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• After World War Two, Britain needed to be rebuilt, but faced a severe labour shortage. The government decided to invite people from the Commonwealth to come and work in Britain.
• The 1948 British Nationality Act said that all Commonwealth citizens could have British passports and work in the UK.
• ​​Conflict in India and Pakistan in the years following Partition, the expulsion of Ugandan Asians and unrest elsewhere in Africa all contributed to an increasing number of migrants to Britain after World War Two.

After World War Two, Britain was left in ruins. There were thousands of jobs that needed to be filled, as well as homes and companies that needed rebuilding.

The British government offered work to people who were living in the Commonwealth. Under the British Nationality Act 1948, all Commonwealth citizens had the same rights to live and work in the UK as British citizens.

World War Two ended in 1945. In the decades that followed, hundreds of thousands of people migrated to Britain for different reasons and from several newly independent nations.

• From 1948 to 1971, around 500,000 people migrated from the Caribbean as part of the Windrush generation.
• After the Partition of India in 1947, millions of people were displaced and many migrated to escape the violence. By 1951, it is estimated that there were 43,000 South Asians living in Britain.
• When Ugandan President Idi Amin ordered all 80,000 Ugandan Asians to leave the country within 90 days, Britain eventually agreed to resettle 27,000 of the refugees permanently.
• There had been steady numbers of migrants from West and South Africa to Britain in the 1900s, which increased from the 1980s onwards.

Following Indian independence in 1947, many jobs in India also disappeared. People who worked for British companies or in port towns with British traders were now left without a job. This meant the opportunity to work in Britain was very appealing to many Indians.

Following the Partition of India, Pakistan had a Muslim-majority population, while India had a Hindu-majority population. The Partition of India resulted in the death of 1 million people as Hindu minorities in Pakistan tried to migrate to the new state of India, and Muslim minorities in India tried to migrate to the new state of Pakistan.

Hundreds of thousands more migrated from India and Pakistan to other countries to escape the violence and find a place to rebuild their lives. Some of these people migrated to Britain.

32,000 Indians had migrated to Kenya and Uganda in the 1890s to help build the railway between the two British colonies. Many of them were indentured labourers. Once the railway was complete, most returned to India. However, several thousand stayed in Uganda to build a new life.

In 1969, the government introduced work permits that would limit the work of Ugandan Asians who were not Ugandan citizens. When Idi Amin became the president of Uganda in 1971, he went much further and declared that Ugandan Asians may lose their citizenship.

In August 1972, President Idi Amin ordered all 80,000 Ugandan Asians to be expelled within 90 days. Amin said that Britain should take responsibility for Ugandan Asians as many of them were Commonwealth citizens. He declared that any remaining in Uganda after 8 November 1972 would be imprisoned in a military camp.

23,000 Ugandan Asians had Ugandan citizenship and were later allowed to stay. However, many chose to leave after Ugandan soldiers carried out acts of violence against the remaining Asian communities. Those in the process of applying for citizenship had their application cancelled and were forced to leave.

Early migration from West Africa

There has been a Nigerian presence in Britain for over 200 years. Olaudah Equiano lived in London in the 1700s. He wrote in his autobiography that he came from the Kingdom of Benin, in what is now modern-day Nigeria. In the early 1900s, it was common for Nigerians to migrate temporarily to study in Britain before returning to Nigeria.

There is evidence that there was a Ghanaian presence in early-modern England. In 1555, John Lok brought five enslaved Africans from a village called Shama, in what is now modern-day Ghana, to England. There is evidence of small groups migrating to England from this part of West Africa from this period onwards, as trade between the two regions continued. Britain eventually colonised this part of West Africa in the 1800s.

Migration since the 1960s

Following Nigerian independence in 1960, migration to Britain steadily increased as political unrest and the Nigerian Civil War, which began in 1967 and ended in 1970, led many people to leave Nigeria. The number of people migrating to Britain from Nigeria steadily increased throughout the 1900s. As of 2019 there are an estimated 215,000 Nigerian-born residents in the UK.

People began to migrate from Ghana to Britain in much larger numbers from the 1960s onwards as the economic conditions in Ghana did not improve as much as expected following independence in 1957. In 1961 a census of the United Kingdom recorded 10,000 residents born in Ghana, which had increased to over 95,000 by 2011.

The British Nationality Act 1948 meant that anyone who had a Commonwealth passport had the right to live and work in Britain. Between 1962 and 1971 the British government had put several laws in place to limit immigration from Commonwealth countries, which included Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria and Ghana.

By 1971, Commonwealth citizens could only be granted entry to Britain with a temporary work voucher. However, after Idi Amin’s announcement that all Ugandan Asians were to be expelled, the British government had to decide how they would respond to the refugee crisis. They decided to allow 27,000 Ugandan Asians to migrate to Britain.

While these 27,000 refugees were able to escape persecution in Uganda, they faced a lot of hostility when they arrived in Britain. Following the mass arrival of Ugandan Asians there were anti-immigration protests by the National Front, a far-right group that wanted to ban all non-white immigration to Britain.

In 2001, a UK census said that 55,000 people in Britain had been born in Uganda. There is still a small Ugandan Asian population in Britain today, although many felt able to return after Yoweri Museveni became President of Uganda in 1986.

By 1965, there were almost 1 million immigrants living in Britain. At this time, it was not against the law to treat people differently depending on the colour of their skin.

In December 1965, the Government introduced the Race Relations Act. This new law aimed to prevent discrimination on the basis of race. It made it illegal to discriminate against someone because of the colour of their skin or their ethnic or national background in public places, such as cinemas and restaurants.

The government introduced this law because Black and Asian people, who had migrated to Britain after World War Two, had been suffering a lot of anger and discrimination in Britain. The new law was an attempt to prevent this discrimination, but many people of colour continued to face racism. The act did not include public places like shops, and many people suffered discrimination when they applied for jobs.

The Government introduced a new Race Relations Act in 1968, which aimed to address some of the problems that migrants continued to face. It made it illegal for someone to be refused housing, a job or services - such as taking out a loan at a bank - on the basis of their ethnic background.

In 1976, the Government introduced a third Race Relations Act, which specifically defined different types of discrimination.