Post war 'mass migration' myths and realities, a thread.
So you may have seen lots of seemingly ridiculous commonwealth deportation cases recently, like this one theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/m…
But when you understand the history of British commonwealth immigration policy you will see these cases are perfectly consistent and not *shocking* at all...
Before we start the thread proper 2 things to note. 1 - I am posting sourced evidence, adjectives and slogans are not counterarguments, but counter evidence if you have it, is welcome.
2 - My sources are: Whitewashing Britain by Paul, The Battle Of Britishness by Kushner, An Immigration history of Britain by Panayi and Race, Migration and schooling by Tierny. Safe
First thing to note: The 1948 British nationality act made citizens of the entire British Commonwealth, with (theoretically) the same rights, including the right to work and live in Britain
So to speak of literal British citizens (and taxpayers before they even arrived here) including war vets as immigrants or 'coloured labor (as they were noted at the time) tells its own story...
You will often hear British people being given space to go on TV (unchallenged by anyone who knows better) to talk of British citizens as being 'post war mass migration'...
However they conveniently forget that between the end of the war and mid/late 60's 1.5 million domestic Brits accepted state subsidised migration to Canada, NZ, AUZ, ZIM & SA at a cost of £7.5 million (back then)...
75% of those British emigrant families could not have even afforded the journey without state subsidy so they did not 'pull themselves up by the bootsraps' or 'pay their own way'...
To put 1.5 million people into context that is more than all of the people who have migrated to Britain from India, ever. Or from the entire African continent, ever...
So that means more poor Brits accepted state (commonwealth) subsidised migration in the post war years than all of the people that have to to Britain from India or Africa (though not both places combined)
and they were often migrating to places where the natives were prevented by law from engaging in skilled work (for all the 'people come over here and take our jobs lot')
So in the same year as the British nationality act 1948 a few Caribbean British citizens (not just Jamaicans as has been said) decided to pay for themselves to come to the mothers country....
Many people know about the Windrush boat but there was actually an earlier boat called the Orbita... either way...
The Windrush brought 492 fee paying British citizens, who were mostly skilled workers to mainland Britain. Atless government referred to them as an 'incursion' ...
And took steps to identify the 'ringleaders' so that no further 'influxes' would be encouraged...
During the exact same period Atlees government spent £18.1 million of taxpayers (commonwealth) money to bring 345,000 non British citizens to the UK.
All in all post war British governments brought at least 600,000 people from post war (pre EU) Europe at the taxpayers expense - whose grandchildren are now apparently indigenous 'British' and will NOT be getting deported, ever.
In addition to a further roughly one million post war Irish immigrants who whilst despised and mistreated in Britain never had their citizenships revoked, obviously.
So what happened after world war 2 is more accurately described as a state sponsored racially inspired population swap than 'mass migration' as you can see...
To try and stem the flow of non-whte British citizens post war governments tried a number of things including trying to bully the governments of Jamaica and Pakistan into not issuing passports as 'there was no work here' ....
When Jamaican prime minister Norman Manley came to Britain and saw the issue was skin colour and not a lack of jobs he told them fi go suk dem.... bleeep! Lol
they also commissioned a number of reports to try and prove that British Caribbeans were a drain on public resources.. when the reports found they were 95% employed and no more likely to commit crime than any1 else, govt did not publish.
Finally by 1962 they found a climate in which they thought they could pass immigration restriction (they believed the public would not go for it before seeing as we'd all just fought the Nazi's together)
Just in case we are confused that the issue was skin color and nothing else the home secretary from the time Rab Butler has left us a nice helpful quote to sum up the 1962 immigration act:
Mr Butler said that its (62 act) “great merit” was that it could be presented as nondiscriminatory even though in practice “its restrictive effect is intended to, and would in fact, operate on coloured people almost exclusively
Other government ministers noted that the aim 'was obviously to keep out coloured people' (British citizens, remember).
Over the next decade ad a half successive British governments used ostensibly racially neutral immigration acts to remove the entire sense that people from the Commonwealth (other than NZ,AUS,CANADA) had ever been citizens in the first place...
Some of these acts (68 and 71 I believe but check that one) inserted 'grandfather clauses' so that the people whose grandparents had gotten state subsidised migration to SA/Zim/Kenya could keep their British citizenship rights...
This is the history that is allowing people who have paid taxes for half a century, whose parents were citizens, who themselves have even had passports to be sent 'back' to places that are no longer their homes, just so you know..
The British state and popular discourse has been so successful in racialising British citizenship while pretending not to that...
People whose grandparents were literal German and Italian prisoners of war (Atlee subsidised them 2) and got tax funded migration think they can call me an 'immigrant' loool
Even though my mums family been on this island thousands of years and my dads came here as citizens from a country ruled by England since 1655!!! (before the act of union).
Last point: I want you to think about how this population swap has vanished from public discourse overall...
And how the millions of ppl whose grandparents came from Ireland, Italy, Germany, Poland, Latvia etc have been encouraged to see themselves as indigenous 'white British' and not immigrants even though they were (which is fine btw)
And how the millions of ppl whose grandparents were literal British citizens (who paid their own way + contributed as taxpayers to others migration) have been encouraged to see themselves as supposedly foreign 'ethnic minorities'.
I could go on, there are plenty more quotes and a ton of easily available evidence, see the books I mentioned at the start of thread. Safe
Thought I'd add one thing to this thread, even before WW2 there was lots of immigration into Britain. Panayi estimates 2.5 million ppl from 1800-1915, Kushner goes all the way back to late 17th century groups.
