Britain’s History of Immigration, and its Current Chapter

When Ali Ahmed Aslam moved to Glasgow, Scotland in 1964 from Pakistan, he hoped to make a living for himself and his family by opening up his own restaurant, which he named the Shish Mahal. Originally selling traditional dishes from his homeland, Aslam’s culinary approach was altered in the early 1970s, when one of his customers complained to him that one of his chicken dishes was consistently dry in texture. Not wanting to lose a valued patron, Aslam began brainstorming a way to make his traditional dish more amenable to the local palette. His breakthrough moment came with the idea to use a yogurt-based tomato sauce to accompany the previously dry chicken, to the delight of his customers. The dish became known as Chicken Tikka Masala, the cultural and culinary legacy of which has made it the recipe most often cited as the national dish of Great Britain.

I use this slightly tongue-in-cheek example here to introduce a much more important point about Britain’s legacy of multiculturalism, and the influence immigrants have had within the heart of Empire. It is hard, if not impossible, to imagine a modern Britain without the influence of its migrant populations. For better or for worse, Britain has been defined by the cultural interchange between the motherland and its colonial peripheries. Despite the British state’s unwavering efforts throughout history to reject those people it has deemed unworthy, however, it has simultaneously sought to exploit their traditions, resources, and labour.

Despite the immense contribution immigrants and citizens of the commonwealth have made to the mother country, British society though primarily the British state, has always been reluctant to repay its debts, even if payment need only take the form of granting commonwealth citizens their dignity. For a more in-depth discussion on this topic, I recommend Tony Kushner’s book; The Battle of Britishness: Migrant Journeys, 1685 to the present. This impulse is encapsulated perfectly in the journey and reactions to the arrival of Caribbean immigrants to Britain after the Second World War, a case study which in many ways can inform our understanding of the present chapter in Britain’s history of immigration.

The multiculturalism we come to associate with Britain today is a relatively new phenomenon. Before post-war labour shortages forced the British state to subsidise and encourage the influx of migrant workers from its colonies and abroad, it had been the policy of the British state to, in the words of Akala, ‘expel Britain’s domestic class conflict’. This took the form of sending criminals and working class Britons to destinations such as Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. In fact, the British state were so unconcerned with the prospect that commonwealth populations would come to settle in the heart of Empire, that they were comfortable passing the British Nationality Act of 1948, thus declaring that ‘every person who under this Act is a citizen of the United Kingdom and colonies…shall by virtue have the status of a British subject’. 

This position was later rescinded by the British state through the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962, which ended the automatic right of Commonwealth citizens to enter and live in the UK, introducing immigration controls based on a voucher system. One does not have to look too deeply into the matter to understand why such arbitrary barriers were erected at the time, and social context in which they were instantiated. It would seem ludicrous to well-adjusted people in the modern day to restrict access to Britain for such a well-educated migrant population of skilled workers, at a time when the country was in desperate need of labour in the wake of the Second World War. When we read the government’s own archives however, particularly Clement Atlee’s calling of the passengers on the Windrush ‘an incursion’, the picture becomes clear. No matter who they were or what they offered to the country, the British state was not prepared to accept them.

Today, the British state’s attitude towards immigration, and the nature of the immigration itself, are not what they were. Many of the migrants coming to the UK are highly skilled, but many are also not, and it is this small subsection of the UK’s net migration figures that recurrently causes a commotion in the political discourse. Similarly, the government is perhaps less discriminatory towards the majority of migrants coming into the country, but the carousel it forces immigrants to step on in the hopes of being accepted, legally and culturally, remains essentially the same.

To articulate this point, I will focus on the discourse surrounding British muslims and muslim immigrants to the UK. Much like Caribbeans and Sikhs in the decades of the 1950s and 60s,  this is the group which has found itself in the crosshairs of the right’s anti-migrant ire, making it the perfect subject to analyse to understand our chapter of Britain’s immigration history. 

Whereas before, those looking to shut out migrant populations from the country could have gotten away with using good old-fashioned racism, modern sensibilities preclude those actors from coming right out to say what they mean. Instead, the ever-tightening web of migration legislation is justified on grounds of ‘legality’, despite no efforts made to make achieving legal status any easier, then on the grounds of religion, culture, and finally the ever-indefinable ‘values’. It is important to identify and scrutinise this never-ending carousel of vilification in order to prevent a reproduction of the now-infamous Windrush Scandal, and protect the members of our society who despite being branded a threat to the sanctity of British life, just want to be left alone.

On the issue of migrants’ legality, a brief look at the logic used by those on the right who use this justification to advocate for more stringent migrant restrictions reveals that their issue was never with a slip of paper. As Ben Ansell points out in a brilliant article titled ‘Who Counts?’, those on the anti-immigrant right frequently utilise the term ‘white British’ when analysing the ‘demographic crisis’ currently taking hold of Britain. The implication, naturally, is that a white person with British citizenship is different, or at least merits different considerations, from a Pakistani or Nigerian British person, despite the fact all of these individuals hold the same legal status. Unsurprisingly, legality was never the issue. 

