Two world wars and inter-war migration
The First World War and Its Refugees
The outbreak of war in August 1914 immediately transformed Britain’s relationship with migrants. The Status of Aliens Act 1914 required all foreign nationals to register with police and restricted their movement (the registration and internment powers themselves came from its companion, the Aliens Restriction Act, passed in the same month). Thousands of German and Austro-Hungarian nationals already living in Britain — many of them long-term residents, some with British-born children — were interned or forced to leave. This was a sharp reversal of the relatively open Britain that had existed before 1905.
At the same time, Britain received its first mass refugee influx of the twentieth century: approximately 250,000 Belgian civilians who fled the German invasion. British public opinion was broadly sympathetic — Belgium’s fate was framed as a war of German aggression against a small neutral nation, and “poor little Belgium” became a propaganda staple. Belgians were housed across Britain, from country houses to purpose-built camps. However, by 1919 the British government was encouraging all Belgian refugees to return home, and most did.
In 1919, race riots broke out in several British port cities — Cardiff, Liverpool, Glasgow and South Shields — directed at Black and Asian sailors and their families. The riots followed demobilisation, when white servicemen returned to find jobs taken by Black and Asian workers recruited during the war. The violence was severe: in Liverpool, a man named Charles Wootton drowned in Queen’s Dock trying to escape a mob. These events demonstrate that wartime solidarity and post-war hostility could coexist, and that the experiences of Black and Asian people in Britain were shaped by economic competition as well as racial prejudice.
Jewish Refugees in the 1930s
The rise of the Nazi regime in Germany from 1933 produced a new refugee crisis. Jews, political opponents, Roma and others faced systematic persecution, including the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 that stripped German Jews of citizenship. Initially, British policy was cautious: the Home Office limited the number of German Jews admitted, citing fears of antisemitism in Britain and concerns about economic competition during the Depression. By 1938, after Kristallnacht, the urgency became impossible to ignore.
British attitudes to Jewish refugees in the 1930s were genuinely mixed. Some charitable organisations, church groups and individuals worked hard to bring refugees to safety. Politicians including Winston Churchill argued for a more generous policy. But there were also significant barriers: government ministers feared public opposition, newspaper coverage was sometimes hostile, and the visa system remained restrictive for many desperate families. Thousands of Jews who applied for British visas were refused and later perished in the Holocaust.
After Kristallnacht, the British government agreed to a special scheme to bring Jewish children to Britain without their parents — the Kindertransport. Between December 1938 and the outbreak of war in September 1939, approximately 10,000 children arrived in Britain, placed with foster families or in hostels. Nicholas Winton privately organised the rescue of 669 children specifically from Czechoslovakia and is the most famous individual associated with the scheme.
The Kindertransport is often cited as a moment of British generosity. But historians have noted that it also reflected the limits of that generosity: adults were not included, and the scheme operated on the understanding that the children would eventually return. Most of the children’s parents perished in the Holocaust. The children themselves grew up as refugees — separated from their families, speaking accented English, and navigating a complex dual identity.
Polish Settlement After 1945
Poland’s wartime experience created another significant refugee community in Britain. Around 250,000 Polish servicemen and women had served with the Allied forces, including the famous Polish squadrons of the RAF who contributed substantially to the Battle of Britain in 1940. When the war ended and Poland came under Soviet control, many Polish veterans faced a difficult choice: return to a Communist-governed country where some were targeted for their wartime service, or remain in Britain.
The Polish Resettlement Act of 1947 offered Polish veterans and their families the right to settle in Britain. Approximately 120,000 Poles chose to remain. Their reception was mixed: trade unions feared competition for jobs, and some newspapers depicted them as economic migrants rather than war heroes. In Scotland, some communities organised protests against Polish workers in local industries. The episode illustrates that even communities with strong claims to British gratitude could face hostility in post-war conditions of economic scarcity.
The British Nationality Act of 1948 defined British nationality in terms that included all subjects of the British Empire and Commonwealth. This had direct consequences for post-war migration: it meant that people from the Caribbean, India, Pakistan and other Commonwealth countries had the legal right to come to Britain as British subjects. Though primarily intended to maintain Commonwealth unity, it was the legal framework that made the Windrush generation’s arrival possible — the subject of Lesson 8.
Both world wars produced internment of enemy nationals in Britain. In the First World War, around 30,000 Germans and Austro-Hungarians were interned on the Isle of Man and elsewhere; many were naturalised British subjects who had lived in England for decades. In the Second World War, the “collar the lot” policy of 1940 led to the internment of around 27,000 “enemy aliens,” including Jewish refugees who had fled Nazism — a deeply ironic consequence of war panic. The SS Arandora Star, carrying internees to Canada, was sunk by a German torpedo in July 1940, killing around 800 people, many of them Italian and German Jewish refugees.
These episodes show how the experience of migrants and ethnic minority communities was dramatically shaped by international events beyond their control. People who had built lives in Britain over decades could find themselves reclassified as enemies overnight when war broke out. Their loyalty to Britain was questioned precisely because of their foreign origins, regardless of their actual sentiments.