Strange sanctuary: state, belief, and emotions in late twentieth-century Britain.

Grant, Amy (2023) Strange sanctuary: state, belief, and emotions in late twentieth-century Britain. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

This PhD discusses the sanctuary “movement” of the 1980s and early 1990s in Britain and explores places of worship as sites of community organisation and unification working across nationalities, faiths, and political agendas. Synthesizing oral testimonies and archival remnants, I draw upon a corpus of theological debates and political theory to investigate how campaign networks attempted to create a moral catalyst for legal change. By analysing how grassroots campaigns wrestled for public legitimacy with the government, I aim to reveal the social and political processes that constitute negotiated interactions between ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ exercises of power. I explore how these campaigns saw priests and parishioners, students, communists, LGBTQ+ and anti-racist activists come together to provide sustained sanctuary for people under direct threat of deportation. In doing so my work contributes directly to historiographies of immigration, the multiple levels of the state, multiculturalism, and activism in the ‘long 1980s’ and questions the wider existing narratives surrounding radicalism and race within the Anglican Church. In particular, it adds to an emerging field of research illuminating the international networks of people and ideas steering the Church’s ongoing process of internal decolonisation.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of History
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	19 Mar 2024 12:08
Last Modified:	11 Nov 2024 08:03
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/94718
DOI:

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