'Because I liked him too much' : intercultural romantic relationships, female agency and the origins of everyday multiculturalism in later 20th century Leicester

Sex, romance and love between women and men of different nationalities and, or ethnicities were everyday features of twentieth century British life. Until now, they have attracted relatively limited scholarly attention. This thesis explores the lived experiences of 23 such women in Leicester between the late 1950s and early 1990s. The existing historiography accentuates colonial and early post-colonial intersections of race, gender, class and British identity, by focusing on public representations of intercultural relationships until the early 1960s. Although overt and judgemental racism suggests life was problematic, these relationships continued. Their numbers increased. A missing chronology and alternative, private perspectives provided by the collection and analysis of new oral life-histories, underpin the continuation and nuanced expansion of this history. The women's narratives illustrate the opportunities and challenges of intercultural loving in a city undergoing its own historical ethno-demographic transformation. 1970s Leicester especially, was characterised by cultural difference, individual and political racism and anti-racism. Interviewees' memories and reflections highlight a mass of gendered similarities and contrasts not necessarily driven by their different cultural backgrounds. They show unique forms of domestic agency that enabled women to form, sustain and flourish in their relationships, considered transgressive by some. This was a fluid, informal, sometimes naïve feminism that exuded a complex mix of anti-racism and inculcated racism. Resourceful women differentially championed new family lifestyles and sometimes strove to regain a respectable femininity they perceived had been lost. The women's messy, rich and diverse subjectivities shed light on a population in cultural transition. New romantic opportunities, cultural difference and exchange and female agency reformed cultural practices. The women were affected by and contributed to the origins of an everyday multiculturalism in Leicester; the organic development of new identities which reshaped notions of blackness and whiteness and challenged what it meant to be British.