Race Relations In The 1960s Essay

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The race relations were also challenged during the 1960s. There were more and more immigrants coming to Britain after 1945 and they had to find a way to deal with it. The fact that there was already a housing crisis in the capital made it that much harder for Londoners to accept them. Far-right groups looked to take advantage of the situation by urging people to throw the immigrants out and spreading their slogan "Keep Britain White". Because of them and the growing tension between the communities, the number of violent acts against coloured people increased largely in 1958. It all built up to the Notting Hill riots of August 1958. Around 400 white people attacked the houses of Asian immigrants and fled when the police arrived. Following British …show more content…

The word that best defines the 1960s is change. Everything changed. More and more people went to university, more and more were educated which made an entirely new generation. The music scene changed, with the apparition of bands with hugely popular music like Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Fashion changed with the invention of a new and young lifestyle, with miniskirts and tights, geometric patterns and unusual fabrics; with the bob as trending hairstyle and the emergence of supermodels such as Twiggy. The private life took a more liberated step, with more sexual freedom for both straight and gay couples, the former being helped by the invention of the Pill and the latter stopping to be illegal in the eyes of the law. But it was also a change in the sense of political change and protest with the hippies and the movements against nuclear weapons and the Vietnam war. Most of the changes that made the 1960s, "the Swinging Sixties" were possible because the consumer society was beginning to settle in and people had generally more income and more money to spend. In London, workers earned 170 times for than the cost of life in the 1950s, and 183 times more than the cost of life in the 1960s. in 2014, the 1960s were voted Britain 's most defining