Introduction

Here’s something that has been nagging at me for some time. During my PhD research, I found that the usual narrative told about post-war Britain (that we welcomed the Windrush generation and other Commonwealth citizens with open arms when they came to help rebuild the country after the Second World War) was far from the truth. In fact, active attempts were made during that time, first to avoid asking black and Asian migrants to come here, then to try to discourage them from coming, then to find arguments to justify a law preventing them from coming. Such arguments were found, spurious as they were, and an Act was passed. All that was shocking to me. But I have also realised for some time that pretty much nobody ever tells that story. It’s the old, comforting story that gets told.

So I want to tell the uncomfortable story again, and in a bit more detail. Because this is a time when we are learning that Black Lives Matter. We are being reminded that structural and institutional racism exists here as much as in the US, with some of the consequences of that being persistent inequality and poverty, the ongoing Windrush generation scandal (during which the comforting version of history has been repeated ad nauseam), the long list of BAME people who have died at the hands of the police and the disproportionate effect of covid-19 on BAME people, and much more besides. At a time when white society is facing demands from BAME communities to tell the history between us the way it is, I don’t think we should be telling comforting stories about our past and complacent stories about our present. Nothing will change if we do that. So here it is. My contribution to one bit of our history.

Post-war reconstruction

The task of reconstruction in the UK after the Second World War was massive and daunting: many workers had been killed in the fighting and much of the country‘s infrastructure and industry had been destroyed in the bombing. Moreover, the government was committed to social change, for the people had demanded not just victory but a better world. The politicians remembered how the First World War had been followed by the Russian Revolution and Quintin Hogg (later Lord Hailsham) warned the House of Commons in 1943 that “if you do not give the people social reform, they are going to give you social revolution”.[1] As Hobsbawm notes:

Nobody dreamed of a post-war return to 1939 … as statesmen after the First World War had dreamed of a return to the world of 1913. A British government under Winston Churchill committed itself, in the midst of a desperate war, to a comprehensive welfare state and full employment.[2]

Civis Britannicus sum

Such a project would require much work and many workers, and the story of how the job was eventually done is usually told in terms of the willing recruitment of black and Asian workers from the colonies and ex-colonies to augment the labour force. As more and more colonies achieved independence, imperial rhetoric about British rule over an empire “on which the sun never sets” gave way to a Commonwealth rhetoric used by both Labour and Conservative parties for many years following the war. Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell told his party conference in 1961:

I believe with all my heart that the existence of this remarkable, multiracial collection – association – of independent nations, stretching across five continents, covering every race, is something that is potentially of immense value to the world.[3]

More specifically, in 1954, Henry Hopkinson, Conservative minister of state at the Colonial Office, declared that colonial subjects’ right of free entry into the UK was

not something we want to tamper with lightly … We still take pride in the fact that a man can say civis Britannicus sum [I am a British citizen] whatever his colour may be and we take pride in the fact that he wants to and can come to the mother country.[4]

Indeed, for at least a century no distinction had been made between citizens of the British Empire regarding their right to enter Britain. The reasons for this were economic and political: from the middle of the nineteenth century “the economic imperatives of the free flow of goods, labour and services within the Empire enhanced the feeling that such distinctions were likely to be detrimental to broad imperial interests”.[5] In the post-war period Britain wanted to foster good relations with the newly independent countries in order to keep a foothold, particularly in terms of economic power, in the regions of the world it once ruled. These were the realities which underlay the softer talk of the Commonwealth and the continued right of free entry into Britain for all its members – and it was against this background that the British Nationality Act 1948 was introduced. It defined UK and Colonies citizenship. But for most politicians this meant “the continued flow of two-way traffic between Britain and the ‘old dominions’ – Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand – which were sometimes called the ‘white dominions’ or the ‘old commonwealth’.”[6] David Olusoga explains:

The Act was intended to ensure that British people remained free to settle in the colonies and commonwealth citizens were free to reside in Britain. The people the government envisaged making use of the rights of entry and residence enshrined in the 1948 Act were white people of “British stock” … who were coming “home” to Britain.[7]

Two-way traffic? Of course: “Most of the 720,000 Britons who left their war-ravaged homeland between 1946 and 1950 headed for new lives in the old dominions.”[8] Inevitably, however, the Act also confirmed rights of entry for all Commonwealth citizens, which turned out to be exactly what the post-war Labour government didn’t want.

