The racist legislation that led to Windrush

A suppressed report on the Windrush scandal has concluded that its origins lie in three decades of racist immigration legislation that was designed to reduce the UK’s non-white population.

 Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Norman Potter/Getty Images

It found that the “deep-rooted racism of the Windrush scandal” had roots in the fact that “during the period 1950-1981, every single piece of immigration or citizenship legislation was designed at least in part to reduce the number of people with black or brown skin who were permitted to live and work in the UK”.

The leaked copy of the government-commissioned paper, which the Home Office has repeatedly refused to make public, lists a few specific examples. Here are some of those considered among the most damaging:

• The 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act introduced a voucher system, whereby only a limited number of migrants from the Commonwealth were permitted to enter the UK, curtailing free movement within the British empire and restricting an open-door policy that had been enshrined in law in 1948

• The 1968 Commonwealth Immigrants Act altered the rules on who could apply for employment vouchers, dividing applicants into “belonging” and “non-belonging” citizens. To qualify as belonging, an individual had to prove a connection to the UK through a parents or a grandparent – in other words, “belonging” was a euphemism for “white”. The legislation also deprived more than one million individuals worldwide of their right to enter Britain, including those from the Caribbean, Malaysia and Singapore, many of whom held only British passports and were thus rendered effectively stateless.

• The 1971 Immigration Act further constrained Commonwealth citizens’ right to enter the UK, ending large-scale immigration from the Commonwealth. It introduced a new term, “patrial”, to describe those to whom immigration controls would not apply. A “patrial” was defined as an individual who had a grandparent born in the UK, or a parent born or naturalised in the UK. This meant that white citizens of former colonies, such as those from Canada, Australia and other “settler colonies”, were the beneficiaries of positive discrimination in that they were far more likely than their counterparts from places like Jamaica to have UK-born ancestors.

• The 1981 British Nationality Act followed concerns expressed by Margaret Thatcher that “people are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture”. The act required Commonwealth citizens who had settled in the UK to register to become British citizens.