The riots of 1958: Notes on the ideological construction of ‘race relations’ as a political issue in Britain

The 1958 riots in Britain have received only limited attention. Those who have written about them have all assumed that they were ‘race‐related’. The paper argues, contra this orthodoxy, that the riots were the site for political and ideological conflict, and that particular political and ideological relations ensured that the idea of ‘race’ came to be used to interpret them.