Chapter 2 section 1
Migration to Britain
Many people living in Britain today have their origins in other countries. They can trace their roots to regions throughout the world such as Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. In the distant past, invaders came to Britain, seized land and stayed. More recently, people come to Britain to find safety, jobs and a better life.
Britain is proud of its tradition of offering safety to people who are escaping persecution and hardship. For example, in the 16 th and 18 th centuries, Huguenots (French Protestants) came to Britain to escape religious persecution in France. In the mid – 1840s there was a terrible famine in Ireland and many Irish people migrated to Britain. Many Irish men became labourers and helped to build canals and railways across Britain.
From 1880 to 1910, a large number of Jewish people came to Britain to escape racist attacks (called ‘pogroms’) in what was then called the Russian Empire and from the countries now called Poland, Ukraine and Belarus.
Migration since 1945
After the Second World War (1939-45), there was a huge task of rebuilding Britain. There were not enough people to do the work, so the British government encouraged workers from Ireland and other parts of Europe to come to the UK to help with the reconstruction. In 1948, people from the West Indies were also invited to come and work.
During the 1950s, there was still a shortage of labour in the UK. The UK encouraged immigration in the 1950s for economic reasons and many industries advertised for workers from overseas. For example, centres were set up in the West Indies to recruit people to drive buses. Textile and engineering firms from the north of England and the Midlands sent agents to India and Pakistan to find workers. For about 25 years, people from the West Indies, India, Pakistan, and later Bangladesh, travelled to work and settle in Britain.
The number of people migrating from these areas fell in the late 1960s because the government passed new laws to restrict immigration to Britain, although immigrants from ‘old’ Commonwealth countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada did not have to face such strict controls. During this time, however, Britain did admit 28,000 people of Indian origin who had been forced to leave Uganda and 22,000 refugees from South East Asia.
In the 1980s the largest immigrant groups came from the United States, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand. In the early 1990s, groups of people from the former Soviet Union came to Britain looking for a new and safer way of life. Since 1994 there has been a global rise in mass migration for both political and economic reasons.
This material is based on "Life in the United Kingdom, A Journey to Citizenship" book and produced with the permission of Controller of HMSO (under special license). No part of this material may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted without the written permission of HMSO's copyright unit.