This year will mark 800 years since the signing of Magna Carta, the charter guaranteeing for the first time the rule of law between the monarch and nobility. It is often described as the first of many steps in England to increasing political, civil and social rights. This gathered pace during the 19th century with the Great Reform Acts and culminated in 1928 with universal female suffrage and the 1945 vision of the Welfare State.
But notably absent in this broad narrative of gradual liberal reform are the discordant experiences of Britain’s ethnic minorities, their rapid and repeated exclusions from ‘the rights of freeborn Englishmen’, and how their own activism and agency has enriched British politics.
