Immigration: Windrush, race riots and Enoch Powell
Post-War Migration and the Empire Windrush
After the Second World War, Britain faced a severe labour shortage. Industries from the National Health Service to London Transport needed workers that the domestic population could not supply. Recruiters actively sought workers from Britain’s colonies and former colonies in the Caribbean, South Asia, and West Africa. The British Nationality Act 1948 gave all Commonwealth citizens the right to settle in Britain. They were British subjects in law, invited or at least welcomed as essential workers.
The most famous symbol of this migration is the Empire Windrush, which docked at Tilbury, Essex, on 22 June 1948, carrying approximately 1,027 passengers from the Caribbean — largely from Jamaica, Trinidad, and Barbados. Newspaper photographs of passengers descending the gangway became iconic images. Most came expecting to work, earn, and return home; many stayed. The date — 22 June — is now commemorated as Windrush Day.
Between 1948 and 1962, an estimated 500,000 Caribbean migrants came to Britain. They settled mainly in areas of affordable housing and manufacturing work: the Notting Hill and Brixton areas of London, Birmingham, Bradford, and other industrial cities. They faced hostility from landlords who refused rooms to Black tenants, from employers who paid lower wages, and from neighbours who objected to their presence.
The Notting Hill Riots, 1958
In late August and early September 1958, serious racial violence erupted in the Notting Hill area of west London and in Nottingham. White youths, some associated with the fascist White Defence League, attacked Black residents and their homes over several nights. Buildings were petrol-bombed. In Notting Hill, an estimated 400 white youths attacked Black homes and businesses. The police response was widely criticised as inadequate and sometimes biased.
The Notting Hill riots were a turning point. They demonstrated that racial tension was not hypothetical but deadly real. Out of the Notting Hill riots came, indirectly, the Notting Hill Carnival; an outdoor street carnival was first organised in 1966 by Rhaune Laslett as a community-building response to the violence — it became one of the largest street festivals in Europe. The riots also accelerated political debate about immigration control.
The Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962, passed under Harold Macmillan’s Conservative government, was the first major restriction on Commonwealth immigration. It required Commonwealth citizens (other than those born or holding passports issued in the UK) to obtain employment vouchers before entering. The Act effectively ended the open-door policy of the 1948 Nationality Act.
A second Commonwealth Immigrants Act in 1968, passed hastily by Harold Wilson’s Labour government in just three days, targeted East African Asians — British passport holders facing expulsion from Kenya — by requiring them to have a “substantial connection” with Britain. Critics argued this was racially discriminatory. These acts reflected the political difficulty of both controlling immigration and treating all Commonwealth citizens equally.
Enoch Powell and the ‘Rivers of Blood’ Speech
On 20 April 1968, Enoch Powell, Conservative Shadow Cabinet member and MP for Wolverhampton South West, gave a speech in Birmingham predicting catastrophic social conflict if immigration continued. He quoted a constituent saying that in fifteen or twenty years “the black man will have the whip hand over the white man” and referenced a passage from Virgil’s Aeneid. Journalists named it the “Rivers of Blood” speech after his Virgilian allusion.
The reaction was immediate and dramatic. Conservative leader Edward Heath sacked Powell from the Shadow Cabinet the next day. But the speech attracted enormous popular support: opinion polls suggested more than 70% of the public agreed with Powell’s concerns about immigration levels. London dockers and Smithfield meat porters marched in support of Powell. His speech transformed the immigration debate and made race a permanent fixture of mainstream British politics. It also caused lasting pain to Black and Asian communities, providing language and apparent legitimacy for racist attacks.
Powell was sacked from the Conservative Shadow Cabinet the day after his 1968 speech by Edward Heath. But polling showed over 70% public support. This gap between political and public reaction revealed how deep racial anxiety ran in sections of British society — and how immigration had become a politically explosive issue by the late 1960s.
Race Relations Legislation
Alongside immigration control, governments legislated against racial discrimination. The Race Relations Acts of 1965, 1968, and 1976 built a progressively stronger legal framework. The 1965 Act was the first to make racial discrimination in public places unlawful and established the Race Relations Board. The 1968 Act extended coverage to housing, employment, and commercial services. The 1976 Act (under the Labour government) strengthened enforcement, established the Commission for Racial Equality, and introduced the concept of indirect discrimination.
The legislation coexisted uncomfortably with immigration controls: the message appeared to be “those who are here should be treated equally, but fewer should come.” The National Front emerged as a significant far-right presence in the early 1970s, marching in areas with large Black and Asian communities and contesting elections. By the late 1970s, anti-fascist campaigns (Anti-Nazi League, Rock Against Racism) mobilised tens of thousands in response.
Caribbean, South Asian, and East African Asian migrants made vital contributions to post-war Britain. NHS staff, bus drivers, factory workers, small business owners, teachers, and doctors — migrants filled gaps across the economy and public services. Yet they faced persistent discrimination in housing (landlords who displayed “No Coloureds” signs), in employment (lower wages, blocked promotions), and in everyday life (racist abuse and physical violence).
Communities responded by creating their own institutions: temples, mosques, churches, social clubs, and newspapers. The Notting Hill Carnival (outdoor street carnival from 1966) celebrated Caribbean culture. Southall’s Sikh and Hindu communities built temples that became centres of community life. These communities were building genuinely new British identities — neither simply “British” in the traditional sense nor simply the culture of a distant home country.