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Abstract: This article explores the legal precedent of the case of Mandla versus Dowell-Lee (Mandla v Dowell-Lee 1983) to explain how the far right British National Party mobilizes ethnic strategies and specifically the category of "indigenous Britons," to turn post-colonial multiculturalism on its head and thereby disavow the realities of a post-industrial, multiracial working class in Britain. The article argues that the historical moment in contemporary Britain is characterized by a shift away from the politics of social class toward collective organization and sentiment based on ethnicity and cultural nationalism. Drawing on ethnographic and historical research, conducted between 1998 and 2000 on the post-industrial Docklands of Southeast London, the article explains an exceptional local area case study, which proves the rule about the growth in influence in the first decade of the twenty-first century of far-right politics in post-industrial urban areas of Britain.
Keywords: Britain, ethnicity, multiculturalism, race, social class
In 1983, in the UK, the father of an orthodox Sikh boy made a complaint to the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE). The boy, Gurinder, had been offered a place at a private school in Birmingham, but on condition that he remove his turban at school and cut his long hair short. The headmaster, Mr. Dowell-Lee, was concerned that: "the wearing of a turban, being a manifestation of the boy's ethnic origins, would accentuate religious and social distinctions in the school ... a multi-racial school based on [the commonality] of Christian faith" (Mandla v Dowell-Lee [1983] 2 AC 548 (HL)). The CRE advised the boy's father to sue the school in the County Court for unlawful discrimination against a member of a "racial group" as defined in section 3(1) of the Race Relations Act 1976, which defines a racial group as "a group of persons defined by reference to colour, race, nationality or ethnic or national origins."1 The CRE brought the case to the court on the appellant's behalf in order to test the meaning and extent of the recent racial discrimination legislation.
Judge Gosling, presiding over the County Court, held that Sikhs are a religious group, not a racial one; that they also share a nation and language in common with racially similar non- Sikh Hindus and Muslims in the Punjab, and are,...