What The Far-Right Won't Tell You: Part 2
Today, Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Gurkhas, and individuals from other British colonies make up the great bulk of immigrants in the UK. Among these colonies, India played a vital role during World War I. According to the BBC, “In Europe, Indian soldiers were among the first victims to experience the horrors of the trenches. Indian jawans (junior soldiers) halted the German assault at Ypres in the autumn of 1914, while the British were still recruiting and training their own forces.
Many Asians criticize British politicians and the media for failing to adequately emphasize their sacrifices. Shashi Tharoor, a prominent Indian politician and novelist, laments that history has mostly forgotten these sacrifices.
During World War II, 2.5 million Indians, 3,340,00 South Africans (white and black), 3,200,00 East Africans, 2,000,00 West Africans, and 16,000 Caribbeans fought for the United Kingdom. Indian forces made significant contributions to the military effort, earning 30 Victoria Crosses. Approximately 87,000 Indian soldiers were killed. Gurkha soldiers fought in Italy, Greece, North Africa, the Far East, and other locations. Over 110,000 men served in 40 different battalions, with 30,000 killed or injured. Gurkha soldiers received 12 Victoria Cross medals. Some historians suggest a larger number of Gurkhas. For example, the StGeorgeWoolwich website reports that nearly 132,000 Gurkhas served with the Allied troops during World War II and received 2,734 bravery honors.
Despite being treated inhumanely, Indians, Africans, and other non-white nations continued to sacrifice their lives for the British empire. Some white nurses were not permitted to treat black volunteers or soldiers. Despite charges that British policies contributed to the deaths of nearly three million Bengalis during the 1943 famine, Indian soldiers continued to fight.
Many Indians and other immigrants also contributed significantly to the country’s rehabilitation efforts. According to Linda McDowell, a human geographer at Oxford University, the UK experienced labor shortages following World War II. “The total working population fell by 1.38 million between mid-1945 and the end of 1946, as many married women and elderly persons who had postponed retirement departed the employment they had held during the war. People were also departing the country.
“In the late 1940s and early 1950s, many families emigrated to parts of what was then known as the ‘Old’ Commonwealth (including Australia, New Zealand, and Canada), which were themselves short on labor and eager to encourage white settlers from the United Kingdom in order to maintain their old colonial ties and European notions of citizenship and identity. As these areas served as recruiters rather than sources of white British workers, attention shifted to people of ‘New’ Commonwealth countries, particularly Caribbean residents in the early postwar years, as a potential supply of new employees.”
McDowell writes, “The migration of colonial citizens began gradually. From 1948, when the Empire Windrush landed, to 1952, between 1,000 and 2,000 individuals entered Britain every year, with a steady and rapid increase until 1957, when 42,000 migrants from the New Commonwealth, primarily from the Caribbean, entered. The numbers fell by nearly half in the two years that followed, but by 1960 had risen to 58,000, and by 1961 had more than doubled, in anticipation of the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, which would restrict entrance.
“According to the national population census of 1961, there were just over 161,000 people in England and Wales who were born in the Caribbean: 90,000 men and just over 71,000 women. Men from the Caribbean were more likely to find work in manufacturing and construction, as well as public transportation. Many Caribbean women found work in the NHS as nurses and nursing assistants, as well as in public transportation and manufacturing, particularly in the booming white goods industry in cities.”
World War II killed 450,700 Britons and inflicted immense destruction. For example, the German Luftwaffe unleashed hundreds of bombs on London between 1939 and 1945, killing around 30,000 people. More than 70,000 buildings were entirely demolished, with another 1.7 million damaged in London, and 200000 dwellings destroyed throughout the country. Despite the destruction and a lack of manpower, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of white British people elected to flee to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States of America.
Now the question is whether post-war reconstruction would have been possible without the contributions of immigrants who worked in labor-intensive areas to restore the destroyed country.
It was not illegal immigrants coming in droves to seize employment, but rather the British government’s policies that cleared the way for migration, which would not have occurred if the country had not been in desperate need of labor. The 1948 British Nationality Act stated that all Commonwealth citizens could get British passports and work in the United Kingdom. Many of the early arrivals came from the West Indies, South Asia, and Cyprus.
What caused the government to develop a plan to encourage immigration? It is said that the UK experienced a serious workforce shortage following World War II, particularly in the transportation network and the newly established National Health Service. Given that aerial bombing had damaged huge portions of the principal towns, the government launched a reconstruction effort that required personnel. It is said that British policies contributed to the violent partition of India and Pakistan, the civil war in Cyprus, and the underdevelopment of the Caribbean economy, which resulted in widespread unemployment. All of these causes contributed to increased immigration.
It is true that hundreds, if not tens of thousands, of immigrants have entered the UK unlawfully throughout the years, but the far-right gives the idea that all immigrants enter the UK illegally and under false pretenses. In truth, a large number of people were transported here or forced to quit their home countries in order to avoid persecution or seek shelter.
For example, the initial groups of Black Africans were not illegal immigrants, but rather slaves. According to Migration Watch, a migration research institute, the number of Africans brought to the British Isles increased dramatically beginning in the 1650s, and by the late 18th century, tens of thousands of people of African heritage lived in Britain. “The majority of estimates vary from 10,000 to 20,000, with occasional outliers over 30,000. Some estimate 14,000-20,000 for London alone in the late eighteenth century, out of a population of approximately 675,000.”
It is said that there were only 6000 Jews in the UK in 1734, but pogroms, persecution, and discrimination forced the community to seek refuge, increasing the number to 400000 by the 1940s. War and turmoil appear to have spurred the exodus from Eastern Europe as well. According to the 1901 Census, there were only 82,844 Eastern Europeans in Britain, but their numbers increased dramatically during and after two world wars.
According to Migration Watch, during World War II, hundreds of thousands of Poles were stationed in Britain, and the Polish Resettlement Act of 1947 granted citizenship to 200,000 Polish troops who refused to return to a Soviet-dominated Poland. “The 1951 Census found 162,339 Poles living in Britain. After World War II, a substantial number of additional Eastern Europeans were allowed to settle in Britain.”
