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From Heroes to Whingers: Changing Attitudes to British Migrants, 1947 to 1977
Author(s) -
Hassam Andrew
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
australian journal of politics and history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.123
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1467-8497
pISSN - 0004-9522
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8497.2005.00362.x
Subject(s) - british empire , multiculturalism , prestige , sympathy , ethnic group , white british , stereotype (uml) , gender studies , history , political science , sociology , colonialism , law , psychology , social psychology , philosophy , linguistics
Shifts in attitudes towards British migrants from the late 1940s to the late 1970s chart the development of a non‐British Australia. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, British migrants were accorded a special prestige based on a belief that Australia and Britain had fought to defend shared imperial British values. Although British migrants protested at hostel conditions, public sympathy remained on the side of the migrants. The rise of the Whingeing Pom stereotype around 1960 reflects the declining weight of British wartime experience and a strengthening of the idea of an independent non‐British Australia. The 1970s saw the ending of British preference, and the debate surrounding British activism in Australian trades unions raised the question of whether British migrants were now merely an ethnic group within a multicultural Australia.