Immigration in Britain In the Cold War Period - DOCUMENTARY
on June 21 1948 a ship that had originally been built as a German passenger liner but that then been taken as a British prize of war after the second world war docked at the Port of Tilbury east of London onboard HMT Empire Windrush were 492 West Indian men citizens of the Empire coming to Great Britain to work and to make new lives the arrival of the Empire Windrush is often considered the symbolic birth of a multicultural Britain I'm your host David and today we are going to look at multiculturalism how it stemmed from the death of Empire and its continued Legacy in the United Kingdom this is the Cold War England expects that every man will do his duty this is perhaps one of the single most famous phrases in British history signaled to the fleet by Lord Horatio Nelson before the Battle of Trafalgar I knew the line but I didn't really know much about the man until I recently watched an outstanding biography of the man from the sponsor of this episode Magellan TV part of their great Commander series the video looks at his personal background his tactical and strategic skills and the impact he had on history and this is just one video in a series which looks at other great commanders as well including Grant zhugov and of course Napoleon and one of the best things about the video it is completely ad-free just like every video on Magellan TV including the new 4k content that's being added every week and Cold War viewers will get a one month free trial by clicking on the link in the description make sure to start your free trial of Magellan TV so you can join us in and watching Horatio Nelson Great Britain is recognized as a country with a very long history of multiculturalism stemming from the mixing of old and new populations of people on the islands whether that be angles Saxons Welsh Scots Irish Cornish manx Danes Norman's Spanish Portuguese french and the list goes on and on and my apologies to any groups I may have forgotten as the British Empire established itself and its reach spread further and further around the world more and more diverse communities were brought under the influence and control of the crown emigration was a constant feature of the Empire especially to places like America Canada Australia New Zealand and South Africa depending on the time period what there was very little of however was immigration of native peoples from the Empire back to Great Britain in practice this meant that the population of Great Britain remained pretty white there were some small black communities that emerged in major port cities Associated to the slave trade like London Liverpool and Brighton but these communities numbered in the thousands things changed during the second world war however when over 100 000 black American servicemen arrived in Great Britain as part of the war effort these soldiers were by most accounts treated better in the UK than they were in segregationist America although in a sign of things to come there were increased tensions surrounding things like interracial relationships between white British women and those black soldiers but on the whole they were welcomed and then they were gone off to the continent or back home to America after the war ended but although they were the most numerous there were other black men who came to Great Britain to fight this included up to 16 000 West Indian men and women who served not just in Support Services like the forestry Corps but on the front lines most notably with the Royal Air Force and the Royal Canadian Air Force as pilots bombardiers and Gunners risking their lives and dying for the empire for which they belonged for anybody interested in further reading on this subject I recommend the book Black Eagles by Mark Johnson the end of the war sought a war weary some would say exhausted Britain facing an economic crisis the war had drained British coffers and yet the nation was facing the need to rebuild financial assistance was provided by the United States in the form of both Emergency Loans as well as aid from the Marshall Plan but one of the major challenges facing the nation was a lack of Manpower by the end of 1946 it was estimated that Britain required 1.346 million workers to meet the demand for labor required to rebuild the country and after this long setup this is where we get to the heart of this week's story there were concerns within the Atlee government including from Clement Ali himself or how best to make up this shortfall without the use of non-white workers while schemes were developed and put in place including granting the right to settle over 100 000 ethnic polls who had fought with the Western allies during the war as well as recruiting up to 80 000 ethnic ukrainians lots and poles who were stuck in displaced persons camps on the continent for anybody with even basic math skills like myself there was still a tremendous labor shortfall that needed to be made up despite this there was still active discouragement in the British West Indies to recruit workers envoys were sent to places like Barbados Trinidad Jamaica and Guyana to communicate a message that people should remain in the colonies and that everything was just fine in Jolly Old England of course the people in the colonies knew this to be false they could read the newspapers coming from Great Britain which were full of help wanted ads clearly showing a need for workers so what was the status of people living in colonies like Jamaica or Barbados well before 1948 they were considered simply as British subjects same as any person from Great Britain and her colonies and dominions and they saw themselves as members of the empire but in 1946 Canada passed legislation that created Canadian citizenship as a separate thing in response a meeting of the Commonwealth in 1947 came to an agreement that commonwealth countries could create their own citizenships but would additionally be entitled to be citizens of the United Kingdom and colonies in Great Britain this status was enshrined in the British nationality Act of 1948 and gave equal right of citizenship and settlement to any member of the empire well it was originally conceived as a way to ensure that citizens of this so-called old dominions primarily Canada Australia and New Zealand would remain attached to the Old Country it did give citizens of all the colonies legal right to move to and settle in Great Britain keep in mind this was in effect simply a continuation of the open borders policy of the Empire only now