“… we cannot force them to return …”

The 1945 Labour government attempted from the beginning to limit the number of black and Asian Commonwealth and colonial citizens allowed into the country. It resorted to administrative methods of control, many of doubtful legality and most of them secret. The government’s first action was to ensure the early repatriation of the black workers who had been urgently recruited from the colonies during the war. It also set about discouraging them from returning. This was true in the case of about a thousand Caribbean technicians and trainees recruited to work in war factories in Merseyside and Lancashire. In April 1945 an official at the Colonial Office had minuted that, because they were British subjects, “we cannot force them to return” – but it would be “undesirable” to encourage them to stay.[9] The Ministry of Labour managed to repatriate most of them by the middle of 1947. Then, in order to discourage them from returning, an official film was distributed in the Caribbean

showing the very worst aspects of life in Britain in deep mid-winter. Immigrants were portrayed as likely to be without work and comfortable accommodation against a background of weather that must have been filmed during the appallingly cold winter of 1947-8.[10]

Nevertheless, on 22 June 1948, 492 passengers disembarked from the Empire Windrush. They had travelled on the ship from the West Indies. While the London Evening Standard (with the headline, “Welcome Home”) and a film crew from Pathé News seemed pleased, the government was not. Minister of Labour George Isaacs “was quick to stress that the West Indians had not been officially invited to Britain”, writes Olusoga.^[11] Isaacs warned his colleagues of “considerable difficulty and disappointment” to come and he expressed the hope that “no encouragement will be given to others to follow their example”. Attlee himself had tried to get the Empire Windrush “diverted to East Africa, and the West Indian migrants offered work on groundnut farming projects there”.[12] No chance. They were British subjects, and to Britain they came.

Redistribution of labour and recruitment from Europe

Whatever Attlee and Isaacs may have wanted, the need for labour remained and the government tried to solve the problem in two ways – neither of which involved importing Commonwealth labour. First, it tried to increase labour mobility within the existing population and, secondly, it imported labour from Europe. A Ministry of Labour report had predicted before the end of the war that there would not be sufficient mobility of labour within the country to face the challenges of the post-war world.[13] Workers would have to be more willing to move into sectors where they were needed most. Virtually no one could be excluded, for everyone had to be part of the reconstruction project, even the unskilled and those “below normal standards”.[14] In 1947 the government issued an invitation for people to go to their local labour exchanges to register. Some incentives (in the form of Ministry of Labour hostels and training) were provided, plus the threat of prosecution.[15] The presenter of the radio programme Can I Help You? entered into the spirit of the government’s intentions: “The hope is … to comb out from plainly unessential [sic] occupations people who could be better employed; and to get the genuine drones in all classes to earn their keep …”[16]

Attlee had hoped that this project would provide what he had identified as the “missing million” workers[17] but six months later only 95,900 of the “drones” had responded.[18] Moreover, one source of home-grown labour had hardly been tapped in this exercise: women, essential workers during the war, were now told to go back to the home and make way for the men returned from battle. There were still sectors where women might work (e.g. textiles) but, as Harris notes, “their ability to do so was greatly hampered by the reluctance of the government to maintain the war-time level of crèche provision.”[19] Thus an important source of labour was largely excluded.

In the case of immigration from Europe, the government set up Operation Westward Ho in 1947 in order to recruit labour from four sources: Poles in camps throughout the UK; displaced persons in Germany, Austria and Italy; people from the Baltic states; and the unemployed of Europe.[20] It was partly knowledge of this recruitment which inspired pleas to the British government from the governors of Barbados, British Guiana, Trinidad and Jamaica. Each of these territories was suffering from high unemployment, with consequent discontent among their populations, and the governors wrote to London arguing that Britain could solve its own problem and theirs by accepting these workers into the UK. In response to this, an interdepartmental working party was set up which decided that there was no overall shortage of labour after all.[21] The working party’s minutes also display “entirely negative attitudes to colonial labour”:

One senior official at the Ministry of Labour expressed the view that the type of labour available from the empire was not suitable for use in Britain and that displaced persons from Europe were preferable because they could be selected for their specific skills and returned to their homes when no longer required. Colonial workers were, in his view, both difficult to control and likely to be the cause of social problems.[22]

“… the object is to keep out coloured people”

Opposition to black and Asian immigration continued throughout the next decade, with successive British governments seeking to justify legislation to control it. Hayter observes that the delay in introducing the legislation “was caused by the difficulty of doing so without giving the appearance of discrimination”.[23] There is no doubt, however, about the racist nature of the intent to do so. From 1948 onwards various working parties and departmental and interdepartmental committees were set up to report on the “problems” of accepting black immigrant workers into the UK. All of them were created in the hope of providing evidence that black immigrants were bad for Britain. There was the “Interdepartmental Working Party on the employment in the United Kingdom of surplus colonial labour”, chaired by the Colonial Office; the Home Office based “Interdepartmental Committee on colonial people in the United Kingdom”; the “Cabinet Committee on colonial immigrants”; and the one that really gave the game away: the “Interdepartmental Working Party on the social and economic problems arising from the growing influx into the United Kingdom of coloured workers from other Commonwealth countries”.

