My own parents (of a similar age) had to emigrate from Malaya because of this; but my grandmother (on my mums side) forgave them in 1972 when I was born.
I know very little about Dads side of the family (he was also disowned for not having an arranged marriage after completing his Catholic sixth form education) but this may be also due to language barriers; they would have spoken Hokkien which my Dad did not understand (he was taught in English, and picked up some Malay in sixth form and teacher training college); and my family name is widely duplicated across Malaysia and Singapore..
But I had always been led to believe England had changed by the 1960s/1970s; and stuff like this didn’t happen amongst white British communities that recently (the Navy chaps parents basically wanted him to have an arranged marriage!)
What is worse though is the parents remained stubborn and were prepared to go to their graves not knowing their grandchildren… then again I’ve been told in all seriousness by people my age in rural areas that some of the well off farming families still have arranged marriages (some bits of Mid Suffolk aren’t too far diverged from Malaysia or Indonesia in the 1970s…)
Class prejudice drove our family apart | Life and style | The Guardian