enshrined into law it was also a method of maintaining Britain's Global influence as the power and strength of empire was being diminished so it's through this lens that we can now consider the arrival of the 492 men aboard the Empire Windrush they were citizens of the empire of whom approximately half had served in Great Britain during the War years who were listening to the call for Aid to help rebuild the mother country while the Empire Windrush is commonly seen as the starting point of Britain's Multicultural immigration and was greeted by reporters and was even filmed for the newsreels it wasn't the first ship to arrive carrying West Indian migrants in 1947 the RMS Ormond had arrived with 110 Jamaican men aboard who were certainly not greeted by reporters and newsmen but were rather deemed a problem especially in light of the news that thousands of Jamaicans and West Indians were reported to be applying for passports but by 1948 with these passports in hand and with legal right to settle in Great Britain as recognized citizens of the Empire the people came and became known as the Windrush generation in terms of the numbers of immigrants who moved from the West Indies to Great Britain as part of the Windrush generation the estimate is that well over 200 000 people came before more restrictive immigration measures began to be introduced in the 1960s between 1945 and 1950 only about 5 000 West Indian migrants arrived but a combination of events happened in the early 1950s that resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of immigrants in 1951 hurricane Clark devastated Jamaica wiping out people's livelihoods and Prospects encouraging them to operate their lives and relocate somewhere else then in 1952 the United States passed the immigration and nationality act which severely restricted the number of immigrants allowed to enter the United States which up until then had often been seen as a favorite destination due to its proximity to the Caribbean basin with access to the United States closed the call of the mother country grew in 1953 three thousand West Indians relocated to Great Britain in 1954 that number increased to ten thousand then 42 000 in 1955. the number climbed to 46 000 in 1956 then beginning to taper off to 42 000 30 000 and then 22 000 people per year over the next three years and who was immigrating well it tended to be those West Indians who were educated and who were considered skilled or semi-skilled workers they were the people who in the places of their birth were successful and had saved enough to a foreign passage to relocate to a new part of the world in so leaving although they took their skills with them to improve the conditions of the mother country they likewise denied their homelands the same use of those skills delaying and hampering the speed of development making further immigration for others a more enticing Prospect they arrived in Great Britain seeking work of which there was plenty Industries like the railways Urban public transit systems and the rapidly expanding National Health Service recruited heavily from the growing West Indian population as more West Indians arrived they settled in community groups in places like Notting Hill in London and Nottingham and across the island nation they worked hard they bought homes and built their families and their lives and were British this is the narrative that many would like to see propagated but there's a lot to challenge in that narrative they did work hard and they did buy homes and build families and were British but they also faced discrimination and Prejudice along the way housing options were often limited and many white landlords would refuse to rent to non-whites forcing immigrants to settle in run-down areas often sharing space with others in poorly maintained housing over time they saved money they bought houses often in the same rundown areas and began to renovate and improve where they lived they'd started families and built communities not only absorbing some of the cultural practices of British Society but also sharing their own culture into the fabric of Britain okay so this is where we're going to talk a bit about white Britain's perception of West Indian migrants at this time in the 1950s as the numbers of West Indians arriving in Britain was sharply increasing there were fears that non-white immigrants were a growing quote social problem in the most British of ways it was determined that a government study must be conducted to identify if there was indeed a social problem the study which we should note may have already determined its answers before the study was carried out concluded that visible minorities had issues finding work due to their nature characterized by a lack of quote responsibility quarrelsomeness and lack of discipline of course these conclusions flew directly in the face of the actions of British industry who were actively recruiting workers directly from the West Indies even going so far is to pre-pay transport for migrants to get them to relocate studies that were conducted in the 1960s designed to measure the views of white britons towards visible minorities estimated that approximately one-third of the population held firm prejudicial views and wanted no minorities in Great Britain a further one-third held mildly prejudicial views towards visible minorities but generally accepted that they were in Britain to stay while the final one-third held little to no prejudicial views and were welcoming of visible minorities to the country these results indicate that two-thirds of Britains were therefore relatively accepting of visible minorities West Indians who filled key roles in the workforce were often criticized in a variety of ways for either being lazy and not wanting to work or for working too much and not only disrupting the accepted workday pattern and not participating in the traditional after work social period at the pub but of stealing jobs that white British men should have had in reality West Indian workers did often work more hours but this was to make up for poorer wages being offered to visible minorities and their unwillingness to participate in after work socialization with other workers was often the result of not being accepted at pubs and bars for anyone who pays attention to present day arguments over the position of immigrants around the world many of these arguments and lines of Reason will probably sound familiar but it was interracial relationships that Drew the most concern like during the War years white women