A new history of multicultural Britain

Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. When we think of Britain's multicultural past, we often think of the arrival of HMT Windrush in Tilbury docks in 1948 and of the impact of policies issued from Westminster. And both of those factors are hugely important, but there are other stories to be told, too, of community gatherings and pubs and cafes, of complicated romances and sexual relationships, and of people embarking on new lives in new towns. Kieran Connell's book, Multicultural Britain, charts some of these stories, and I spoke to him to find out more. Kieran, thank you so much for being with us today to talk about your new book.

I am sometimes loath to start an interview talking about the definition of a term, but in this instance it feels like it's really central. Can you talk a little bit about the term multiculturalism and I suppose how that phrase, how that term has come to stand in for a wider set of concerns, I suppose? Yeah, I feel like this a huge amount of confusion around what that term means. I think partly some of the problem may be because it has that kind of ism attached to it.

So it sounds like a philosophy, like Marxism or something like that. And so it's almost become, I think, in the minds of some people, almost like a a doctrine that people either do or do not believe in. So, you know, people can talk about multiculturalism and they're actually talking about immigration, or they can be talking about multiculturalism and they're actually talking about education in schools and the kind of syllabus that we should have in our schools or or that we do have in our schools. And I guess what I wanted to do with my book is reclaim that term.

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