Embedded Files
Volume 4 | Issue 1 - Glorious Britain
Article by David Holland. Edited and Researched by Rob Russell.
2012 will long be remembered as the year of the London Olympics with its astonishing opening ceremony, Team GB’s equally remarkable performance, and its celebration of Britain’s diverse heritage. Notably, within the ceremony, director Danny Boyle chose to symbolise the ethnic diversity of contemporary British society by his depiction of that moment, in 1948, when the Empire Windrush landed at Tilbury. For many, this arrival from the Caribbean symbolises the entire period of the mass-migration of people of colour from the Commonwealth to Britain.
However, much less likely to be remembered is that 2012 is also notable for being the 50th anniversary of the passing of Commonwealth Immigrants Act, (1962) into British law. The 1962 Act was the first official and formal blow against the notion of a Commonwealth citizenship of equals formally bestowed by the The British Nationality Act, 1948. This new legislation effectively ended the welcome offered to those British Commonwealth citizens who traveled to the imperial ‘motherland’.
The 1962 Act can be seen as part of a long-running debate within the British elite and sections of British society – and provoked by the arrival of the black Windrush settlers – about the role and place of non-white people within a declining British Empire. Before the Windrush settlers had even stepped ashore at Tilbury, Clement Attlee’s Labour government had made strenuous, but ineffective, efforts behind the scenes to prevent what they saw as an unwelcome ‘incursion’ of non-whites into Britain.
However, an openly racist strategy was deeply problematic on practical and political grounds. There were there significant demands for cheap labour by British industry and the public sector – especially from the new NHS. On the international stage, with the Harold Macmillan forecast of ‘winds of change’ blowing through the empire, the imposition of overtly discriminatory legislation was considered far too provocative to the non-white peoples of the Commonwealth. In a cold war world the restive colonies might have easily turned to the rival Soviet Union for support in their national aspirations for freedom. As Sir David Hunt, Churchill’s private secretary bluntly explained: ‘the minute we said we’ve got to keep these black chaps out, the whole Commonwealth lark would have blown up’.
It would be the Nottingham and Notting Hill riots of 1958 that gave real impetus to calls for immigration control from the both the left and right of British politics. White racists had been widely identified as being the source of the violence. But, at root, the source of the problem was implicitly located with the new immigrants for ‘provoking’ the unrest due to their ‘cultural differences’ and lack of ‘understanding’ as to what ‘British’ behaviour entailed.
The Conservative Macmillan government finally decided to introduce the controversial legislation in October 1961. Home Secretary Rab Butler considered that the great merit of the new Act was its ability to be presented as non discriminatory. However, the intent was clear in his consideration that ‘its restrictive effect is intended to, and would in fact, operate on coloured people almost exclusively’.
Ironically, and despite the exclusionary intent of the 1962 Act, its actual effect was to initially promote surges of immigration from the New Commonwealth in response perceived ‘closing of the door’ to Britain. The new Act also, perhaps, encouraged the permanent settlement of migrants in the UK, transforming what had often been considered by the migrants to be a temporary economic relationship, into much more permanent settlement. The increasingly severe restrictions on the freedom of movement leading to the migrants reuniting with their families – as intended by the Act – but on UK soil.
The majority of the, now elderly, Pakistani and Kashmiri interviewees in a study carried out for a Sheffield Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE, 2012) project stated that they came to Britain either immediately before or after the passing of the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Bill into law and migrated when they did to ‘beat the ban’. The interviewees – all now British citizens – stated that their intention was to work in Britain ‘just for five years’ (the period of validity of a UK work entitlement voucher), before returning to Pakistan or Kashmir. Furthermore, on arrival in Britain, they had no idea that they would be making a permanent home here and later be bringing over their wives and children.
Perhaps the most challenging insight the interviews provide is that it was the restrictions on the free movement of non white labour introduced by the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act – and its successors throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s – that changed many migrants’ relationship to Britain from being a temporary, economic one to being a much more complex relationship of permanent settlement while still keeping close family and economic ties with extended families in their countries of origin.
The irony of the immigration controls of the second half of the 20th century, with their implicit intention to ‘Keep England White’, is that their unintended consequences were, by the 2012 Olympics, to build such an ethnically diverse basis for the selection of the phenomenally successful Team GB – enabling political commentators to talk about the recasting of a new and ‘inclusive’ British identity.
• The Empire Windrush was an old naval ship used to transport the first wave of prospective Jamaican immigrants to Great Britain in 1948, carrying a total of 493 passengers and one stowaway.
• The Notting Hill race riots of late August and early September 1948, have been attributed to building discontent at the increasing number of Caribbean immigrants to Britain in the 1950s, set against the backdrop of the success of right wing political movements, such as Sir Oswald Mosley’s Union Movement.
• The 2012 London Olympic opening ceremony which portrayed Britain’s cultural history was called the ‘Isles of Wonder’, and was directed and designed by film director Danny Boyle. The event had a staggering 900 million worldwide viewers.
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