It's a matter of our history.
In the UK this is more a question of age than anything else.America has had a large number of black citizens for some two hundred years.
Britain has been quite different.The very
first ship bringing immigrants from the West Indies, people who were recruited to work here, docked in Britain in 1948 !Before then nobody who was not white was found here,save in a few major ports. So Liverpool,Bristol, Cardiff and London all had people who were, or whose ancestors were, sailors who settled here.They came from the Empire, an empire which contained every race known.Mixed marriages and mixed matches were quite common.
Immigration was largely restricted for long periods thereafter. Those West Indians and those who followed had been recruited to work on London's public transport. Later on the demand was for doctors and health workers. The Indian community of 50,000 in Southall, West London, is derived from those coming to work in the neighbouring Heathrow Airport.The Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigration to Yorkshire was for the textile industry and that to the Midlands for the motor industry.Our 'corner shops' and small newsagents are run by the 28,000 'Asian' [in Britain that means those whose ancestry is of the Indian sub-continent] immigrants who were expelled from Idi Amin's Uganda in 1972. The bulk of all this immigration dates only from the 1970s.By the early 1970s of 1.4 million 'immigrants' a third had been born in Britain.If Wikipedia is correct there must be nigh on 6 million non-whites in Britain. The big increase since the early 1970s will be substantially accounted for by births here.
Given that, the greater part of the non-white community is comparatively young.Born in the 1970s means 27 to 37, ages at which few people will be high in politics in any case though some of the older ones may be well on the way. Mr Brown's cabinet has five members under 40 and his foreign secretary is 41.Five of his cabinet are women (Mr Blair's had eight). One of his cabinet is black. She is also a woman, the Attorney General, Baroness Scotland of Asthal. The cabinet has to be comprised of lawmakers. She was never a Member of Parliament. She is a barrister who was made a baroness by the Labour government in 1977[all peerages created are for life only].She sits in the House of Lords as a 'working peer'[ that is she has a say: not every Lord or Lady is allowed one. We can't have people who are there having an influence merely because their distant ancestor was, say, the bastard son of Charles II
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There are currently 15 black and Asian MPs, out of over 630 Members .A Briton may also be a lawmaker, albeit limited in powers, if they take the Baroness' route. The political parties nominate new members of the House of Lords.Some of these are nominated as 'working peers'.New peers are created from all fields of endeavour; some are politicians but most are not; so anyone black or Asian who is interested,and thought good enough, may be a working peer.It's unlikely that they'll be in any key cabinet post, simply because cabinet ministers are expected to submit themselves to immediate scrutiny and gruelling questioning in the House of Commons.Having their deputy , an MP,to undergo that whilst themselves being in the Lords does not meet that expectation.They themselves are questioned by opposition peers, and others, in the Lords but that is not as satisfactory as their being in the Commons in person.
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