What are the origins of today's hostile environment for immigrants in Britain? Using
declassified documents from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office this book tells a secret
history of Britain's role in the end of the age of empires in the 1960s. During the post-war
period as Britain made a huge transfer of sovereign power to its former colonies
international demands for racial equality came to dominate world politics. Despite this new
international recognition of racial equality Britain's colonial and Commonwealth citizens from
the Caribbean Asia and Africa were subject to a new regime of immigration control based on
race. From the Windrush generation who came to the UK from the Caribbean and the South East
Asians who were expelled from East Africa Britain was caught between attempting both to
restrict the rights of its non-white citizens and redefine its imperial role in the world.
Under sustained international pressure Britain appeared to be poised to make a final
transition from a colonial to a postcolonial power symbolized by its desire to join Europe
which eventually happened in 1973. But Britain's post-imperial moment never arrived subject to
endless deferral and reinvention. Instead officials drew upon an imperial vision of the world
to contain what it saw as a vast migration 'crisis'. Citizenship itself was redefined along
racial lines fatally compromising the British Commonwealth and exposing the limits of
Britain's influence in world politics. This book reveals an important untold global history of
post-war immigration uncovering the origins of the present crisis
