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Power and Policing in the British Metropole: 1957 and now Charlotte Lydia Riley
Event details
In 1957 the Home Office reached out to 41 chief constables of police forces scattered around the country, explaining that they had been selected because they were working in areas that had recently seen an ‘influx’ of people of colour from around the Commonwealth. The Home Office, and their ministers, were curious about the possible ‘problems’ arising from this post-war wave of immigration.
The survey that they attached, and the responses by the police forces, paint a vivid picture of the way that the Windrush generation were treated by the British government and their local police in this period.
In this important and timely talk, historian Charlotte Lydia Riley of the University of Southampton will explore the survey and responses, asking how they can help us understand more about the Windrush Scandal, the Hostile Environment and cultures of policing in Britain today.
Annual Aylmer Lecture
Please note that this event is not livestreamed but will be recorded and made available to watch again.
About the speaker
Charlotte Lydia Riley is a lecturer in 20th-century British history at the University of Southampton. Her book, Imperial Island: A History of Empire in Modern Britain, explores the ways that empire has shaped and changed British society, politics and culture since the Second World War, and will be published by Penguin in summer 2023. She has recently edited a collection of essays on free speech, The Free Speech Wars: How did we get here and why does it matter? (Manchester University Press, 2021), which examines the contemporary culture wars around freedom of speech. She has written for Tribune, New Humanist, the Guardian, BBC History Magazine and the Washington Post.
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