'Mixed' Romantic Relationships, Female Choices and Everyday Multiculturalism in Britain, 1960s-1980s

This open access book examines the romantic activism of ordinary women who, by being in long-term ethnically and racially ‘mixed’ romantic relationships between the 1960s and 1980s, defied the social and cultural expectations of their families, communities and British society. It provides new and alternative perspectives to the existing histories of twentieth-century British love and sexualities and uses Leicester, one of the first ‘super-diverse’ cities in Britain, as a case-study. Newly recorded oral life-histories describe everyday experiences of childhood, becoming an adult and at times being a lover, wife and mother. Across five chapters that explore–choosing a romantic partner, dating in the nascent multicultural city, racism and resistance, female respectability and changing and developing British identities–the women’s voices enable an authentic reimagining of living through a period of British history which is renowned for its gendered and racialised political and social challenges. Despite their varied cultural backgrounds, common themes relating to gender and race thread through the women’s experiences. Their memories and reflections illustrate the historical opportunities and challenges that arose from the women’s romantic choices and explain how the women lived with the consequences of their decisions. They show varied and differential engagement with cultural difference, alongside personal resourcefulness and resilience resulted in the women’s reshaping of cultural practices and the creation of new cultural identities. These pioneering women facilitated demographic change processes that were fundamental to the origins of Leicester’s trailblazing ‘everyday’ multiculturalism; a transformational development that questioned and reworked what it meant to be British in the later twentieth century.