British subject status. After a conference held in London in 1947, the other independent countries of the Commonwealth followed suit, as have other countries on achieving their independence within the Commonwealth. Under the new
arrangements, each country was to determine who were its citizens, to declare those citizens to be British subjects, and to recognise as British subjects the citizens of other Commonwealth countries. However, each country was left free to decide what this recognition should entail, so that the content of British subject status has come to vary widely within the Commonwealth.
4. The Act of 1948 introduced these principles into United Kingdom law. It created a citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies, with the continuing status of British subject, and laid down rules for its acquisition. It was relatively simple to provide how this status should be acquired in 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
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