Category: Immigration
-
Enoch Powell and the immigration “challenge” to Thatcher (1985)
In the file on the Scarman Report and the 1985 Handsworth riots that has been recently released by the National Archives, there is a series of documents concerning a challenge made by Enoch Powell to Margaret Thatcher to clarify her position on immigration. Speaking to the Birkenhead Conservative Women’s Association in September 1985 (two weeks…
-
State crime and the migrant experience in the UK
After the coverage of the number of recent deaths of black people at the hands of the police in the United States and the commentary about similar victims of police/prison brutality in the UK and Australia, I thought I would post this excerpt from our book Race, Gender and the Body in British Immigration Control.…
-
The Prevention of Terrorism Acts and exclusion orders: 40 years since their introduction
This week it will be forty years since the introduction of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (Temporary Provisions) 1974, passed quickly in the aftermath of the Birmingham pub bombings in November 1974. The POTA was a broad piece of counter-terrorism legislation and many of the controversial elements of contemporary legislation concerning counter-terrorism and national security…
-
Trends in myths about immigration
Today The Guardian published a very thorough Q&A about European immigration to the UK and addressed some of the routinely asked questions about immigration, particularly as UKIP and the Tories seem to want to make immigration an issue at the next election. As I was reading the article, I was reminded that many of the…
-
UK border control has long history of screening for ‘unhealthy’ migrants
High on the excitement of a potential by-election victory this week, UKIP’s Nigel Farage has called for immigration restrictions on people with HIV. This proposal has been roundly criticised as prejudiced against people with HIV, as well as impractical (as argued by The Guardian‘s Sarah Boseley). But Farage’s suggestion taps into a longer history of…
-
Anwar Ditta and the discriminatory border control system
The following is based on an excerpt from our book Race, Gender and the Body in British Immigration Control: Subject to Examination (Palgrave Macmillan). It discusses the case of Anwar Ditta, a British-Pakistani woman who fought the UK immigration control system for four years to get the authorities to allow her three children into the country. Only after…
-
Chinese students at Grunwick? An overlooked aspect of the strike
I am currently looking through the photographs I took in the archives during my recent UK trip and today have been looking through the papers of the Grunwick Strike Committee (held by the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick). This material will probably be used in my forthcoming book on the Communist Party…
-
CIGH’s Imperial & Global Forum blog on colonial origins of ‘virginity testing’ practice
The blog of the Centre for Imperial and Global History at the University of Exeter has kindly published an article by Marinella Marmo and I on the colonial origins of the ‘virginity testing’ practice. The article is based on part of our new book, Race, Gender and the Body in British Immigration Control, which outlines…
-
The PFLP/RAF terrorist who evaded the UK border control system: Zohair Akache and the ‘German Autumn’
In 1980, Lord Carrington, the new Foreign Secretary under Margaret Thatcher, ordered a review of how the UK border control system was utilised in the fight against terrorism, particularly in relation to terrorists from the Middle East and North Africa. The catalyst for this review were two incidents in May 1980 – the siege at…
New Historical Express 