Citizenship, Immigration and Race Relations in Lambeth Palace Library Archives

Abstract

Lambeth Palace Library's primary function is to preserve the records of the Church of England, but there are ample opportunities for researchers to use these archives to better understand Britain's histories of citizenship, race relations, and migration in the twentieth century. Lambeth Palace Library (LPL) houses documents on projects on race relations undertaken by the British Council of Churches and the Church of England's Board of Social Responsibility's Race and Community Relations Committee, as well as Archbishop Michael Ramsey's correspondence from his tenure as Chair of the National Committee of Commonwealth Immigrants. These papers attest to the Church of England's significant role in urgent national debates on migrant rights and race equality, and the work of organisations representing the interests of Commonwealth migrants as they actively sought the support of church leaders in their campaigns. LPL collections reveal the important place British churches had in building networks, providing funding and supplying resources to support anti-racist organisations, and the ways ideas of Britishness were contested in the 1960s and 1970s around the passage of the Commonwealth Immigrants Acts and Race Relations Acts. Papers in LPL collections can also be used to critically examine post-imperial formations of Whiteness, xenophobia and the racialisation of British citizenship.