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Notes -
The largest immigrant minority in Britain before the Empire Windrush docked in 1948 was the Irish. (They were legally British, but so were the Jamaicans on the Windrush - people who are inclined to racism didn't see either group as remotely British). Moral panics about Irish wickedness were an ongoing feature of 19th and early 20th century British politics. There is also the notorious indigenous minority with their own unique kind of sexual deviance, the Welsh. Anti-Welsh racism has also been an on-and-off feature of British politics, and there was at one point in the 19th century a semi-serious moral panic among a certain type of conservative Anglican about the spread of Welsh-influenced Nonconformism* in England.
The British are less prone to ethnic hatred than most countries, but we are not immune to it. It is just that the ur-racism in England was never about skin colour, and this confuses Americans and lefties raised in the American tradition of anti-racism.
* Nonconformism is a general term historically used in British religious politics for and form of Protestantism that is not Anglican or Scottish Presbyterian (both of which are official state religions in different parts of the UK).
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