who entered into relationships with black men were often looked down on as morally corrupt or Misfits and were even described as suffering from emotional insecurity in a background of personal rejection black men on the other hand were portrayed as predatory creatures highly sexualized and even looking for revenge against their colonial Masters by stealing and defiling their women often the opposition to interracial relationships was not stated directly but instead in the guise of protecting the well-being of any potential children from these relationships who would be discriminated against by other racists by 1958 tensions were boiling over resulting in race-driven riots in various parts of the UK these weren't new either 1948 had seen anti-black riots break out in Liverpool with black men being attacked by whites and the police subsequently arresting the black men but back to 1958 in the London suburb of Notting Hill where many of the West Indian Community had settled riots erupted with young white men many of them so-called Teddy Boys attacking any West Indian men they could find the rioting allegedly began over white objections to a black man and a white woman on a date over the course of two nights groups of whites roamed the streets of Notting Hill looking for black men to assault with improvised weapons including crowbars and weighted leather belts the police did not intervene on the third and fourth nights however the West Indian men began to organize to fight back against their attackers many of whom were being bussed in from other parts of London and Southern England it was only on the third and fourth nights that police intervention began likewise in Nottingham riots broke out with large groups of white men actively looking for black men to assault when they were unable to find men on the street they lay Siege to houses where they suspected black men to be living so that's a brief overview of the social conditions feelings and reactions and these naturally played directly into the realm of politics where immigration became a long-term hot button issue as early as 1951 according to Harold MacMillan Winston Churchill's concerns over black immigration even led him to consider keep Britain white as a potential election slogan well that didn't happen politicians began looking for legal methods to restrict black immigration while not appearing to be racist in doing so a positive non-racist Public Image was important for the international stage where Cold War Great Britain was looking to maintain its Global influence through organizations like the Commonwealth a Gallup poll conducted in 1961 showed that two-thirds of British people surveyed were in favor of increased restrictions on immigration coming from the Commonwealth though race riots in Nottingham and Notting Hill had helped to further the idea of a decline in white morality and society as a result of close proximity to non-white communities 1962 saw the first major change to the citizenship and immigration rules with the introduction of the Commonwealth immigrants act which required anyone not traveling on a passport issued by the government of the United Kingdom to be subject to immigration controls this meant that those not of British birth remained citizens of the Commonwealth but no longer had the automatic right to enter and settle in the United Kingdom a general election held in 1964 saw immigration and racism emerge as a growing issue in the West Midland riding of smethwick the labor party incumbent was defeated by the Tory candidate who ran his campaign on an expressly anti-immigration platform winning the seat bucking the national Trend which saw labor form the new government the writing the riding wind set an example of how anti-immigration ideas based on racism could win an election something that future campaigners were quick to take note of 1964 however also saw Great Britain enact the first race relations act which outlawed the refusal of access to public spaces such as hotels schools pubs and restaurants on the grounds of race and also made incitement to racial hatred a criminal offense it took until 1976 for this to be extended to employment education housing and the provision of goods and services one of the results of these pieces of legislation is that an anti-immigration stance became conflated with racism a fact which has muddied and complicated debate on the subject with people against immigration not always being racist further immigration reforms were enacted in 1968 and 1971 which applied much more stringent qualifications as to who was considered eligible for the right of automatic entry and settlement in the United Kingdom these restrictions were largely based on familial connections thus favoring white immigrants from the old dominions during the 20 years of open immigration that stemmed from the British nationality act itself the result of Britain aiming to maintain its relevance in the early Cold War period as decolonization loomed hundreds of thousands of citizens of the Empire left their homes and moved to what they saw as the Home Country the seat of the crown they served they not only looked to improve their own lives and opportunities but also to give back to the Empire to which they belonged what they often found however was discrimination distrust and even hate but they stayed they built lives families and communities and in doing so they began to change the very fabric of British life and culture now some of you will have noticed that I have not discussed Enoch Powell in his Infamous rivers of blood speech and this is deliberate I have every intention of coming back to the subject of British multiculturalism as it changed in the 1960s and 70s now a result of a large influx of immigrants with a South Asian background I have also not discussed the more modern Scandal surrounding the Windrush generation where thousands of West Indians who had settled in the United Kingdom as citizens of the empire were later deemed to be undocumented and illegal after their home countries became independent I will be looking at all of this in a future episode so please stay tuned we hope you've enjoyed this episode so please be sure to like subscribe and wish the Bell button well as it boards a ship leaving its Island Home in the tropics destined for a land where it towed in the hole and spotted dick are considered culinary Delights please consider supporting us on patreon at patreon.com the cold war or through
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2023-05-25 05:38
