Context: 1960s/70s Britain & Immigration
Britain in the 1960s and 1970s
Anita and Me is set in the fictional village of Tollington, based on the real village of Essington in the Black Country. Meera Syal drew heavily on her own childhood experiences growing up as the daughter of Indian immigrants in a predominantly white English village during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Understanding this context is essential for the Edexcel exam, where AO3 requires you to show how the text reflects its social and historical setting.
After the Second World War, Britain faced a severe labour shortage. The government actively encouraged immigration from Commonwealth countries — including India, Pakistan, and the Caribbean — to help rebuild the economy. The Windrush generation arrived from the Caribbean in 1948, and significant South Asian immigration followed throughout the 1950s and 1960s. These communities settled in industrial areas where work was available, including the West Midlands.
Post-war Britain actively recruited workers from Commonwealth countries to fill labour shortages. Meena’s parents represent this generation of South Asian immigrants who settled in industrial England, bringing their culture and traditions to communities that were often unwelcoming.
Enoch Powell and the “Rivers of Blood”
In April 1968, the Conservative MP Enoch Powell delivered his notorious “Rivers of Blood” speech in Birmingham — just miles from where the novel is set. Powell warned that continued immigration would lead to violence and social collapse, using inflammatory language that gave public respectability to racist views. The speech divided the nation: some saw Powell as speaking common sense, while others condemned him as a dangerous bigot.
Syal weaves this political backdrop into the novel. Sam Lowbridge’s racist outburst at the village fete echoes Powell’s rhetoric, and the casual racism Meena encounters reflects the attitudes Powell helped to legitimise. The novel is set in a period when being openly racist was socially acceptable in many white working-class communities, and Meena’s family must navigate this hostility daily.
Tollington is a small, insular village in the Black Country — an area defined by its industrial past. The mines are closing, jobs are disappearing, and the community feels left behind by modern Britain. This economic decline is crucial to understanding the resentment that characters like Sam Lowbridge direct towards immigrants. When people feel their livelihoods are threatened, they look for someone to blame. Syal shows how racial prejudice thrives in communities experiencing economic hardship and social change.
The village’s isolation also matters. Meena’s family are the only Indian family in Tollington. There is no wider South Asian community for them to turn to, which intensifies both their cultural isolation and Meena’s desire to fit in with the white children around her.
Syal’s Autobiographical Elements
Meera Syal was born in 1961 in Wolverhampton to Punjabi parents and grew up in Essington, a former mining village. Like Meena, Syal was one of very few Asian children in her community. She has described feeling caught between two cultures — wanting to belong to the English world outside her door, while being rooted in the rich Indian culture inside her home. The novel is not a straightforward autobiography, but it draws extensively on Syal’s memories and emotions.
A central theme of the novel is the experience of living between two cultures. Meena’s parents maintain their Punjabi traditions, language, and values at home, while Meena yearns to be accepted by the English community outside. This cultural duality creates an internal conflict that drives the narrative. Meena does not fully belong to Tollington’s white community, but she also feels disconnected from the Indian heritage her parents cherish.
Syal uses Meena’s child narrator voice to explore this tension with both humour and pathos. As Meena says, “those of us deprived of history sometimes need to turn to mythology to feel complete” — a line that captures both her creative imagination and her need to reinvent herself to fit in.
Syal’s autobiographical experience gives the novel authenticity and emotional depth. The tension between wanting to belong to English culture and honouring Indian heritage is drawn from her own childhood, making Meena’s voice both personal and politically significant.
The Novel’s Genre and Narrative Voice
Anita and Me is a Bildungsroman — a coming-of-age story. Meena narrates retrospectively, looking back on her childhood from an adult perspective. This dual narrative voice is important: the child Meena misunderstands or overlooks things that the adult narrator allows the reader to see clearly. The humour often comes from this gap between what young Meena thinks is happening and what is really going on.
The novel also functions as a social commentary on 1960s Britain, examining race, class, gender, and community through the eyes of a child who is both an insider and an outsider in her own village.