In 1955, on a long summer holiday in England, my father rented a house in Shoreham, on the Sussex coast. This was when I met Brighton and Eastbourne, and fell in love with the English seaside town.
It was in Shoreham itself, however, that I was waiting one morning for a bus. A woman either joined me on the bench, or was there when I myself sat down. (That part of the incident I have forgotten.) She began to ask me about myself, and I mentioned that I wasn’t from the town, and actually didn’t live in England. My home was Nairobi, in Kenya.
I think we had been chatting for a while about other things before this came up. But when it did, the woman suddenly withdrew from me on the bench. A look of extreme distaste appeared on her face. “You aren’t – coloured, are you?” she asked.
I explained that I was ‘European’ (as the English in Kenya called themselves, to distinguish themselves from Asians and Africans). I had been born in England, like both of my parents.
I don’t remember if we went on talking, or when the bus came. But I vividly remember the woman’s horror, that she might have been talking to someone of another race without realising it.
This was long before Enoch Powell, let alone Tommy Robinson or Nigel Farage. No one persuaded this woman into her attitude: it was hers—shared, I have no doubt, with the members of her particular tribe. ‘Coloured’ people were definitely ‘Them’ and not ‘Us’, and one should beware of the possibility that one might have a normal conversation with one of them without realising.