ABSTRACT
In the 1950s when Britain was trying to rebuild its war-devastated economy it needed labor. Long years of imperial history made it turn reflexively to its ex-colonies to fill its needs. Dislocated from their ancestral homes when the British partitioned India, thousands of Pakistanis and Indians responded by moving to Britain in search of a new life. By the late 1950s and early 1960s the South Asian migrants in Britain had reached a sizeable number, at least large enough to cause racial riots. The Conservative government, experiencing a downturn in the economy, claimed the migrants were “taking away jobs” from the indigenous people. Controls on immigration from the “colored” Commonwealth were proposed in Parliament. Fear of these controls led South Asian workers to bring friends and families to Britain before the 1962 Immigration Act went into effect (Anwar 1986:9). These new arrivals flocked to the areas where members of their extended families and villages lived and worked (Anwar 1979; Jeffery 1976). The 1960s also saw an influx of Indian and Pakistani students to British universities, a number of whom stayed on as doctors, lawyers, teachers and writers.
