West Indian electoral support for Labour did not align with mainstream left politics

Evidence

Rex and Tomlinson claimed in their study of Handsworth in the mid-1970s that West Indian political action was not in the main channeled through the Labour Party, although their normative class position as workers led them to give electoral support to the Labour Party and membership of trade unions. They also claimed that the community politics which was in operation within self-help groups was not articulated within mainstream left politics. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2169

Categorization

• XREF: The split between electoral support and movement politics mirrors debates about Black electoral incorporation in the US (e.g., Dawson’s ‘linked fate’ scholarship) and the wider ‘representation without politics’ critique.