Act (UK Public General)
Passed by the British Parliament

1948

British Nationality Act
An Act to make provision for British nationality and for citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies

Key features of the British Nationality Act 1948:

• It established the status of Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies (CUKC), national citizenship of the United Kingdom and those places which were still British colonies on 1 January 1949, when the 1948 Act came into force.
• The Act conferred the status of British citizen on all Commonwealth subjects and recognised their right to work and settle in the UK and to bring their families with them.

• Prior to this nationality status was assigned according to the Sophia Naturalization Act of 1705. Sophia was not considered to be an Englishwoman as she had not been born in England. This Act naturalised her and "the issue of her body" as English subjects. Naturalisation was restricted to those of the Protestant faith. However any person born to a descendant of Sophia could also claim to be the "issue of her body".
• The act effectively allowed any one of the 800 million subjects of the King in the British Empire to enter, live and work in the UK, without needing a visa. At the time many MP’s thought that few citizens of the Empire would want to reside in the UK.
• The Act effectively created a global British labour market .
• 1948 – 1961 became known as the ‘Open Door’ period and generated hostility out of all proportion to its size, especially during times of economic downturn.
• The journey of the SS Empire Windrush from Kingston, Jamaica to Tilbury in Essex in June 1948 with almost 500 West Indians on board intent on starting new lives in Britain has become the symbolic starting point for this period of immigration.
• Between 1948 and 1962 approximately 250,000 African-Caribbean immigrants settled in Britain, the majority arriving in the 1950s

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Nationality_Act_1948
http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/English/Collections/OnlineResources/X20L/Themes/1386/
http://uk.encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_1481611617_3/Migration_into_Britain.html
http://www.nationalar

Liz Peadon

CREDS, Cambridgeshire County Council

Researcher