Open%20borders%20The%20case%20against%20immigration%20controls%20-%20Teresa%20Hayter

Border Controls 43
Sir Edward Boyle. One of the most persistent Labour critics, Reginald Paget
MP, spoke as follows on 17 November 1964:
We, in this House, are for the fiftieth time to deny aliens the most elementary of
human rights – the right to live under the rule of law. ... we are renewing emergency
wartime provisions given to the Government on 4th August 1914 and renewed again
without discussion in 1919 and renewed annually since then. These emergency
powers give complete control to the Executive over the liberties of the people who
come here. ... Entry to this country is subject to the say-so of immigration officers and
from their decision there is not really even an appeal to the Executive. The
immigration officer can say ‘Back you go’.
CONTROLS ON COMMONWEALTH IMMIGRATION
British imperialism, by a curious accident of history and presumably without
thought of the possible consequences, had awarded British citizenship to all
the inhabitants of all the colonies and dominions. The Aliens Acts therefore
did not apply to them. This position was reaffirmed in the British Nationality
Act of 1948. Until 1962, when the first Commonwealth Immigrants Act was
passed, British subjects from the Commonwealth and colonies could enter
Britain freely without controls.
Before the Second World War few black citizens of British colonies took
advantage of this freedom. When from 1948 onwards first Caribbeans and
then Asians began arriving to work in Britain in large numbers (see Chapter
1), they provided what should have been a perfect solution to the problems
of labour shortages experienced by British capitalism. In 1951 in the first
Conservative King’s Speech after the war, the King declared on the Tories’
behalf that:
My government views with concern the serious shortage of labour, particularly of
skilled labour, which has handicapped production in a number of industries.
Not only did the new immigrants, many of whom were skilled, fill vacancies,
but, unlike the European workers, who were anyway in short supply, they
did not have to be recruited, organised or have their fares paid. While the
postwar Labour government did something to help the early arrivals, on the
Windrush for example, find accommodation and jobs, and Labour-controlled
local authorities made varying, and usually inadequate, efforts to help in
large cities, the Tory governments of the 1950s did virtually nothing.
When pressure groups and a few Tory and Labour backbenchers nevertheless
demanded controls to stop ‘coloured’ (but not the larger white)
immigration, these were resisted, as were demands for deportation powers
against Commonwealth citizens. Both the government and the Labour
opposition were opposed to any openly discriminatory measures against
black Commonwealth immigration. The Commonwealth was held to be
indispensable to Britain’s status as a world power. Tory and Labour