Immigration and multiculturalism

Before the Second World War, mass immigration to Britain had been from within Europe, with the most clearly foreign groups being the Irish, and Jews from Central and Eastern Europe. Mass immigration from outside Europe began only in the postwar period, when the immigration of substantial numbers of West Indians (that is, people from the Caribbean), Africans (especially from Nigeria) and South Asians (from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) created pockets of far more visible racial and cultural difference in many British cities.

The British Nationality Act 1948 gave a right of settlement in Britain to any citizens of the British Empire or Commonwealth. The Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury on 22 June 1948 with 492 immigrants, mostly from Jamaica: the beginning of postwar mass immigration. In 1954 around 10,000 immigrants from the West Indies arrived (see this clip, from about 1 min onwards). Such immigration resulted in a much more visibly culturally and ethnically diverse country. It supplied not only labourers for British industry, but also doctors, dentists and nurses: without the immigration of medical professionals, the NHS would not have survived.

As the 1955 report linked to above has it:

Already their coming has caused a national controversy, but one point must always be borne in mind: whatever our feelings, we cannot deny them entry, for all are British citizens, and as such are entitled to the identical rights of any member of the Empire.

The official approach to integration was proclaimed in 1965 by the Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, as:

not a flattening process of assimilation but equal opportunity accompanied by cultural diversity in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance

Britain is now a multiracial society, with something over 85% of the population identifying itself as "White British" on the 2001 census returns. Another 7% identified themselves as "White Irish" or "White Other" (Polish, etc.); the "non-white" 7% of the population, still well over 4 million people, identified (in descending numbers) as: Indian, Pakistani, "Mixed Race", Black Caribbean, Black African, Bangladeshi, Chinese, "Other Black", and "Other Asian".

The laws that created Britain's current ethnic composition and race relations are:

• Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962
• Race Relations Act 1965
• Commonwealth Immigrant Act 1968
• Race Relations Act 1968
• Race Relations Act 1976
• British Nationality Act 1981
• Immigration Act 1988 (EC free movement)
• British Nationality (Hong Kong) Act 1990
• Asylum and Immigration Act 1993

With the exception of the Immigration Act 1988 (which incorporated European Community agreements on the free movement of persons into British law), the trend of this legislation has been to restrict entry to new immigrants (undoing the work of the British Nationality Act 1948), while at the same time outlawing discrimination against existing immigrants. It was in reaction to the proposed equal opportunities legislation of the Race Relations Act 1968 that Enoch Powell gave his "Rivers of Blood" speech.