ABSTRACT
Following the Second World War, despite the restrictionism typified by the response to victims of the Holocaust, Britain became home to a heterogeneous mass of people displaced by the war, primarily from eastern Europe, who were unable to return to their place of origin. The government, wishing to avoid moral responsibility, did not classify them as refugees but as 'displaced persons' accepted for economic reasons. The International Refugee Organisation, formed in 1947, defined displaced persons as
victims ... of the Nazi or fascist... or ... quisling regimes ... [or] persons who were considered refugees before the outbreak of the second world war, for reasons of race, religion, nationality or political opinion ... who [have] been deported from, or obliged to leave [their] country of nationality or of former habitual residence.