Committees reported, cabinets discussed their findings and much correspondence passed between ministers and departments. Lord Salisbury (Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Lords) wrote in March 1954: “It is not for me merely a question of whether criminal negroes should be allowed in … it is a question of whether great quantities of negroes, criminal or not, should be allowed to come.”[24] Lord Swinton, secretary of state for Commonwealth relations, saw a difficulty and wrote to Salisbury: “If we legislate on immigration, though we can draft it in non-discriminatory terms, we cannot conceal the obvious fact that the object is to keep out coloured people.”[25] In the case of the “old Dominions” (i.e. the “white” Commonwealth), he noted a “continuous stream” of people coming to the UK “in order to try their luck; and it would be a great pity to interfere with this freedom of movement.”[26] Moreover, such interference would undermine the strong ties of kith and kin between the UK and the “white” Commonwealth. Swinton also believed that those strong ties would be further weakened by the development of a large “coloured” community in Britain – declaring that “such a community is certainly no part of the concept of England or Britain to which people of British stock throughout the Commonwealth are attached.”[27] “Swinton held the view strongly”, writes Spencer, “that immigration legislation which adversely affected the rights of British subjects should be avoided if humanly possible, and if it did become inevitable it was better for the legislation to be overtly discriminatory than to stand in the way of all Commonwealth citizens who wished to come to Britain.”[28]

Obstacles to racist controls

The Commonwealth connection

It was not just concern for the “white” Commonwealth which made governments delay legislating for controls until 1961. The UK’s relationship with the Commonwealth as a whole was also a factor. In a period of decolonisation and the building of Commonwealth institutions, UK governments trod carefully. For example, openly discriminatory legislation “would jeopardise the future association of the proposed Federation of the West Indies with the Commonwealth.”[29] Politicians tried to persuade governments in the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent to control the flow of migrants at source. They had some success in India and Pakistan, but not in the Caribbean. In 1958 Sir Henry Lintott, Deputy Under-Secretary of State at the Commonwealth Relations Office, advised caution on the question of legislation. There had been calls for immigration controls in the wake of the Notting Hill riots (provoked by extreme right-wing groups). Sir Henry advised that in these circumstances immigration controls would imply that “the British people are unable to live with coloured people on tolerable terms”:

This could be immensely damaging to our whole position as leaders of the Commonwealth which, in its modern form, largely draws its strength from its multi-racial character. If, therefore, strong pressure develops for the introduction of legislation to control immigration, I would hope that some way could be found to delay action and to permit passions to cool.[30]

These arguments were supported by many in the Conservative Party in the mid-1950s and by the Labour Party too. In 1958 Arthur Bottomley spoke for the Labour front bench against legislation to control immigration:

The central principle on which our status in the Commonwealth is largely dependent is the “open door” to all Commonwealth citizens. If we believe in the importance of our great Commonwealth, we should do nothing in the slightest degree to undermine that principle.[31]

With a House of Commons majority of only fifteen, the Conservative government was vulnerable. Similar considerations had applied in January 1955 when Home Secretary Gwilym Lloyd George presented his ideas for restrictive legislation to the cabinet. The cabinet judged that “such a bill would not obtain the full support of the Conservative Party and would be opposed in the House by the Labour opposition and outside the House by the Trades Union Congress.”[32]

The working party evidence

Another obstacle to immediate legislation was the fact that the working parties set up to provide evidence of the “undesirability” of black immigrants failed to do so. They described “coloured women” as “slow mentally” and said that their “speed of work” was unsatisfactory. They claimed there was “a disproportionate number of convictions for brothel keeping and living on immoral earnings” among West Indian men and made references to “the incidence of venereal disease among coloured people”.[33] But they failed to make the case for immigration legislation. The committee with the specific mandate to investigate “social and economic problems” relating to “coloured workers” must have been a particular disappointment. In August 1955 the committee’s draft statement went to the cabinet. The allegation of a high incidence of venereal disease was included here – but only as a “suggestion”. The author of the report admitted that there were no figures to support the claim.[34] Spencer summarises the committee’s findings:

