1970s social context

How does Syal use the social context of 1970s Britain in Anita and Me? (30 marks)

Mark scheme guidance:

• The mining village context: post-war industrial decline; unemployment anxiety channels into racial hostility.
• The biker gang/Robert — explicit National Front sympathies; the threat becomes concrete.
• Adults' range of responses: Mr Ormerod's warmth; Mr Worrall's casual prejudice; Anita's mother's neglect.
• The Kumars as aspirational model: they study, they read, they plan — represented positively but never as the only valid mode.
• Context: Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood" (1968); National Front 1970s activity; Commonwealth Immigrants Act; Idi Amin's Uganda expulsion (1972) — creating new refugee communities.