Abstract

The chapter examines the historical and contemporary dynamic of debates on cultural diversity in Britain. It surveys the development of claims and grievances, responses from majority society and the mobilization and political activism of post-immigration groups with particular emphasis on the South Asian and Black Caribbean experience. The chapter public debates on cultural difference, contested events, such as the ‘Brixton riots’ of 1981, and contestations, such as the mobilization of British Muslims around the publication of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses in 1988/9. It reviews the scholarly literature on British race relations and gives a historical overview of the development of public policy measures. It then identifies, drawing on this historical background picture and on contemporary patterns, practices, ideas and institutional arrangements of accommodation, tolerance and respect that respond to the various ways in which diversity has been considered a challenge.