Those on the slightly braver side of the British right claim to base their gripes with the muslim migrant population on just that, their religion. Characterisations of Islam from the right of the political spectrum are that of a violent religion, obsessed with conquest, medieval in their attitudes towards women and the queer community, and completely incompatible with the enlightened, Christian values of the west. Given I am neither qualified enough nor have the space to address this point fully, I recommend Christopher de Bellaigue’s analysis of progressivism in the muslim world in the last 200 years, wherein he details the layered and complex modernism of muslim scholars and states, not in spite of their religiosity, but as a result of it.

On a more basic level, disproving the gross caricature of Islam and muslims propagated by the British right can be quickly achieved by listening to muslims themselves, as opposed to observing them through the eyes of the western media. It does not take a political junkie to recognise the broad support from British muslims enjoyed by Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party in the 2019 elections, where 83% of muslims in the UK chose to vote for perhaps the most left-wing candidate British politics had seen in 40 years. Incidentally, in the most up-to-date study I could find on the issue, 85% of Muslims say they felt they belonged in Britain, and more than half said they valued their British identity, compared with 44% of the general population. With regards to Labour support from ethnic minorities more broadly, among voters of Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Caribbean, and African descent who earn less than £25,000/yr, 93% vote Labour.

Outside of the UK, despite perceptions of muslims and Islam on the right, there is a plurality of thought and expression of identity among communities in the muslim world. During the Arab spring of 2011, itself a mass movement to secure western-style democratic representation and political rights, women played an important role; as protestors, organizers, and leaders of street demonstrations. Similarly, women flooded the streets of Iran to protest the country’s fraudulent presidential elections of 2009, as in 2022 in response to Mahsa Amini’s death, where many Iranian women chose to remove their hijabs as a symbol of their freedom. In Syrian Kurdistan, the Rojava Commune is organised through democratic institutions that are more representative than those of the British state, with a series of councils set-up to encourage political participation, all while maintaining an unwavering commitment to women’s liberation and equality. There are even gay clubs in Palestinian Rammallah.

To be clear, I am not arguing that the Islamic Republic of Iran, or other middle eastern states, are wholly progressive, that would be ridiculous. I am simply providing a much-needed counter narrative to the representations of muslim people we are all too used to seeing in the West, especially when that perception is the reason for many of the threats faced by Muslims in the UK and across Europe.

Nor do I question the fact that muslims in the UK commit crimes, and I do not even question the fact that a small proportion of Muslims commit crimes and acts of terror on religious grounds, even if the majority of terror attacks in Europe are in-fact committed by ethno-nationalist and separatist groups. The burden of proof however, is on those on the right to prove how violence and terrorism is intrinsic to Islam and muslim communities, when a complex mix of poverty, housing insecurity, domestic abuse, and personal traits are the more likely explanatory factor.

Once again, it was never the excuse of religion or ‘cultural values’ that prevented Muslim migrants from being accepted. The vague definition, if any, of the ‘British values’ in question which muslims do not ascribe to should be the first tip of the right’s intentions to move the goalposts whenever necessary. Whatever these values may be, I doubt lying to the Queen and causing a constitutional crisis over Brexit would be included, and yet nowhere in the media was Boris Johnson identity as a white Christian posited as the reason for his disregard for the law.

It seems like a gotcha, but it is a question worth investigating to give proper balance to the debate; why does the mainstream media not scrutinise Christians and Christianity in the same way that it often does Muslims and Islam? As I write this, it is proud Christian fundamentalists like Mike Huckabee, United States special envoy to Israel, who are openly supporting Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people on the grounds that the land was promised to the Isrealites millennia ago. This is without looking at the history of Christian colonialism and territorial dispossession carried out by European powers across the world for centuries, partly in the name of their God. One might think that knowledge of such a history would render the modern media landscape more critical when a member of the United States cabinet openly states he does not believe in the West Bank, but only in Judea and Samaria. Alas, that would be asking too much.

I don’t mean to say here that Britain is just as racist as it was in the 1950s and 60s. Looking at the polling, Britons have positive views of many migrants that come into the country to work in industries such as construction, care, and hospitality. On a similar note, the majority of British adults fundamentally want the UK government to have control over who can and can’t enter the country, whether or not that would mean immigration numbers are significantly reduced. Finally, British people attach greater importance to migrants’ skills than their country of origin, and only 18% of the UK population believes that immigration makes a country a worse place to live in, making it one of the most pro-migrant countries in all of Europe. After all, white British people themselves are the product of immigration, a fact they will proudly admit as they list an assortment of minor percentages obtained through 23 and Me which exempts them from being classed as ‘plain English/ British’.

I do, however, feel that the country is slipping down that racist path. In order to avoid repeating the mistakes of prior generations, it is imperative that we remain vigilant, practice empathy, and read as much as possible on history and current affairs. As hateful rhetoric becomes increasingly prevalent in the mainstream, it is no longer enough to simply ignore it. It is more important than ever to stay informed and to scrutinise the narratives that seek to vilify entire groups of people for no other purpose but to serve their political agenda. To deny migrants their dignity as human beings is to ignore the lessons of the last 200 years of British history, let us not fall into that same trap as many did before.

Image: Flickr/Giandomenico Jardella

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