'The other day I met a constituent of mine': a theory of anecdotal racism

This article argues that the theoretical problem of the new racism thesis, as originally formulated in the 1980s, was the account of the discursive ch ange it proposed and the role and significance of Powellism in this process . In offering a modification of the thesis I highlight the significance of the use of anecdotal accounts of the plight of ordinary English people in a reas of black settlement as central to the re-articulation of racialized co mmon sense in Powellism. I go on to argue that the particular discursive fo rm of the racialized anecdote is one that is developed within Parliamentary debates from at least the mid-1950s onwards and that Enoch Powell is not t he author but the elite beneficiary of this ideological work. I suggest tha t this Commons' sense informs and makes possible the success of the campaig n for exclusion of black Commonwealth migrants prior to Powellism, and that Powell fashions his own elite/ populist version of such narratives in 1968 . Offering an account of racism as a discursive fiction, I argue that the a necdotal form of political racism in post-war Britain is a political and id eological response to the public prohibition on 'race' talk in public space . In offering a tentative theory of post-'race' signification which is cons istent with empirical evidence, I argue that the 'moment' of re-articulatio n of racism in post-war politics is one consistent with the evacuated space of the prohibited notion of 'old' racism.