Although “coloured” immigration was running at the rate of about 30,000 a year … even those arriving most recently had found jobs easily and were making “a useful contribution to our manpower resources”. Unemployment … could not be regarded as a problem, nor could undue demands on National Assistance or the National Health Service … The immigrants were for the most part law-abiding except for problems with [cannabis] and living off the immoral earnings of women. Though the immigrants had not been “assimilated” there was no evidence of racial tension and it was apparent that some “coloured” workers in the transport industry had made a favourable impression.[35]

The same was true of the working party’s reports between 1959 and 1961. “Viewed objectively”, writes Spencer, “the reports of the Working Party consistently failed to fulfil the purpose defined in its title – to identify ‘the social and economic problems arising from the growing influx of coloured workers’. In the areas of public order, crime, employment and health there was little noteworthy to report to their political masters.”[36] Moreover, the Treasury, when asked whether black and Asian immigration benefited the economy, “gave the clear advice that on economic grounds there was no justification for introducing immigration controls: most immigrants found employment without creating unemployment for the natives and, in particular, by easing labour bottlenecks, they contributed to the productive capacity of the economy as a whole.”[37] But, in the end, the working party managed to construct an argument for controls: “‘Assimilability’ – that is, of numbers and colour – was the criterion that mattered in the end.”[38] Between 1959 and 1961 there were large increases in the numbers of blacks and Asians entering the UK. At the beginning of the period there were around 21,000 entries a year; by the end they had risen to 136,000 (though much of this last figure may have been due to the fact that the government had signalled its intention to introduce legislation and larger numbers had decided to come in order to “beat the ban”). Working party officials compensated for their inability to find existing problems by predicting that they would arise later:

Thus in February 1961, whilst it was admitted that black immigrants were being readily absorbed into the economy, [officials predicted] “it is likely to be increasingly difficult for them to find jobs during the next few years”. Further, it was doubtful if the “tolerance of the white people for the coloured would survive the test of competition for employment”.[39]

There would be “strains imposed by coloured immigrants on the housing resources of certain local authorities and the dangers of social tensions inherent in the existence of large unassimilated coloured communities.”[40] The working party recommended immigration controls. It was “prepared to admit that the case for restriction could not ‘at present’ rest on health, crime, public order or employment grounds”, writes Spencer, but

[i]n the end, the official mind made recommendations based on predictions about … future difficulties which were founded on prejudice rather than on evidence derived from the history of the Asian and black presence in Britain.[41]

Now there was just one obstacle impeding the introduction of controls.

Public opinion

One of the government’s worries about introducing legislation had been the uncertainty of public opinion. Racist stereotyping in the higher echelons of government could also be found among the general population. Bruce Paice (head of immigration, Home Office, 1955-1966), interviewed in 1999, believed that “the population of this country was in favour of the British Empire as long as it stayed where it was: they didn‘t want it here.”[42] It is true that hostility towards black people existed throughout the 1950s, and in 1958 the tensions turned into violent confrontation. In Nottingham and in the Notting Hill area of London there were attacks on black people, followed by riots, orchestrated by white extremist groups.[43] After these explosions, racist violence continued but became more sporadic, ranging from individual attacks to mob violence.[44] Nevertheless, for much of this period governments had not been confident that public opinion would be on its side when it came to legislation on immigration control. In November 1954 the colonial secretary wrote a memorandum expressing the hope that “responsible public opinion is moving in the direction of favouring immigration control”. There was, however, “a good deal to be done before it is more solidly in favour of it”.[45] In June 1955 cabinet secretary Sir Norman Brook wrote to prime minister Anthony Eden expressing the view that, evident as the need was for controls, the government needed “to enlist a sufficient body of public support for the legislation that would be needed.”[46] In November 1955 the cabinet recognised that public opinion had not “matured sufficiently” and public consent “could only be assured if the racist intent of the bill were concealed behind a cloak of universalism which applied restrictions equally to all British subjects.”[47]

Mission accomplished

By 1961 the cloak was in place, and a Bill could be prepared. Home secretary R.A. Butler donned the cloak in a television interview: “We shall decide on a basis absolutely regardless of colour and without prejudice,” he told the interviewer. “It will have to be for Commonwealth immigration as a whole if we decide [to do it].”[48] He removed the cloak, however, when he explained the work-voucher scheme at the heart of the Bill to his cabinet colleagues:

The great merit of this scheme is that it can be presented as making no distinction on grounds of race or colour … Although the scheme purports to relate solely to employment and to be non-discriminatory, the aim is primarily social and its restrictive effect is intended to, and would in fact, operate on coloured people almost exclusively.[49]

The Bill passed into law and became the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962. Though Gaitskell’s Labour Party had strongly campaigned against it, and voted against it in parliament, the 1964 Labour government under Harold Wilson increased the immigration controls.  The 1962 Act was the first of many post-war Acts, Orders, Statutory Instruments and Regulations that deny people rights, status, equality, honour and respect, and they culminate in the latest Immigration and Social Security Bill going through parliament at the moment. This is a history in which both Conservative and Labour governments are implicated. Nobody has clean hands.

