Withdrawal from Empire

Abstract

English post-war immigration has a turbulent history. Surprisingly, directly after the war, immigrants were mostly welcomed into English society with Polish, Irish, and Italian communities forming across the country. This began to change by the 1950s after the arrival of HMT Empire Windrush into Tilbury docks saw the first immigrants from outside Europe taking up their rights as a British Citizens to emigrate to the centre of the Commonwealth. “White Riots” broke out across the country in the latter half of the 1950s as traditionally white English communities began to fear what they saw as a “disrupting coloured invasion of their identity”. This caused a political backlash and saw the pushing through of the Race Relations Acts of 1965, 1968, and 1976 through parliament which outlawed various racial prejudices and discrimination on grounds of colour, race, ethnicity or national origins. Ultimately, the friction caused by increased immigration reached a crashing crescendo in 1968 with Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech which was met with vocal support up and down the country. Today, immigration, and the political and social connotations that come with it, are an accepted part of societal life. This article aims to show how and why this came about and the disruption this caused for English society; tracing the timeline of immigration from directly after the Second World War to the early 1970s.