It is some decades of years when the steam ship Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury carrying with it the hopes and dreams of hundreds of young men and women from the Caribbean. Nothing like this had happened before. Here was an event when people from the margins of the Empire were coming to build a new life in Britain. There was the devastation in Britain inflicted by the war. It’s role as a global power was declining with changes in the former colonies and at home.This country was trapped in the old idea of itself.
There was little policy consideration of a genuine migration policy and the settlement of new arrivals.The first arrivals were greeted with the optimistic assumption that Britain, shedding its colonial legacy was a true melting pot. Commonwealth citizens were British subjects. It was generally assumed that all the many racial, cultural and religious groups would be assimilated into a new whole- a single people with similar ideals, attitudes and values. The policy makers never thought that ‘identity’ would be an issue.New arrivals would simply “do as Romans do” and neatly fit in and assimilate.Little thought was given to the impact of racism and economic marginalisation or that people would want to retain the cultural heritage of which they were proud at the same time as feeling included as citizens.
Immigration policies have played a crucial role in successive governments ever since the introduction of the Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1962. So how did we arrive to face a situation were citizens from Caribbean and other countries were denied their rights as British citizens legally settled here.
The Labour Government In 1950 set up an interdepartmental Committee to consider the first ever possibility of legislation and administration methods to deal with the matter of ‘immigrants’. So preoccupied were Ministers with the numbers entering the United Kingdom that the welfare and integration of the newcomers was not even discussed. In fact the key policy recommendation was that “any solution depending on an apparent or concealed test would be so invidious as to be impossible for adoption. Nevertheless less it has to be recognised that the use of any powers taken to restrict the free entry of British subjects to this country would as a general rule be more or less confined to coloured persons”.
This approach has been at the heart of control policy based on colour. No wonder we are in a mess in relation to the settlement issues of Windrush generations.
This confusion is further supplemented by four other issues in recent times.
First, there are the unending discussions about numbers-now focussed on the others coming from Eastern Europe and the media panics about bogus asylum seekers.
Second, we worry about our national borders and our borders within what has been called “Fortress Europe “.
Third, there are questions around our role in in the international community— do we face towards Europe or have bilateral relationship with other countries.
And last,we worry about what is our national identity, which a focus on immigration leads us to believe is insecure and therefore must be better defined—what it is,and who can be members within the single identity.
It is time to look at a new approach on immigration where race, colour, national or ethnic identity should have least impact in the way we regulate our policies.
