Dealing with Destitute Cypriots in the UK and Australia, 1914–1931

Abstract

In 1928, the Australian authorities told the British government that they would no longer accept Cypriots into the country because of the widespread destitution of those already in Australia. This chapter takes a comparative framework to understand the problem of Cypriot immigrant destitution and shows that it was indeed widespread in the UK as well as in Australia. It explores how the British and Australian authorities dealt with the issue of destitute Cypriots who had emigrated abroad before, during and immediately after the Great War, and what action was proposed and applied to resolve the issue. Recent work has shown that the British authorities considered the London Cypriots as a deviant community in the 1930s, both for their perceived criminality and communist activity. This paper shifts the focus to the period before and adds a broader context, especially Australian.