Post-colonial Britain: Immigration and the emergence of a multicultural society

The end of World War II marked a watershed in British history. Once the world’s preeminent industrial power, the devastation of the war was the final contributing factor to a process of economic decline vis-à-vis other industrial nations that dated to the 1890s. Though still one of the most important capitalist industrial economies, its earlier preeminence was no more. At the same time, the British Empire, which had been the largest empire during the imperialist age, was progressively dismantled. From the perspective of the metropole, its colonies were increasingly seen as too costly to maintain in both economic and political terms. Moreover, the legitimacy of the racist ideologies that had shaped imperialism and served as rationales for colonial rule were undermined by their association with the racist ideology of Nazi Germany (Füredi 1998). However, at the same time, the nation began the process of wartime recovery and rebuilding, and thus served as a spur to immigration. As it did so, it became clear that as the economy of England prospered – particularly the southeast of England – the regions of Scotland and Wales lagged behind