Handsworth 1970 - 1985

Description:Text: Malcolm Dick

By the 1970s local and national politics were increasingly defined in racial terms. In 1964 during the General Election which Labour won, an uncharacteristic swing against the party in the Smethwick constituency which bordered on Handsworth, deprived the party of a leading figure, Patrick Gordon Walker. The victorious local Conservative party openly campaigned on an anti-immigrant ticket. In 1968, Enoch Powell the Birmingham–born MP for Wolverhampton delivered his “rivers of blood” speech in the Midland Hotel in the city centre. For a time he was Britain’s most popular politician and in Birmingham as elsewhere minorities were the target of hostility and discrimination.

By 1970, though the living standards of Handsworth’s people were varied, the area displayed many of the characteristics of multiple-deprivation such as overcrowding, high unemployment and low levels of educational attainment. For many the situation worsened with the collapse of several traditional industries in the 1970s and 1980s. People of Indian and Caribbean origin had traditionally secured unskilled and semi-skilled work in Birmingham’s booming metal-bashing trades between the 1940s and early 1970s. Unemployment hit these groups harder than the upwardly mobile white population. Moreover, second generation Blacks and Asians, who were finding it increasingly hard to enter the labour market were likely to be less deferential than their parents. Authority structures such as schools, social services and the police were largely staffed by white individuals. Many of these people had little knowledge of or empathy towards minorities. A combination of political, economic and cultural factors was creating tensions which were reflected in Handsworth’s experience. Bristol, Toxteth in Liverpool and parts of London revealed similar characteristics, but it was Handsworth which attracted the full force of media attention in 1985.

See Sources and Further Reading:

Murphy, Tale for Two Cities…

The photograph used here is from the Illustrated London News of December 28th 1968 and shows Enoch Powell in May 1968 in Wolverhampton.