Mass immigration in the period 1945-c.70 a Essay

Was Britains orgasm to push-down store in-migration in the period 1945-c.70 a achievement or a failure?The interrogation of whether Britains go up to mint candy immigration in the period 1945 c.1970 was a success or a failure is nary(prenominal) as transp arent as it first may seem. Unpacking the question a little volition help. Firstly, it is important to consider what is meant by Britain? Should it be taken to mean the governance or the people, and which people?Britains accession might be mind more likely to refer to government besides clearly several(prenominal) British people having nothing to do with government alike encountered mass migration and migrants in one way or another and therefore toilet be said to have had an approach to it. Also, the idea of a bizarre approach over some 25 years is mis star(p). A grade of governments were incumbent over this period and therefore a variety of approaches to mass immigration might be expected. British clubhous e also undergo significant changes from the trauma of World War 2, the immediate post-war period and decolonisation to the 1970s and thus approaches and re characterizationions amongst the population at large are terminus ad quem to be many and varied as well.Then, finally, there is the question of success and failure. In objective history how are success and failure to be judged? there is no very satiscircumstanceory answer to such unverifiable notions. It might best be determined on a insurance insurance basis, either governmental or non-governmental, unless(prenominal) that is still a kind of narrow view. This essay will examine selectively both governmental and non-governmental approaches to mass immigration into Britain from 1945-1971 in a broadly chronological framework, first base with the immediate post-war period and devour settlement, before turning to what has been termed colonial or New Commonwealth immigration.Government policy will be analysed as will some o f the social effects of and response these to migrations. Finally, the governmental approach to mass immigration from Ire farming will be examined and furrowed with the former suits before a conclusion and answer is tackleed. It should be noted at the outset that it is not possible in the space provide to include discussion of either immigrant population group, nor to examine satisfactorily the responses of the population at large but the groups discussed herein have been chosen on the basis of numbers.That the reconstruction of the Britain former(a)r on(prenominal) World War 2 would require fight was already a concern of the government in 1944, who appointed a Royal missionary post to assess the matter of population. This steering reported in 1949 that immigration could be welcomed without reserve if the migrants were of good human stock and were not pr yetted by their theology or race from intermarrying with the host population and becoming merged into it. An recital of who constituted acceptable migrants had already been given by the government. At the revoke of World War 2 there were perhaps 500,000 Poles in Britain. piece initially the government favoured voluntary repatriation for the Poles, the advent and recognition of a USSR reign communist Poland was off-putting or impossible to many.Recognising the potential offered by the Poles, the Polish move Corps (PRC) was formed in 1946 to help in their transition to civilizedian life in Britain. This was followed in 1947 by the Polish Resettlement manage. The dependents of those who enrolled in the PRC were also admitted to Britain and by 1948 there were approximately 114,000 enrolled in the PRC and 33,000 dependents. Layton-Henry has concluded that, tour sympathy for the Poles existed because of the war and the Soviet appropriation of their country, the main reason for the successful integration of the Polish ex- aidmen and their families was the acute deficit of bear on at the end of t he war although there was some electrical resistance from people and trade unions.Post-war Britain was still imperial and colonial (though undergoing an ongoing help of decolonisation), if no longer a power, and as British subjects colonial immigrants had the obligation of access to Britain and full rights of citizenship, including voting rights, the right to work in the civil service and the right to serve in the armed forces. Notable in discussions rough colonial immigration are the West Indies and the Indian subcontinent and it is immigration from these areas that shall be considered below.In both the West Indies and the Subcontinent there was an awareness of the labour market in Britain during the war colonial labour had been widely used, with some settlement resulting. In India, Britain had gained a reputation as a land of milk and honey and mutual k instantlyledge was undoubtedly increase by the war. The increasing migration of West Indians to Britain began in 1948, the E mpire Windrush leaving Kingston on the 8th of June with 492 passengers bound for a new life with their right, and that of other citizens of colonies or Commonwealth countries, to free entry guaranteed by the British Nationality Act 1948. The take for labour in Britain and the p undefendedy of some the West Indies were the main factors direct to the migration, but also important was the especially Jamaican tradition of labour migration.Many had traditionally gone to the nearby and rich US, but this was mischievously re sterned in 1952, directing migrants to the UK. Although much West Indian migration to Britain was do in the hope of better prospects, direct recruitment also