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future, but it was more difficult to decide which of the British subjects then alive should become citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies. The Act gave that citizenship not only to British subjects then alive who had ties with the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, or with a Colony, but also gave it to some British subjects who did not, for one reason or another, acquire the citizenship of another Commonwealth country. But most of the Commonwealth countries which were then independent had yet to pass their citizenship laws, and the 1948 Act therefore provided that British subjects who had ties with those countries should be regarded as potential citizens of them. These people remained British subjects but had to wait for a final determination of their status until the countries with which they were associated were deemed to have passed citizenship laws (or until they acquired citizenship of another Commonwealth country or of the Republic of Ireland in some other way, or became aliens). Only if they then failed to obtain a citizenship would they become citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies. In the meantime they were to hold the temporary non-transmissible status of British subject without citizenship.
GRA
5.
The Act also provided that all those holding citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies or of a Commonwealth country should be regarded in United Kingdom law as British subjects (or Commonwealth citizens the terms were to be synonymous), and exempted them from the disabilities of aliens. Citizens of Eire were similarly exempted, and those who were alive when the Act came into force and had been British subjects with ties with the United Kingdom were enabled to give notice to remain so. The Act made it easy for a citizen of a Commonwealth country who had come to live in the United Kingdom to acquire citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies; he had merely to show that he had been ordinarily resident here for 12 months. Other provisions of the Act enabled British women who married foreigners to keep their citizenship on marriage (before the Act they had ceased to be British subjects automatically), and gave women from other countries who married citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies the right to acquire their husband's citizenship, on application. But British women could not in any circumstances transmit their citizenship to their children born over- seas, and the husbands of British women had no right to acquire their wives' citizenship. The Act was followed by an Order which made new arrangements for the status of British Protected Persons.
6.
It is worth emphasising at this point that the 1948 Act dealt with nationality and citizenship but not with the control of immigration to the United Kingdom. At that time British subjects/Commonwealth Citizens were entitled to enter and leave the United Kingdom freely; it was not until 1962 that any of them became subject to immigration control,
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