Windrush, Whiteness, and the end of 'Open Door' Britain
In 1948, the British Nationality Act formalised a specifically imperial identity, just as Britain's empire tilted definitively towards decolonisation and commonwealth. For migrants from its colonies and former Dominions, this Act placed in law what already existed in practice: the 'Open Door' through which all could pass to take up their right of abode in the United Kingdom. Only 14 years later, the Open Door began to close through the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962. Using primary and secondary sources, we will look at the specific tensions and events that drove this change in migration policy and British culture.
It is worth noting that our secondary sources across this section of the module will often include very offensive language, in order to accurately represent the attitudes of the time, and to subject both the terms and the attitudes they reflect to historical analysis. You will, of course, also see this language in primary source material. It can and should be shocking to us; it is worth thinking critically about this and discussing it together. Do feel free to come see me if you would also like to discuss this privately.
Required Readings:
- Roberta Bivins, , Immigrants and Minorities, 25 (November 2008) 3: 263-289.
- Kennetta Perry, ', History Workshop Online 2018. (Note that this is BOTH a key contribution by a major scholar AND a piece of public history).
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Evan Smith, 'Integration and limitation: Labour and immigration 1962-8'. This blog (link below) offers an example of how professional historians engage with wider audiences in the blog format
- Scan at least some of: Commonwealth Immigrant Act debates, 1961-2; Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 (Kenyan Asian Crisis debates) 1968; Immigration Act 1971; British Nationality Act, 1981; Race Relations Acts, 1965, 1968, 1976. You can find the debates and parliamentary questions relating to these Acts by keyword searching the historic Hansards database. You need not read ALL of the debates, which are copious (!), but do at least sample the tenor of discussions across this whole period. Note that the debates occur before the laws are passed but may continued after implementation, e.g. with the 1962 Act and its manifest failure to reduce migrant numbers. Read critically, and be aware that the language used can be offensive, particularly to our ears.
NB: If you are not completely familiar with the legislative process in the UK, you may find this webpage useful (I did when I started researching in this area!):
It takes you through the process by which a Bill becomes law through parliamentary debate in each of the Houses of Parliament, with additional information on each stage of debate available by clicking that stage.
Discussion Questions:
- Why did Britain immigration policy change so radically in the years between 1948 and 1962?
- Why was health so often deployed in debates about immigration in post-war Britain?
- What are the strengths and limitations of political rhetoric and statements as sources for understanding responses to migration?
Background Readings:
Brett Bebber, 鈥樷�淲e Were Just Unwanted鈥�: Bussing, Migrant Dispersal, and South Asians in London鈥�, Journal of Social History, 48:3 (Spring 2015), 635-661.
Roberta Bivins, Contagious Communities: Medicine, Migration and the NHS in Post-War Britain (Oxford: OUP, 2015), e-book.
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, The Empire Strikes Back: Race and Racism in 1970s Britain (London; Hutchinson and Co., 1982).
Catherine Cox and Hilary Marland, eds, Migration, Health and Ethnicity in the Modern World (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), E-Book esp. the chapters by Bashford, MacLellan, Bivins and Welshman.
D. W. Dean, 鈥楥onservative Governments and the Restriction of Commonwealth Immigration in the 1950s: The Problems of Constraint鈥�, The Historical Journal, 35 (1992), 171-194.
William Deedes, Race without Rancour (London: Conservative Political Centre, 1968). (A participant's account)
Fred van Hartesevldt, 鈥楻ace and Political Parties in Britain, 1954-1965鈥�, Phylon, 44 (1983), 126-134.
Randall Hansen, Citizenship and Immigration in Post-war Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) -- but read critically: this is a book with a strong historiographical and political agenda
Kennetta Hammond Perry, London is the Place for Me: Black Britons, Citizenship and the Politics of Race (Oxford: OUP, 2016).
Francesca Sobande, In eadem, The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain. Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.
Bill Schwarz, The White Man鈥檚 World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011),
Bill Schwarz, 鈥樷�淭he Only White Man in There鈥�: The Re-Racialisation of England, 1956-1968鈥�, Race and Class, 38 (1996) 65-78.
Wendy Webster, Englishness and Empire 1939-1965 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Wendy Webster, 鈥楾he Empire Comes Home: Commonwealth Migration to Britain鈥� in Andrew Thompson (ed.), Britain鈥檚 Experience of Empire in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 122-160.
John Welshman and Alison Bashford, 鈥楾uberculosis, Migration, and Medical Examination: Lessons from History鈥�, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 60 (2006): 282-284
Amrit Wilson, Dreams, Questions, Struggles : South Asian Women in Britain (London: Pluto Press, 2006) E-book.
Amrit Wilson, Finding a Voice : Asian Women in Britain (London: Virago, 1978).
Rachel Yemm, , Contemporary British History, 2018 (Advanced Access) DOI: 10.1080/13619462.2018.1535973
Patrick Zylberman, 鈥楥ivilising the State: Borders, Weak States and International Health in Modern Europe鈥�, in Alison Bashford (ed.), Medicine at the Border Disease, Globalization and Security, 1850-the Present (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006), 21-40