Cultivating local xenophobia

Whenever the Smethwick contest is discussed, it is often described as a ‘race’ election. However, the significance of migration as a political factor must be clarified. Determining when migration to Smethwick became considered a political issue is imperative to understanding how the 1964 election played out in the town. The issue centres on the extent to which migration and integration became the problem compared with growing housing pressures and the fewer employment opportunities available. How politics was racialised, or at least discussed in racialised terms, needs to be unpicked and analysed. Limited scholarship existed on the issues of economic decline, post-war housing policy, and local politics in Smethwick itself before Adam Carey’s recent work. 1 While the contest has often received attention in broader-focused, recent studies, such as those of Phil Child on housing and Charlotte Lydia Riley on the influence of empire in post-war Britain, electoral politics have never been the primary focus of the work. 2 This chapter will consider the role of migration and anti-migrant social movements within local politics, arguing that this helped develop alternative interpretations of local problems and acted as a different focus for community political activism.