Maltese in London: A Case-Study in the Erosion of Ethnic Consciousness - Geoff Dench

After the second world war, Maltese migrants in London acquired a highly adverse public reputation for the organization of prostitution. At the same time, the few serious commentators on community relations in Britain who referred to Maltese immigrants tended to characterize them as a quiet and unassuming group, earnestly seeking individual assimilation, and fully vindicating the comfortable liberal model of the absorption of minorities in British society at the time.

Originally published in 1975, this first detailed study of the main Maltese settlement in Britain attempts to resolve the apparent contradiction between these alternative images. It suggests that, although by comparison with other recent immigrants the pace of Maltese ‘assimilation’ had indeed been rapid, this had not been the smooth process assumed by the traditional liberal model. An examination of the background to migration and the motives and expectations of migrants – which are shown to be shaped by the experience of paternalistic British rule – and of the interplay of these factors with the reception given the Maltese by British public opinion, illustrates how far from orderly and peaceful the absorption of Maltese into local society in London had been.

In the light of his findings, Dr Dench poses a number of fundamental questions about our community relations policies, and suggests that they were not yet grounded in a realistic analysis of British colonial and metropolitan society.