerance in Britain, but it shouldn’t be mistaken for an absence of intolerance. And in this, as in many other things, London is not the same as England. Still, I’m shocked by the data on the youngest generation. It suggests a deep lack of real integration beyond the prosperous metropolis.



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Published on January 05, 2014 14:28
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