‘Claudia Jones and the West Indian Gazette’: Reflections on the Emergence of Post‐colonial Britain

In this article the specifically domestic and cultural properties of British decolonization are explored. It is suggested that the very category of ‘post‐colonial Britain’ invites us to think in these terms. Conventionally, the question of the domestic consequences of decolonization is thought in terms of the native white population of Britain. This article turns attention to the role of the black migrants resident in the metropolis during the years of decolonization: most especially, to the role of West Indians. By a reading of the West Indian Gazette it is proposed that the West Indian migrant played an active role in the organization of a specifically anti‐colonial culture—providing the means by which white Britons, too, could come to terms with the end of Empire.