‘I felt like I just belonged’: urban multiculture and black Irish migrants in post-war Britain

This article reevaluates historians’ understanding of the Irish in post-war Britain from the perspective of a previously unresearched population, black and mixed-race Irish migrants. Writing on the Irish in Britain has lingered on themes such as stereotyping, discrimination, and ethnic profiling. More widely, some historians have framed Irish emigration and the diaspora around motifs of exile and reluctant departure, while others have highlighted the liberating potential of departure. Oral histories with black Irish migrants fall firmly into the latter, emancipatory camp, depicting urban, multicultural Britain as a site of acceptance and belonging. Far from presenting emigration as a reluctant withdrawal from a cherished homeland, Irish people of colour narrated their departure as a liberating exit from an upbringing of alienation and abuse. These findings have wider implications for understanding the dynamics of British multiculture. Black Irish narrators revelled in the anonymity granted by post-war British diversity, which allowed them to discover and embrace their blackness. Some found belonging within the black communities of urban Britain, especially London. Conversely, they faced rejection from Irish diasporic spaces, which were characterized by conservative, Catholic and exclusively white conceptions of Irishness. The article therefore uses previously unexplored narratives to reframe our understanding of the Irish community in Britain and the broader context of urban multiculture in which it existed.