took place, for example between the capital of the United Kingdom Transport Executive and the Barbadian Immigrants Liaison improvement and the NHS. Similarly, mass migration of Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims from India and Pakistan was to increase in the 1950s and 1960s. Many factors governed this, such as the econ omic opportunities presented by Britain, pressure for land and unemployment following limited industrialisation. In both cases, travel agents, family reunions and chain migration helped to drive numbers, with the arrival of dependents often signalling a shift from temporary to permanent migration.West Indies India Pakistan Others Total1953 2,000 2,0001954 11,000 11,0001955 27,500 5,800 1,850 7,500 42,6501956 29,800 5,600 2,050 9,350 46,8001957 23,000 6,600 5,200 7,600 42,4001958 15,000 6,200 4,700 3,950 29,8501959 16,400 2,950 850 1,400 21,6001960 49,650 5,900 2,500 -350 57,7001961 66,300 23,750 25,100 21,250 136,4001962* 31,800 19,050 25,080 18,970 94,900 dishearten 1. Estimated profit immigration from the New Commonwealth(* first six months)It has been said that after the war, the British agitate government maintained an open door policy to immigration, deliberately settling some groups and encouraging others, although the racism of the Royal Commission Report which followed raw (a)ly from the racism strong among the government, armed forces and civil service before and during the war remained present. Of special concern were the immigrants visibility and ability to earn into British society, obviously favouring white Christians. In early 1950 an interdepartmental works committee recommended discouraging colonial immigration at source, tightening up entry requirements and encouraging voluntary repatriation.The immigration of coloured people was now being seen as a problem in several areas of British life although because of the small numbers involved, the Labour government chose not to act and curtail the traditional rights of citizens. The new worldly-minded government of 1951 were also bear on with avoiding the creation of, in Churchills words, a magpie society. two Labour and Conservative governments from 1948-62 were involved in the complex political and ideologic racialisation of immigration policy and had by 1952 instituted some covert, and someti mes il pro strand, administrative quantifys to disapprove black immigration. Debate continued throughout the 1950s about(predicate) non-white immigration and social problems that were, in the minds of some, intimately connected with it.Where blacks had settled in Britain before the war, racial prejudice was already a factor but during the war, when co-operation and unity were vital, it may have lessened for a time. For non-white immigrants the post-war era revealed inveterate hostility and vilification from various parts of society, including in Stepney a non-Christian priest who considered that blacks posed a social and moral problem. Incidents of violence occurred in the late 1940s between whites, sometimes Irish immigrants, and non-whites in Birmingham, Liverpool and capital of the United Kingdom. These continued sporadically, leading to the much frequentised Notting Hill and Nottingham riots in 1958 and the again in 1968.There were problems on both sides including discrimin ation against non-whites in employment and housing while some whites also worried about these issues and it seems that certain employers and landlords, seeking to maximise their profits took advantage of the situation. Despite such extreme incidents we must contrast also the less high profile friendly and welcoming approach of some people. It would indeed be inappropriate and inaccurate to generalise about the approach to mass immigration by the public and individual local anesthetic circumstances must always be considered. However, it has been said that post-war British society was still very traditional, and contempt the empire, very insular for the mass of British people. This, combined with the pride of empire and the recent defeat of Germany, exacerbated by the natural British superiority taught in schools, could easily lead to a ostracize attitude to immigrants.In 1962 the Commonwealth Immigration Act was passed by a Conservative government, legally restricting for the fir st time immigration from the Commonwealth. It was attacked by some sections of Labour and the media press as a response to unrefined racist pressures. Other Labour members, however, supported and had runed for stricter immigration controls, sometimes even stricter than that of 1962 and eventually Labour u-turned on the issue of repealing the Act. In fact, the looming prospect of strict regulation of immigration from the New Commonwealth speeded up immigration, in particular from the West Indies, destroying the rough balance that had existed between labour demand and supply.The overt politicisation of race and immigration is visible in the Smethwick campaign of 1964. Peter Griffiths fought the Conservative campaign against Labours Patrick Gordon Walker and was returned against the national trend. His campaign was based, as he saw it, on defending the interests of the local white majority over the influx of immigrants and he notoriously refused to condemn the popular motto If you w ant a nigger for a neighbour vote Labour defending it as an expression of the popular feeling about immigration. some ironically, Labour introduced another Commonwealth Act in 1968 in edict to restrict the entry of East African Asians who held British passports.The governmental approach to post-war mass immigration from the colonies and the