[1] Philo, G. (undated), Television, Politics and the New Right, p. 2, Glasgow University Media Group. Available from http://www.gla.ac.uk/centres/mediagroup

[2] Hobsbawm, E. (1995), Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914-1991, p. 161, Abacus, London.

[3] Race Card: Playing the Race Card, 24 October 1999, Channel Four Television, London.

[4] Hayter, T. (2000), Open Borders: the Case against Immigration Controls, p. 44, Pluto Press, London.

[5] Spencer, I. (1997), British Immigration Policy since 1939: The Making of Multi-Racial Britain, p. 53, Routledge, London.

[6] Olusoga, D. (2017), Black and British: A Forgotten History, chapter 14, Kindle edition, Pan Books, London.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Cited, Spencer, I. (1997), British Immigration Policy since 1939: The Making of Multi-Racial Britain, p. 39, Routledge, London.

[10] Ibid., p. 32.

[11] Cited, Olusoga, D. (2017), Black and British: A Forgotten History, chapter 14, Kindle edition, Pan Books, London.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Harris, C. (1993), “Post-war Migration and the Industrial Reserve Army”, in James, W. & Harris, C. (eds), Inside Babylon: the Caribbean Diaspora in Britain, p. 16, Verso, London.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid., pp. 18-19.

[16] Ibid., p. 17.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Ibid., pp. 17-18.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Ibid., p. 19.

[21] Spencer, I. (1997), British Immigration Policy since 1939: The Making of Multi-Racial Britain, p. 40, Routledge, London.

[22] Ibid.

[23] Hayter, T. (2000), Open Borders: the Case against Immigration Controls, p. 46, Pluto Press, London.

[24] Carter, B., Harris, C. & Joshi, S. (1993), “The 1951-55 Conservative Government and the Racialization of Black Immigration”, in James, W. & Harris, C. (eds), Inside Babylon: the Caribbean Diaspora in Britain, p. 65, Verso, London.

[25] Spencer, I. (1997), British Immigration Policy since 1939: The Making of Multi-Racial Britain, p. 64, Routledge, London.

[26] Ibid., p. 67.

[27] Ibid., pp. 67-68.

[28] Ibid., p. 68.

[29] Ibid., p. 82.

[30] Ibid., p. 102.

[31] Cited, Foot, P. (1968), The Politics of Harold Wilson, p. 251, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth.

[32] Spencer, I. (1997), British Immigration Policy since 1939: The Making of Multi-Racial Britain, p. 76, Routledge, London.

[33] Race Card: Playing the Race Card, 24 October 1999, Channel Four Television, London.

[34] Spencer, I. (1997), British Immigration Policy since 1939: The Making of Multi-Racial Britain, p. 78, Routledge, London.

[35] Ibid.

[36] Ibid., p. 119.

[37] Hayter, T. (2000), Open Borders: The Case against Immigration Controls, p. 48, Pluto Press, London.

[38] Spencer, I. (1997), British Immigration Policy since 1939: The Making of Multi-Racial Britain, p. 118, Routledge, London.

[39] Ibid., p. 119.

[40] Ibid., p. 118.

[41] Ibid., p. 120.

[42] Race Card: Playing the Race Card, 24 October 1999, Channel Four Television, London.

[43] Favell, A. (2001), Philosophies of Integration: Immigration and the Idea of Citizenship in France and Britain, p. 103, Palgrave, Basingstoke.

[44] Fryer, P. (1984), Staying Power: the History of Black People in Britain, p. 380, Pluto Press, London.

[45] Carter, B., Harris, C. & Joshi, S. (1993), “The 1951-55 Conservative Government and the Racialization of Black Immigration”, in James, W. & Harris, C. (eds), Inside Babylon: the Caribbean Diaspora in Britain, p. 66, Verso, London.

[46] Cited, ibid.

[47] Ibid., p. 68.

[48] Race Card: Playing the Race Card, 24 October 1999, Channel Four Television, London.

[49] Cited, Hayter, T. (2000), Open Borders: The Case against Immigration Controls, p. 47, Pluto Press, London.