IMMIGRANTS IN THE BRITISH SOCIETY: PROBLEMS OF ADMISSION AND INTEGRATION, 1945 – 1951

Abstract

On the basis of the revealed British documents the author formulates the main challenges of the colonial policy of the United Kingdom after World War II. One of these challenges was the existence of racial discrimination in some areas of the British Empire and within the UK. The establishment of the United Nations (UN) in 1945 attracted the attention of the metropolis to the problem of racial discrimination, and the Labour government of C. Attlee was forced to revise the existing structure of relations inside multiracial societies in colonies. The flow of immigrants from underdeveloped colony of the British Empire was another challenge for the Labour leadership since the end of the War. Both challenges complicated the implementation of domestic and foreign policy of Great Britain. The paper shows the process of decision-making within the Labor cabinet of C. Attlee on these issues, including the reasons for the introduction of the British Nationality Act 1948. The author features thethe offers made by British officials to limit the number of immigrants from the colonies of the Caribbean and Africa, in fact, constituted a waiver for the future compliance of the adopted law. The author‘s conclusions contradict with some points of view established in the Russian and foreign historiography on the causes and the scale of the increasing number of immigrants, and give an idea about the origins of contemporary migration issues in the UK and the European Union as a whole.