Regulating the reserve army: Arabs, blacks and the local state in cardiff, 1919–451

Abstract

Cardiff's cosmopolitan population was expanded greatly during the First World War, but unwelcome once the exceptional demands of the war were over. A variety of governmental agencies became concerned with the regulation of this reserve army of labour. There were persistent attempts to deny entry to coloured seamen, to restrict unemployment relief and to brand the whole community as undesirable. From the late 1930s a greater demand for shipping provided the context for growing black resistance to discrimination, much of which came from the seamen's union and the police. In the Second World War official attitudes to blacks were modified somewhat.