ABSTRACT
On 5 July 1945, the Conservative Party led by Winston Churchill suffered a resounding defeat at the hands of the British electorate. Clement Attlee became the new Prime Minister on 27 July. His government, which remained in power until 1951, is usually associated with policies such as the nationalisation of industry, expanding the welfare state and further peaceful withdrawal from empire. It is seldom remembered for instigating an inward movement of roughly 1 million people from continental Europe, Ireland, the dominions and colonies.1 If the subject of migration is mentioned at all in relevant surveys of the Attlee era, references are usually limited to the Empire Windrush, the former German cruise liner2 that arrived from the West Indies in 1948 with almost 500 immigrants on board.
