Prescod, C. (1988) Book Review: ‘There Ain’t no Black in the Union Jack’: the cultural politics of race and nation By Paul Gilroy, Race and Class, 29 (4): 97-100, Les Back is Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. My MSc was at the University of Birmingham, it was the Thatcher era, it was unheard of that one would dare to critique/disagree but I insisted on utilising Gilroy and USAs Cornel West to counter one of the University’s learned Professors! Gilroy points out that Churchill and the Conservative cabinet discussed fighting the 1955 election with the slogan ‘Keep Britain White’. Although, there is no easy accommodation in his thought he does give us some tools to confront that past. I think one of the things that is distinctive about Paul Gilroy’s thought is his unnerving capacity to anticipate, read and interpret the damage that the British empire and colonialism did to both the colonized but also to the colonizers.
Also, Paul is a committed to doing the work of critique with rigour and care. It helped many of us think that the things we cared about were legitimate and possible, I feel that as a personal debt and I am sure many of its readers will share that feeling. View abstract . chapter 1 | 40 pages ‘Race’, class and agency . Paul commented that the working class configured within the cultural politics of race and has more to lose than its chains. There is a warning here that seems all too chillingly relevant. The truth is the white professorate at the time he wrote this book tried to shut him down. The public debates on migrant Channel crossings.
I think some of these qualities are there in There Ain’t No Black. Congratulations, Paul, on the anniversary.

This year has also seen the passing of the fiftieth anniversary of Powell’s ‘Rivers of blood speech.’ All those tribunes of race and nation like Powell felt a special responsibility to be the protectors of ‘working class opinion’ too before the idea of the white working class was invented.

Thank you so much…

Teaching the book now, I need to remind students that the title is taken from a football chant sung during the 1970s and 1980s by England fans: ‘There ain’t no black in the Union Jack, send the bastards back.’ Captured in the song is the exclusive coupling of race and nation. Barthes presents this as a mythic symbol of French imperialism. This is why the book has remained vital. So much is left out in the portrait of Paul as the world famous cultural theorist… former Yale Chair… Professor of Hip Hop etc.

Criminologist Jock Young wrote in a review of The Empire Strikes Back – which Paul contributed centrally – that it was a ‘a work of propaganda not scholarship.’ Sociologist, and early figure in the New Left, John Rex blocked Paul from getting jobs and more than that he boasted about. By contrast, Paul has always encouraged and facilitated younger scholars and his popularity with them is a testament to that. In this sense, I think There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack is a book that made the ideas that followed it possible and gave a generation of scholar license to think differently about the relationship between race and nation. We have much to learn from the early reception of black Commonwealth migrants and Paul’s book is still a sure guide. In total agreement with your astute, of the moment discussion here. She compared it with a child coming up to her mother and instead of the anticipated kiss, she received a slap in the face. DOI link for There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack, There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack book. Enjoyed this reflection on the book (still have my copy, I will look at it again). For that task of becoming more than what others have decided for you is not an easy thing. From Risk to Resilience in the Global Supply Chain Economy after Covid-19, a Humanitarian Response, A Day at a Time: A research agenda to grasp the everyday experience of time in the COVID-19 pandemic, Covid-19 Public Health Messages and Minority Ethnic Older People in Scotland, What the recent exam fiasco has taught us about why government needs to trust teachers. At the same time, Gilroy is equally attentive to the vital culture nestling in the shadows of the imperial metropole. This classic book is a powerful indictment of contemporary attitudes to race. Researching COVID-19 and its impact on families: some ethical challenges, Women’s Studies, Gender Studies and Feminism, Escort girls and clients: individuals and lives beyond representations.

How chilling an echo of this it was to hear during in a discussion of ‘knife crime’ – the latest moral panic about race and crime – on BBC TV show Question Time that a genteel bespectacled white middle-class man could say confidently without shame: ‘Don’t forget it is a particular breed of human being who can repeatedly put a knife into another person and those people should be dealt with like the cancer they are and exterminated.’ The history and force of these cultural pathologies are still unfolding even when they are expressed without a specific reference to race. It is a book that confronts nationalist erasure and this is conveyed visually in the cover. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. It’s a good example for Paul has this capacity to draw connections between Gramsci and the stringing up of a sound system and what he called the ‘kinetic orality’ of the MCs on the Mic. Gilroy, Paul (1987) There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack: the cultural politics of race and nation London: Hutchinson. That’s why I think he sides in the book with the example of rock against racism as a resource to think about what a lived anti-racist culture might look, sound and feel like. The book argued that it is within the professions of the media and within the legal system that the work of racism is centered. You can see that when his face lights, or when he laughs in worldless approval in response to a comment that puts its finger on something important. I want to say one further thing about Paul and that is his courage and intellectual bravery. A brilliant and explosive exploration of racial discourses, There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack provided a powerful new direction for race relations in Britain. How hauntingly true that remains. Forms of policing and criminalization practiced in the hinterlands of empire were repatriated and used against those who are cast as ‘lesser breeds without the law’.

However, Colin Prescod did write approvingly that he liked ‘Smiley Culture being described as an organic intellectual’ (Prescod 1988: 99). The double standards of imperialism fostered in the colony a sense that Britain was the ‘Mother country’ and yet at the same time nationalists from Churchill to Powell were steadfast in their desire to place them at a distance and to ‘keep Britain white’. He has an open curiosity that is as much attentive to the artistry of Congo Natty as to the exponents of contemporary English folk music like Chris Wood. One that is situated in the rhythms of life that have their own protocols and ethical maxims and terms of access. This kind of behavior was open and unashamed.

The idea of decolonizing knowledge doesn’t quite capture the quality of mind he has. Paul Gilroy's 'There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack' offers an intriguing examination of race relations in Britain in the 1980s. It is indeed a “classic” for those of us fighting so-called Professors at that time .. the 80s this text was critical to our debate, our right to espouse a point of view which was our own, borne out of our experiences and not the one I was being told to follow. Get instant explanation for any lyrics that hits you anywhere on the web! Notify me of follow-up comments by email.