Commonwealth should ultimately be viewed in the gentle of Irish immigration, for to 1971 the Irish were the largest immigrant minority in Britain (see Table 2). In the 1861 count 3% of the population of England and Wales were Irish and 7% in Scotland with their numbers increased to 957,830, just under 2% of the total population of not bad(p) Britain, in the 1971 census. In the late 1920s and 1930s some restrictions on immigration and repatriation were proposed, partly in anxiety at the potential effects of US immigration restrictions increasing the flow of Irish into the UK, but were never effected except during the war.The worries expressed by the reconvened working party in 1955 were confine to controlling the immigration of coloured colonial and Commonwealth citizens, who were British subjects with legal rights to settle, and not with Irish immigration, concluding that the Irish are not whether they like it or not a different race from the ordinary inhabitants of Great Britain. That an estimated 60,000 Irish per year were migrating to Great Britain compared with far fewer colonial or Commonwealth citizens was evidently not the point, nor was the fact that Irish immigration also led to social tensions as the working party had itself concluded. These were later emphasised by the Commonwealth Acts, about which there was no pretence of adopting non-racist immigration controls by including Irish or other aliens in the legislation.Table 2. Origins and numbers of some overseas born population of Great Britain in 1971(note that immigrants may have also emigrated, therefore this table does not express total numbers of i mmigrants per year of entry)In such a climate, the origin of the Conservatives Enoch Powell as a spokesman for anti-immigrant resentment seems inevitable and the public response to his rivers of blood prediction saw his popularity in polls stick up from 67 to 82% in his favour, even making him a contest for the Conservative leadership. Powell used rhetoric and narration to create an image of Britain in its death throes through massive immigration, racial civil war and bout in which true white Britons were strangers in their own country, ousted from school, home and hospital by immigrant communities who plotted against them using the invidious Race Relations Act of 1968. The whole premise of the problem of immigrant numbers is in fact a non-starter since in the post-war era emigration from Britain has in any case mainly been at a higher rate than immigration.Fortunately, racism at the highest levels was less acceptable than in former days and Powells speech was found offensive by many of his parliamentary colleagues although 327 out of 412 Conservative constituency groups wanted all immigration stopped indefinitely and 55 wanted strict limits imposed. A Conservative victory owing in some measure to Powells dissonant if not entirely unpopular personal campaign and a promise that there would be no further large-scale permanent migration led to the Immigration Act of 1971, replacing employment vouchers with yearly renewable work permits that no longer carried the right of permanent anteroom or the right of entry for dependants. Because of the special relationship between Britain and Ireland, no(prenominal) of this applied to Irish immigrants, suggesting that colour prejudice was at its heart.In conclusion, despite initial so-called open door policy to immigration, guaranteed by colonial or Commonwealth citizen rights guaranteed in 1948, the approach of successive British governments from 1945 to 1971 was to attempt to regulate mass immigration on the ba sis of skin colour. then it seems that in the late 1960s even Labour accommodated itself to a livid Britain Policy and the difference in approach to Irish and West Indian and Indian immigrants clearly bears this out. Even today it is apparently acceptable to adopt a special case for the Irish who, according to Migration Watch UK hardly come into the same category since they were part of Great Britain for centuries despite the fact that this ignores Irish ethnicity and identity while favouring skin colour, language and historical political and economic domination as reasons for some spurious sameness.An Irish anecdote illustrates the offensiveness of this, stating just because we speak English doesnt mean we are the same. Racial and immigration issues became inextricably linked and highly politicised and the extrusion of Enoch Powell lead to the rise and normalisation of far right groups such as the National Front and the BNP, still active today and recently on trial for race cr imes. Nowadays the debate centres around asylum seekers and criminal immigrants, who, in the style of Powells immigrants, threaten, despite the facts, to swamp Britain, and even in the run-up to the current election the Conservative leader Michael Howard is making immigration a central election issue. Was the approach a success? In terms of keeping non-white colonial and New Commonwealth citizens out of Britain, no. In terms of linking and politicising immigration and racism and normalising prejudice in British society, yes.BibliographyBrown, R. 1995. Racism and immigration in Britain, International Socialism Journal 68.Davies, N. 1999. The Isles. capital of the United Kingdom Macmillan.Foot, P. 1965. Immigration and Race in British Politics. Harmondsworth Penguin.Hiro, D. 1991. Black British exsanguinous British. London Grafton.Homes, C. 1988. John Bulls Island Immigration and British Society, 1871-1971. London Macmillan.Layton-Henry, Z. 1992. The Politics of Immigration. 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