Twenty Years of Racialism and Multi-Racialism

Abstract

The years 1962, 1965 and 1968 were crucial in answering the question of what kind of society Britain was to become and on what terms its million dark-skinned immigrants from the Caribbean, the Indian Subcontinent and East Africa were to be accepted in that society. They also appeared to many of those who approached race relations problems with anything of a liberal spirit to be years of moral betrayal. In the first year the notion of a Commonwealth in which all of the Queen’s subjects had equal rights of settlement in Britain was abandoned. In the second, the party, which in opposition had promised the repeal of the Commonwealth Immigration Act, not only retained the Act, but strengthened its application. In the third, restriction on immigration was applied to East African Asians, despite the fact that they held British passports, and despite solemn undertakings that they would be able to choose between citizenship of the newly independent states and citizenship in Britain. Complex reasons were given for all of these changes, but it was clear that they made sense only on the basis of one assumption. This was that the full rights of British citizenship were being restricted to those with White skins.