ESSAY - “In the circumstances, the Commonwealth Immigrant Act of 1962 was a justified piece of legislation.”

Note: these are essays written by me and have not been marked, so may contain mistakes. Please use for revision purposes only :)  

“In the circumstances, the Commonwealth Immigrant Act of 1962 was a justified piece of legislation.” To what extent do you agree with this statement? (45 marks)

Immigration pre 1962 was growing immensely and at a rate which eventually required government intervention. The Immigration Act of 1962 was one of the ways in which the Conservative government believed that they could control immigration. This was inevitably controversial, with people such as the Labour party arguing that the legislation was racist and unnecessary whereas other groups of people believed the Act was needed and beneficial for the country. Of course, it could be argued either way but with growing tensions between two races, the black people and the white people, the Immigration Act was justified in the eyes of the government; however other people were not so quick to agree.

Over crowdedness was a major issue that Britain had to face from the influx in Immigration. Britain was already described as a “crowded island” with the highest population density in the world. Immigration only made it worse as people from all over the Commonwealth came and settled in Britain with the view that Britain was their mother country and jobs were available as soon as they set foot on British land. In reality, immigration was causing many problems regarding housing, with houses often becoming overcrowded and therefore reducing living standards. Landlords began to increase rent, slums started to be created – Britain could not cope with so many people. As a result, the government passed the Immigration Act and so for these reasons, the act was justifiable to control the amount of people settling in Britain.   

Furthermore, it was argued that with the increase in immigration came the decrease in the amount of jobs. The flood of immigrants in Britain vastly reduced the amount of jobs as most came for that purpose, so they were willing to work for longer and for lower wages. This made them appealing to employers, because they would be cheaper to employ, thus the availability of jobs will fall as more immigrants are employed but the rate of immigration was ever increasing at the same time. Subsequently, this could result in trouble for the British economy if they went back into recession due to the lack of jobs and wages being cut – in this case the Immigration act was justified since the voucher system would regulate the matching of people to job vacancies hence solving this problem.

Similarly, the immigrants were claimed to be making unreasonable demands on the welfare state. It was no secret that the welfare state and the formation of the NHS back in 1945 was very appealing to the immigrants which was one of the reasons that they decided to settle in Britain. However, people began to complain that they made no contribution to the welfare state. They argued that the Immigrants would be living on national assistance instead of making their own money and therefore should not be allowed to live in this country. The government seemed to agree with this view as they passed the immigration act on the basis that the Immigrants did not in fact contribute to the welfare state and so the immigrants who did, such as the people who were guaranteed jobs, were allowed to come in through the voucher system.

Finally, the main justification for passing the 1962 Immigration act was due to the escalating tensions between the white native people of Britain and the black immigrants. The white people, with years of propaganda in their minds, believed they were inferior to the black people and therefore hostility existed between the two races. The fact that the immigrants tended to inhibit small towns and cities in clusters did not help them mingle with the whites. However, the tensions soon turned into violence. 1958 saw the breakout of riots in places such as Nottingham, Bristol and poorer districts of London. There seemed to be a trend with all these riots – they were usually started by gangs of white youths who went round and insulted the black residents who, unsurprisingly, retaliated. The Salmon report gave a few reasons for the underlying reasons for the break out such as: the anger that the blacks were working for low wages, bitterness at the rise of rents (which was blamed on the blacks) and the “teddy boys” playing local heroes by using violence to reduce the number of black residents. This is clear evidence that the immigration act was a justified piece of legislation because more violence and death would be caused if immigration and the number of black residents continued to rise and tensions continue to mount.

Historians such as Ruth Brown agree that the legislation was needed mainly to control the amount of immigrants coming in. She acknowledged that the level of immigration was “slightly too high in relation to actual job opportunities in Britain” therefore showing that there may have been a problem in that aspect.

On the other hand, the Labour party argued vehemently that the Commonwealth Immigration Act was a racist legislation. It was the first legislation which introduced restrictions on British Commonwealth citizens – the target, consequently, was the Black and Asian immigrants. Although the Conservatives hotly denied any racial prejudice, Cyril Osborn (a conservative politician) openly stated that they did not want Britain to become a “chocolate coloured” society.  This is confirmation that the Act was racist as it not only denied citizens from coming to Britain due to their ethnic origin but also because people wanted Britain to remain all white, therefore the Act was not a justified piece of legislation.

Likewise, the Act denied people’s basic human rights. Immigration controls meant that people no longer had the right to choose where they wish to live and work. It also denied them legal protection, since people immigrated to Britain due to financial and social problems in their own country, so they could not claim asylum or join family here. The fact that the Act denied them access into Britain meant they had to stay in their own country, causing many people will suffer. This was a serious consequence of the Act and so was not a justified legislation.

Moreover, Labour also argued that overcrowding was neither an issue nor a justification of the Act. Free entry had not produced overcrowding in the past and so would not be a problem now. With regards to housing, immigration laws were unnecessary as overcrowding can be solved by building more and better houses. Regardless, immigrants seldom complained about where they lived even if it was overcrowded. This shows that the Act was not needed as there were other ways in which problems with immigration can be solved.

Also, there was actually no evidence that the Immigrants made no contributions to the welfare state. In fact, the immigrants were said to be helping to run the health services as doctors, nurses and other occupations within the health service which helped the overall running of such a vital part of Britain. Not only that, but people seemed to have forgotten that the colonies were fundamental to the survival of British trade and economy. Britain exploited their resources and used their help to win the Second World War as many colonial people joined the British army. In this way, the Immigrants have made a vast contribution to Britain in the past and so the excuse that the immigrants made no contributions to Britain was not a justification of the Immigration act, but in turn it is Britain who ultimately owes them a debt.

The question of the number of jobs available is another issue that does not justify the passing of the Immigration act, according to the Labour party. This is because they stated that the relationship between jobs and numbers was self-regulating. This meant that if there were fewer jobs available, then less people will immigrate into the country, and vice versa. The fact that immigrants came for the sole purpose of finding a job means they will be willing to do jobs that others may be reluctant to do, but is nevertheless needed. This shows that the Immigrants will have very little effect on the number of jobs and will actually benefit the country if they are here.

Lastly, the social tensions between white people and black immigrants were, it was claimed, not as excessive as first thought. This is because the tensions were at places which a vast amount of immigrants such as London and Notting Hill, but not in other parts of the country. This can easily be sorted by punishing the wrongdoers individually and by moving the immigrants so they are more spread out across the country. In this way, there will be fewer cases of overcrowding as they will be given better homes and a better chance at welcoming multiculturalism into British society. This therefore shows that it was not compulsory to have Immigration policies be determined by individual prejudices and discrimination.

A historian who completely agreed with these views was Robert Pearce. He agreed to the fact that the Bill was “effectively racist” even though race was not mentioned in the drawing up of the Act. He did mention that the riots caused by social tension needed to be solved but the Immigration Bill was not the way to do this.   

In conclusion, the Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1962 was, in my opinion, a justified piece of legislation. I believe this purely because immigration by the 1960’s was, undoubtedly, spiralling out of control with the number of immigrants more than doubling between 1960 and 1961 – the figures jumped from 58,300 immigrants to 125,400. This is clear evidence that something must be done to prevent the numbers from growing any further, so the Act was introduced. The Act was useful to an extent as it did achieve to reduce immigration; however there was an aspect of racism in the legislation which was unfair and uncalled for. The government could have approached the difficulty of Immigration in another way, such as punishing the wrongdoers themselves or improving housing, and so I do consider the act to be justified, but to an extent.