Britain has experienced many relatively small episodes of immigration over the centuries

1.

Britain has experienced many relatively small episodes of immigration over the centuries. For nearly a
thousand years migration was on a very small scale compared to the size of the population. In the
decades between the Second World War and the late 1990s, foreign immigration grew steadily at a
relatively modest rate before declining in the late 1960s and becoming fairly stable between 1971 and
1981. The massive increase in the level of migration since the late 1990s is utterly unprecedented in
the country’s history, dwarfing the scale of anything that went before.
Until the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962, all Commonwealth citizens could enter and stay in the UK
without any restriction. The Act made Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies (CUKCs), whose passports
were not directly issued by the UK Government (i.e., passports issued by the Governor of a colony or by the
Commander of a British protectorate), subject to immigration control.
By 1972, only holders of work permits, or people with parents or grandparents born in the UK could gain entry
– significantly reducing primary immigration from Commonwealth countries.

2.

Since 1945, immigration to the United Kingdom under British nationality law has been significant, in particular
from
- the Republic of Ireland
- the former British Empire especially India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Caribbean, South Africa, Nigeria,
Ghana, Kenya and Hong Kong.
Other immigrants have come as
- asylum seekers, seeking protection
- as refugees under the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention,
- or from member states of the European Union, exercising one of the European Union's Four Freedoms.

3.

Indians began arriving in the UK in large numbers shortly after their country gained independence in 1947, although
there were a number of people from India living the UK even in the earlier years. More than 60,000 arrived before
1955, many of whom drove buses, or worked in foundries or textile factories.
In 1965-1972, the flow of Indian immigrants boosted in particular by Ugandan dictator Idi Amin's sudden decision to
expel all 50,000 Gujarati Indians from Uganda. Around 30,000 Ugandan Asians emigrated to the UK.
Following the independence of Pakistan, Pakistani immigration to the United Kingdom increased, especially during
the 1950s and 1960s. Many Pakistanis came to Britain following the turmoil during the partition (после беспорядков
во время раздела) of India and the subsequent independence of Pakistan; among them were those who migrated to
Pakistan upon displacement from India, and then emigrated to the UK, thus becoming secondary migrants.
Migration was made easier as Pakistan was a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. Pakistanis were invited by
employers to fill labour shortages which arose after the Second World War. As Commonwealth citizens, they were
eligible for most British civic rights. They found employment in the textile industries of Lancashire and Yorkshire,
manufacturing in the West Midlands, and car production and food processing industries of Luton and Slough. It was
common for Pakistani employees to work nightshifts and at other less-desirable hours.
In addition, there was a stream of migrants from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).

4.

There was also an influx of refugees from Hungary, following the crushing of the 1956 Hungarian revolution,
numbering 20,990 people.
Enoch Powell (He served as a Conservative Member of Parliament (1950–1974), then Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) MP
(1974–1987), and was Minister of Health (1960–1963), gave the famous "Rivers of Blood" speech on 20 April 1968 in
which he warned his audience of what he believed would be the consequences of continued unchecked immigration
from the Commonwealth to Britain.
Conservative Party leader Edward Heath fired Powell from his Shadow Cabinet the day after the speech, and he
never held another senior political post. Powell received 110,000 letters – only 2,300 disapproving.[33] Three days
after the speech, on 23 April, as the Race Relations Bill was being debated in the House of Commons, around 2,000
dockers walked off the job to march on Westminster protesting against Powell's dismissal,[34] and the next day 400
meat porters from Smithfield market handed in a 92-page petition in support of Powell.[35] At that time, 43% of
junior doctors working in NHS hospitals, and some 30% of student nurses, were immigrants, without which the
health service would needed to have been curtailed.

5.

Jewish Migration
By the 1940s, the Jewish population of Britain was about 400,000 and had come mostly in four
major waves.
At the end of the 19th century a larger wave came from Tsarist Russia and Eastern Europe.
Another wave from Nazi Germany came in the 1930s- with perhaps as many as 100,000 coming.
European Migration
After the failed uprising against the Russian Empire in the 1831, several thousand Polish insurgents
moved to London. By the 1901 there were 82,844 Eastern Europeans living in Britain. During the
Second World War, hundreds of thousands of Poles were stationed in Britain and the Polish
resettlement Act of 1947 offered citizenship to 200,000 Polish soldiers who did not wish to return
to a Soviet dominated Poland.
The 1951 Census (Перепись) subsequently recorded 162,339 Poles living in Britain. After the
Second World War quite large numbers of other Eastern Europeans were allowed to settle in
Britain[48] many of whom were actively recruited to work in Britain as part of an overseas workers
scheme- one of the very few episodes of a ‘guest workers’ scheme in British history.

6.

There were fairly large number of Americans in Britain in the 19th Century; 18,496 at the census of 1881
and 16,860 in 1891. Some Historians estimate that the number of Chinese and African born migrants was
so small that it was only about a tenth of the number of Americans resident at those two censuses.
The British Nationality Act 1948 granted the subjects of the British Empire the right to live and work in the UK.
Commonwealth citizens were not, therefore, subject to immigration control but the Home Office estimate is that
the net intake from January 1955 to June 1962 was about 472,000.
From 1962 onwards, successively tighter immigration controls were placed on immigration from the
Commonwealth. In the 1960s New Commonwealth citizens were admitted at the rate of about 75,000 per year.
After the war, immigration increased, but this did not have a marked effect on the size of the foreign born
population between the 1951 and 1961 census, with the number only increasing by about 225,000. The pace of
change between the 1961 and 1971 censuses was quicker- increasing by almost a million in a decade.