Using oral history and archival documents, Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) Historian James Southern tells the story of non-white British diplomats since the Second World War. The FCO has come a long way since the 1940s, and this History Note aims to begin a conversation about the history of race in the Diplomatic Service to continue to build a tolerant, inclusive and representative organisation.
It covers:
the pre-1939 context before examining the FO's responses to the beginning of the era of Commonwealth immigration in 1948;
the 1960s and 1970s, and the global impact of the Civil Rights Movement in the USA as well as the domestic impact of Harold Wilson’s first Labour government; the rise of ‘diversity’ at the FCO, from the first explicit pledges to improve ethnic diversity in the 1980s through to the networks, schemes and initiatives designed to increase representation; interviews with current and former staff on race in the Foreign Office in the present day. 2nd Edition FCDO Historians 2021.
