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The Impact of Race on Political Behaviour in Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Susan Welch  and
Donley T. Studlar
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Extract

In contrast to the United States, where analyses of the political behaviour of blacks number in the hundreds, if not more, substantial studies of the political attitudes and behaviour of Britain's non-white minority are fairly scarce. As non-whites have become more visible in the political arena, however, attention by academics has increased. But as yet there have been few countrywide, empirical, and systematic investigations of the political behaviour and attitudes of this population. Our Note uses multivariate methods to investigate the extent of political participation of Britain's non-white minorities in the 1979 election. We focus on a wide variety of political activities and a few selected issue concerns. We attempt to place our findings in the context of some theories of ethnic politics that have developed to explain black political behaviour in Britain and in the United States.

Type
Notes and Comments
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , October 1985 , pp. 528 - 539
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

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2 See Layton-Henry, Zig and Studlar, Donley T., ‘The Political Participation of Black and Asian Britons’, Department of Politics, University of Warwick, Working Paper No. 36, 1984Google Scholar; McAllister, Ian and Studlar, Donley T., ‘The Electoral Geography of Immigrant Groups in Britain’, Electoral Studies, III (1984), 139–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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10 The surveys excluded Northern Ireland. The varied political behaviour of smaller groups within the Afro-Caribbean and Asian communities is explored via Census data in McAllister, and Studlar, , ‘The Electoral Geography of Immigrant Groups in Britain’.Google Scholar

11 This scale is labelled ‘potential participation’ because most of the items indicate what the respondents say they would do rather than what they have actually done.

12 The practice of taking only declared ‘definite’ voters was begun by a Harris survey of non-whites in 1983 and is designed to compensate for lower turnout figures despite declared intentions to vote. See Sigelman, Lee, ‘The Nonvoting Voter in Voting Research’, American Journal of Political Science, XXVI (1982), 47–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Studlar, , ‘The Ethnic Vote, 1983: Problems of Analysis and Interpretation’Google Scholar. Recalled voting also has its problems, but the trends can be revealing. See Himmelweit, Hilde, Jaeger, Marianne and Stockdale, John, ‘Memory for Past Vote: Implications of a Study of Bias in Recall’, British Journal of Political Science, VIII (1978), 365–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Särlvik, Bo and Crewe, Ivor, Decade of Dealignment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 345–56.Google Scholar

13 Studlar, Donley T. and Welch, Susan, ‘Mass Attitudes on Political Issues in Britain’, Comparative Political Studies, XIV (1981), 327–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Respondents could name up to two problems. The issue questions asked were open ended, but the answers were then coded into seventeen categories.

15 The broad patterns found here for political issues, turnout, and Labour party support apparently continued in the 1983 general election. See Studlar, Donley T., ‘Nonwhite Policy Preferences, Political Participation, and the Political Agenda in Britain’, paper presented at Conference on Race and Politics, Oxford, 09 1984Google Scholar; Fitzgerald, Marian, ‘Preliminary Notes on Data from Harris Survey for Black on Black/Eastern Eye Election Special 1983’. unpublished manuscript, 1984Google Scholar; Studlar, , ‘The Ethnic Vote, 1983: Problems of Analysis and Interpretation’.Google Scholar

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19 An aggregate analysis of the 1983 election in which one of the present authors participated (McAllister, and Studlar, , ‘The Electoral Geography of Immigrant Groups in Britain’Google Scholar) concluded that structural characteristics of constituencies dominated non-white voting behaviour. There was little identifiably distinct ethnic political behaviour except substantially reduced turnout in non-white areas, including most Asian enclaves. These findings are broadly in agreement with those from the current survey research, but there are some notable differences. The clearest difference is that the current study finds Asian political behaviour to be largely deviant from the structural theory except as regards turnout. While the sources of non-white political behaviour may have changed somewhat between 1979 and 1983, there are sufficiently numerous other differences between the two studies in variables, data and research techniques to preclude a definite conclusion as to the source of the variation. See, for instance, the previous comments in the ‘Data and Methods’ section and in footnotes 8 to 12. Survey and aggregate analysis of the same problem often yield different results. See Wald, Kenneth D., ‘Does Class Still Count?’ British Politics Group Newsletter, No. 40 (1985).Google Scholar

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