Racial segregation in the United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, racial segregation occurred in pubs, workplaces, shops and other commercial premises, which operated a colour bar where non-white customers were banned from using certain rooms and facilities.

Some resisted the law such as in the Dartmouth Arms in Forest Hill or the George in Lambeth which still refused to serve non-white people on the grounds of colour.

It was clear that, so far as concerned admission to canteens, public houses, theatres, cinemas, and so forth, there would, and must, be no restriction of the facilities hitherto extended to coloured persons as a result of the arrival of United States troops in this country".

[6] Institutions such as transportation companies, royal palaces and private businesses once operated policies of excluding people from employment based on their race.

[4][22] When the Act passed it included an exemption specified that if a member of Palace staff complained about racial discrimination then the case would be heard by the Home Secretary rather than the law courts.

[25] A fixed quota of non-white bus drivers and conductors was reported to the Manchester and District Council for African Affairs in 1954 despite a shortage of employees in those positions.

All the Corporation's drivers and conductors (except one, Arthur Horton), voted to strike against his employment, following an unsuccessful similar attempt to veto immigrant workers on Birmingham Transport shortly before.

[30] In the munitions factory near Leeds that made tanks, Alford Gardner was repeatedly turned down for work in the late 1940s because he was not allowed to join the company's union.

[32] Various pieces of legislation in the 1950s and 1960s sought to ban non-whites migrating to the UK, with The Economist describing Labour's 1968 Commonwealth Immigration Act (premiership of Harold Wilson) as "restricting the entry of many holders of British passports, simply and solely because they are brown".

[41] The mayor of Lewisham was tipped off about a colour bar that operated in the Dartmouth Arms in Forest Hill and visited the pub in January 1965 with Melbourne Goode of the Brockley International Friendship Association.

[47] Smethwick was a key battleground for anti-racism campaigners breaking the colour bar that operated in the town's pubs run by Mitchells and Butlers brewery.

The campaign was run by the Indian Workers Association and one of its members Avtar Singh Jouhl[48] introduced Malcolm X to one of the town's pubs, the Blue Gates.

[51] In 1983, a West Bromwich wine bar banned Sikh youth leader Dal Singh from entering the premises because he was wearing a turban.

[52] Manchester police were called to the Old Abbey Taphouse pub on the Greenheys estate between Hulme and Moss Side on September 30, 1953, and black boxer Len Johnson and his friends were all thrown out after being refused service because of the colour of his skin.

The most famous case was of the West Indian cricketer, Learie Constantine, who in 1943 was told to leave the Imperial Hotel in Russell Square, London, and successfully sued the proprietors for breach of contract.

[57] A colour bar operated throughout the UK and well into the 1980s; for example a Scottish hotel tried to ban two brothers, Omar and David Dafalla, from a disco in March 1986 after they had admitted their white mother.

[59] George Roberts, aged 31, was refused entry twice to a Liverpool dance hall in 1944 because of his colour; once in civilian clothes and then when he returned in his Home Guard uniform.

[61] In 1958, Wolverhampton's Scala dance hall made national news when the owner refused entry to Udit Kumar Das Gupta on the grounds of race.

The jazz musician Johnny Dankworth sued one newspaper for the suggestion that he broke the picket, and donated the proceeds of the case to his charity, the Stars Campaign For Inter-Racial Friendship.

Due to then Home Secretary Winston Churchill's decision in 1911 to support a colour bar, Johnson was banned from competing at both the Royal Albert Hall and National Sporting Club.