A New Policy or a Return to History? the Historical Roots of Britain’s ‘Sending’ Policy Towards Coloured Migrants: The Uganda Case
"The United Kingdom’s post-war migration policy began to take shape with the arrival of Caribbean migrants in London in 1948, which is considered the starting point for post-imperial migration flows to the British Isles. This date could also be seen as the beginning of the discussion about ‘migration’ among British political elites and ordinary people, as immigrants began to participate in every aspect of societal life."
The British government’s initial reaction to imperial migration flows was very welcoming. This policy (especially from 1948 to 1962) led to a diverse influx of people, particularly from the Caribbean, India, and Pakistan. However, from the 1960s onwards, political and social concerns regarding integration and economic recession led to the emergence of restrictive immigration policies, namely the Commonwealth Immigration Acts.
1971 marked another crisis that British political elites had to handle in post-war British migration history. Uganda decided to send British passport holders back to their original countries after introducing new citizenship criteria. The Uganda crisis made headlines for British political elites, as hundreds of thousands of ‘British citizens’ were about to be expelled. During the heated discussions on the plight of Ugandan British migrants, a Conservative organization, the ‘Money Club,’ suggested an unusual solution: sending Ugandan Asian British passport holders to a location in the British Indian Ocean Territory—a move that resonates with a very recent British policy to send irregular migrants to Rwanda. Within the scope of this study, I will be tracking the roots of the British ‘sending’ policy by examining the Ugandan Asian migration crisis.