Misinformation and Hypocrisy: A Short Overview of Immigration in and out of the UK
Less than a century ago, non-white residents made up less than one percent of the population of United Kingdom. Following the two wars, however, the country needed assistance with rebuilding. In 1948, Parliament passed the British Nationality Act which stated that all Commonwealth residents could have British passports and come live in Britain. Advertisements paid for by the British government were placed in Jamaican and other Commonwealth countries’ newspapers actively inviting people to the UK to assist in the post-war effort. They were not immigrants; they were citizens of the British empire exercising their right to move.
However, the country these citizens disembarked in was not the home that had been promised. As John Richards, who was 22 when he arrived on the HMT Empire Windrush, told the BBC in 1998, “I know a lot about Britain from school days but it was a different picture from that one, when you came face to face with the facts. It was two different things…They tell you it is the ‘mother country’, you’re all welcome, you all British. When you come here you realise you’re a foreigner and that’s all there is to it.”
Richards and the other Commonwealth residents who arrived quickly came to realize that while they had been raised to believe that they were British, those living in the ‘mother country’ had not been taught the same. Instead, the UK told its citizens that they were superior to those they had colonized. Even following the collapse of the empire, this exceptionalism remained; a poll in the 1960s found that nearly 70% of white Britons viewed themselves as superior to Africans and Asians.
As Professor Gurminder K. Bhambra recently described the situation, “people from the darker Commonwealth began to exercise their citizenship rights and start[ed] moving to Britain. That wasn’t expected. It was that sort of aspect ‘well we gave you these rights but we didn’t really expect you to come.’” While the demographic changes that came with this inner-Empire movement were relatively limited, they were shocking enough to the British population who had “long absorbed stereotypes of [ethnic] inferiority”, as historian Kenneth O. Morgan wrote, that several immigration laws were passed relatively quickly to ensure that fewer immigrants arrived in the country.
Meanwhile, during the same period more people actually left the UK for places such as Australia, New Zealand, and Canada than came in. Thus, while the British were immigrating to countries where they genuinely replaced the native populations, they were simultaneously so upset that immigrants made up 6.4% of the population by the late 1960s that Enoch Powell’s infamous Rivers of Blood speech — in which he said he was “watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre” and quoted a constituent who told him that “the black man will have the whip hand over the white man” — resonated with millions, and marked a turning point in how immigration is discussed in the political sphere.
In a continuation of this legacy of hypocrisy: despite immigration having been the most-cited reason for a vote for Brexit, of the 28 EU member states the UK is ranked fifth in terms of the number of its citizens who live in other EU countries; and despite the Hostile Environment it is ranked first amongst European countries in the number of citizens living abroad. But of course, British immigrants are more likely to be referred to as expats.
This exceptionalism, connected to the whitewashing of Britain and British history, has led to the situation today that “if you are an ethnic or religious minority, then you have to constantly prove your Britishness,” as Dr. Alita Nandi put it.
For ethnic minorities and immigrants in the UK, the government has proven to be rather fluid in its bestowment of citizenship, including for those who were born in the country, as well as immigrants who have served in the British military. In the case of the Windrush generation, Commonwealth residents arrived as British subjects and yet found themselves deported back to the Caribbean decades later, ‘Jamaica 101’ pamphlets in hand. Indeed, one of the first actions Theresa May did as Home Secretary was to destroy the landing cards of these residents, resulting in their inability to prove that they had arrived when the law gave them the right to remain in the UK. Nor was this merely a Conservative party policy — the decision to destroy the cards came under Gordon Brown’s Labour. The Windrush scandal was not merely a case of severe incompetence; the British government actively caused it.
The hostile environment — which exists in order to appease an electorate that believes immigrants make up 24.4% of the population of England and Wales when in reality is is 13.4% — has harmed or destroyed millions of lives. It has turned, amongst other things, GP visits, property rentals, and banking into constant immigration checks for anybody who does not sound or “look” British. Aspects of it are so racist that this spring the high court struck down ‘Right to Rent’ because it was deemed incompatible with human rights. Mr Justice Spencer wrote in his ruling that “the scheme introduced by the government does not merely provide the occasion or opportunity for private landlords to discriminate, but causes them to do so where otherwise they would not.”
Under Theresa May, Amber Rudd, and Sajid Javid, the UK now ranks dead last of all 38 developed countries in terms of family reunification rights. As a result, there are more than 15,000 children in the UK who live in a single-parent household purely due to immigration laws. There has been a 73% drop in the number of successful applications for permanent residency, replaced instead by government officials saying that immigrants should leave once they have ‘fulfilled their usefulness’. For those who are able to remain in their homes, the fees they are required to pay to the Home Office for this ‘privilege’ have increased by 238% since 2014.
Despite it all, the main political parties of England and Wales have nearly fallen over themselves apologizing to the electorate for not listening to ‘legitimate concerns’ regarding immigration. As Diane Abbott recently said, “a lot of the talk you hear about Englishness and the British [is] about how they’re the ‘real’ victims” of the government’s treatment of ethnic minorities and immigrants. This is an especially troubling message to come from official Labour manifestos and debate stages, as minorities have historically supported the party at double the rate as have white Britons; the party has turned on one of its base constituencies.
This rhetoric has allowed the false narrative of ‘uncontrolled immigration’ to persist, despite the fact that the ‘mother country’ has some of the toughest immigration laws in the world. In England, the only party that consistently defends immigrants’ rights are the Greens, while in Scotland and Wales (perhaps ironically) both nationalist parties do the same. While the education system desperately needs to do a better job of teaching the truths of the Empire, politicians and political parties must also educate the public rather than continue to contribute to the falsehoods that have led to the destruction of countless lives. It is understandable why they do not change tactics, however — it is easier to blame immigrants, who have no voting rights and thus cannot retaliate at the polls, for the consequences of the austerity measures these very same politicians have enacted.
As of the last census, the ethnic makeup of England and Wales is 80% white-British, with foreign-born residents at 13% (about half of whom come from outside of the European Union). While there has, of course, been progress in regards to the acceptance of ethnic minorities and immigrants to the UK, it is still entirely too common and acceptable for immigrants to be blamed for society’s woes. In reality, it is society that creates woes for immigrants.
