Immigration to GREAT BRITAIN
after the Second World War till about 1980

Great Britain has always been a destination for refugees and immigrants!

1.) The type of immigrants and their reasons for coming to Britain after 1945:

1.1.) The Irish:

After 1945 most immigrants in Great Britain came from Ireland. Till about 1980 850379 inhabitants of England were born in Ireland. 32% of them lived in the south-east of England and 32% lived in the area of London. The main reason for the Irish to immigrate was the search for work. Because of the influx of cheap labour force, Great Britain offered Ireland unlimited freedom of movement.

1.2.) Coloured immigrants:

Between 1946 and 1951 there was a recruitment of 450000 workers from Europe. The British were in need of them, because of the reconstruction after the Second World War and because of the fact that Great Britain had not enough workers of her own. To remove the lack of workers too, younger people in the former colonies of Pakistan or India were enlisted for the work in the colonial mother country. Now there was a chain migration, more and more inhabitants of the former colonies immigrated to Britain. Soon their relatives and friends followed, so that only women, children and old people remained in their villages of emigration. The number of the ethnic minorities in Britain increased in the sixties because of the following familie members and a relatively high birth-rate.

The following table gives a survey about the composition of the ethnic minorities in Great Britain at this time:

The social situation for the immigrants:

Lots of immigrants were homeless and unemployed or they had bad jobs. After 1945 there was a big hostility against immigrants, except against black coloured people. So the conditions for the immigrants were very bad.

Policy in immigration and integration at this time:

Juridical Irish citizen were not seen as foreigners or ethnic minorities. Until today they have enjoyed the full rights of a British citizen and the right of election is included.
But, because of the increasing number of the ethnic immigrants there were put forward laws for immigration restriction in 1962, 1968 and 1971. For ethnic immigrants now there was a limit of permission to work in Britain and they needed to have the permission to work there and they need to have an entry permit.
Because of the discrimination against foreigners there the Race Relations Acts in 1965, 1968 and 1976 were passed.

Note:

At last, we have to say, that this topic was very difficult, because we didn`t find enough information. For example in the internet, there are mostly reports and articles about "immigration to the USA". It was hard to find something about this topic, and when we finally found something, it was only a difficult text without statistics.
The information we have used for this project, we have found in the book "Länderbericht Großbritannien"

Gabi Higelin und Sabrina Sundermeier, JgSt. 12

Words:
freedom of movement: Freizügigkeit
recruitment of workers: Vorgang des Einziehens von Arbeitern
to enlist: anwerben
chain migration: Kettenreaktion der Auswanderung
juridical: juristisch
entry permit: Einreisegenehmigung
Race Relation Acts: Anti-Diskriminierungs-Gesetze

[ Back to the index-page ]