Am I Not British Enough?

A look at the challenges faced by non-white migrants to Britain in the post-war period.

Following the end of the Second World War, Britain required immigrant labour that the Royal Commission on Population reported in 1949 should be of ‘good stock’ and who would be welcomed ‘without reserve”. Combined with the British Nationality Act of 1948, granting Commonwealth citizens free entry to Britain, and new US immigration policies restricting entry, large numbers of workers and their families began arriving from former British colonies beyond European borders. 

The Caribbean, India and Pakistan and African states all provided large groups of new migrants previously unseen in Britain in such numbers – specifically, non-white ones. While it is not unusual for any non-white migrant arriving in a new, majority white country, to face difficulties, the responses of various British Governments to the influx of identifiably different migrants contributed significantly to the challenges faced by them. Black, or ‘coloured’ British subjects arriving as migrants faced challenges deeply rooted in a formal racism borne out of an idealised, imperial sense of ‘Britishness’. Successive changes to government migration policies were designed to restrict the flow of non-white migrants. This includes the 1968 New Commonwealth legislation, which limited access to those UK passport holders who could make a claim to that idealised “Britishness’ through birth or male parentage and clearly, as Emma Robertson discusses in her paper “Green for Go, “privileged white citizens” over black ones.

For the purposes of this discussion I examine the situation of the Ugandan Indian (Asian) refugees that arrived in Britain following their expulsion by Idi Amin in 1972. Given that their migration was a forced one, the challenges they already faced as refugees expelled from a country that no longer wanted were further tainted by the knowledge that they were likewise unwanted by their country of citizenship. Reduced employment opportunities, social isolation and institutional humiliation are just three of some of the myriad difficulties created by the formal racism of the British governments of the time.

Non-white British citizens, migrating from former British colonies faced challenges created by Government attempts at maintaining an idealised sense of ‘Britishness’ in the face of a crumbling empire. These institutionalised responses isolated a group of people, with as much right as any other British citizen to access free entry to their ‘Motherland’, from their communities, and restricted their access to cultural activities and support. As Robertson points out, the official message to those who came from Uganda was that should stay away from the already established Asian communities in places like London, Leicester and Hampshire.

Preferring instead to send the refugees where they would not cause undue alarm amongst the natives by being too noticeable, authorities created situations where individuals and families were unable to freely access cultural activities, places of worship and appropriate foods. Whilst some Ugandan Asian refugees certainly felt that “life was better before migration” in some cases the challenge of isolation spurred some on to use their business acumen employed in their home country, to establish their own business and support systems in their new home. However, even this success was to have a negative effect, as what would have been an unnoticeable matter if they were white, became all too noticeable as the refugees slowly built their own communities and pooled resources to buy homes and business. The natives were not happy, and complained of ‘ungrateful foreigners’ putting strains on jobs and housing.

Expelled from a country where they had been successful, mostly middle class business owners and professionals, the Ugandan Asians found that the work available to them meant a social demotion regardless of the many transferable skills they brought with them. Forced to take up low-paid unskilled work in factories, Kathleen Paul claims that “to the majority of employers, a black or brown skin signified a less capable, poorly educated individual.”  The reduction in professional work, as in Robertson’s case study of ‘Julie’, from trained infant teacher to factory packer, supports the notion amongst refugees of their lives having followed a “riches to rags” story arc. The challenges involved in gaining employment were put in place by government authorities even before refugees had left their resettlement camps. Being able to settle permanently was dependent on having a job to go to, but to find that job one needed to be able to travel between the potential job and camp for interviews and medicals. There was also a greater economic need for the women of the refugee families to also work, as the employment their husbands were engaged in was usually of a lower paid level than white workers. To make up the difference in incomes, mothers and wives found themselves likewise engaged in factory work on either a full-time or part-time basis.

Although not specific to the Ugandan refugee experiences, there is also evidence that Asian women migrants especially were subjected to racist and humiliating practices by government officials of the time. Such acts included vaginal examinations as proof of virginity for women claiming to be joining their husbands – an utterly unnecessary (and unscientific) examination for entry to a country as any conceived, and a racist one based on unfounded assumptions of cultural practices. Whilst the British government was willing to spend significant amounts of money attracting white, European migrants to rebuild their country; and similar amounts sending British emigrants to fill what remained of the Empire; they resisted the independent migration and resettlement of genuine refugees of colonial citizens of colour.

The challenges facing non-white British subjects migrating to Britain, especially those outlined here, were constructed by a government – not public opinion - intent on maintaining an idealised, imperial sense of ‘Britishness’ that upheld that view of essential Britishness as being a white hierarchical and imperial  system based on race, class and gender.

Bibliography

Burrell, K. and Panayi, P. (2006). Histories and memories. 1st ed. London: Tauris Academic Studies, pp.134-139.

Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, (1982). The Empire Strikes Back: Race and racism in 70s Britain. 2nd ed. London: Hutchinson & Co., pp.242-245.

Messina, A. (2001). The Impacts of Post-WWII Migration to Britain: Policy Constraints, Political Opportunism and the Alteration of Representational Politics. The Review of Politics, [online] 63(02), pp.259--285. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1408668.pdf?acceptTC=true&jpdConfirm=true [Accessed 8 Jun. 2014].

Panayi, P. and Virdee, P. (2011). Refugees and the end of empire. 1st ed. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Paul, K. (1997). Whitewashing Britain. 1st ed. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.

Robertson, E. (2011). 'Green for Come'. In: P. Panayi and P. Virdee, ed., Refugees and the End of Empire, 1st ed. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.245-267.