“Keep Britain White”: Britain’s Inherently Racist Immigration Laws

Migration policies restricting the entry of ‘foreigners’ to the UK have historically been hailed by the right wing, as protecting both the financial and social security of its citizens, in addition to protecting the cultural heritage of the nation-state. When critiquing these policies, the left wing has had a tendency to highlight their xenophobic nature. The very visceral racial element however is often left out of the debate, as the notion of “citizenship” takes center stage in public discourse. 

Post-war UK immigration policies, controls and political rhetoric are emblematic of institutional racism in Britain. Following the Notting Hill Race Riots in 1958, the Commonwealth Immigration Bill of 1962 required professional justification for migration. It became the first in a series of laws created to prevent black people, British Commonwealth citizens, from entering the UK and joining their families. Constructed around a racist ideology, the notion of citizenship was rendered meaningless.

© Neil Kenlock, ‘Keep Britain white’, 1972

Rivers of Blood

In 1968, the Commonwealth Immigrants Act further restricted Commonwealth migration, preventing people from the Commonwealth from migrating unless at least one parent had been born in the UK. In 1968, Conservative MP Enoch Powell made the significance of race in the politics of migration explicitly clear in his infamous Rivers of Blood speech. Powell referred to ‘piccaninnies,’ ‘negroes’ and ‘Sikhs’ as dangerous intruders amongst ‘white communities,’ defining ‘color’ as the decisive factor in non-integration. Powell’s political discourse incited anti-immigrant sentiment and galvanized the National Front amongst other fascist organizations to harass ‘intruders amongst white communities.’

A few years later, the Immigration Act of 1971 restricted settlement for all Commonwealth immigrants. In 1978, Conservative MP Margaret Thatcher declared on national television that the people of Britain were ‘afraid that the country might be swamped by people of a different culture,’ an outlook that would shape her politics as Prime Minister (1979 – 1990). Two years into her tenure, Thatcher passed the British Nationality Act of 1981, transforming immigration law into nationality law and creating new categories of citizenship: British citizenship, dependent territories citizenship, and British overseas citizenship. This disenfranchised people born in the UK, who were previously entitled to automatic citizenship. Home Secretary at the time, William Whitelaw publicly expressed the necessity for Brits to be ‘separated into insiders and outsiders.’

Political decisions and statements happened in parallel with race riots taking place across the country, with 1981 being a pivotal year in the history of race relations in the UK. Black people stood up against racist policing practices (SUS laws), immigration and housing policies as well as violent attacks against the black community by anti-immigrant groups across the country.

How Much Has Changed?

Fast forwarding to the present day, the Brexit referendum of 2016 was also fuelled by the violent discourse around the so-called migrant crisis, offering a solution to blocking migrants, mainly from the Global South from entering the UK via Europe. The insidious racism underlying Brexit was blatant in the months following the vote, when across the UK a sharp increase in racist hate crimes against black and brown people was recorded.

A year later, the Windrush scandal unfolded: Thousands of people of West Indian heritage, born, raised and permanently settled in the UK were unjustly detained, denied legal rights, wrongly accused of being illegal immigrants, and deported from the UK. West Indians who moved to the UK to rebuild the country’s infrastructure after the war, arrived in large numbers on the ship, the Empire Windrush in 1948, and became known as the Windrush generation.

Many arrived as children on their parents’ passports and as the home office had destroyed a vast number of landing cards, the wrongly accused lacked documentation to prove their right to remain in the UK. An independent report, the Windrush Lessons Learned (2020) stated that the actions of the Home Office were preventable and that victims were let down by ‘organizational failings.’

The Face of Racism Today

In sum, systemic racism in Britain has pervaded immigration policy since the 1960s.  Although having been left out of the public discourse, race has been a defining factor in anti-immigrant policy, political discourse and abuse against black and brown people. With Theresa May’s anti-asylum legacy and Priti Patel’s anti-refugee politics, it is clear racism is still as deeply entrenched in British immigration laws and keeping Britain white remains, even if not explicitly exclaimed, a priority.

Carol Pierre is a Historian and a Doctoral Research Assistant at the nccr – on the move, at the University of Neuchâtel working on Narratives of Crisis and Their Influence in Shaping Discourses and Policies of Migration and Mobility.

References:

-Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Durham, (North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2003) pp. 69-70
-“Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech,” WordPress, accessed 12 January 2023. https://anth1001.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/enoch-powell_speech.pdf
-Pierre, Carol. “The New Cross Fire 1981 and its aftermath,” in Black British History: New Perspectives, ed. Hakin Adi (London: Zed Books Ltd., 2019) p. 162.
-Phillips, Trevor and Phillips, Mike. Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain, (Harper Collins, 1998)