therefore provided that British subjects who had ties with those countries shou 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-trans- missible, status of British Subject without Citizenship.
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 overseas, 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.
Changes since the 1948 Act
7. The scheme set up under the Act has met with various difficulties. First, the status of British Subject without Citizenship, which was intended to be transitional, has persisted. This is because India and Pakistan enacted citizenship laws in 1950 and 1951 which withheld citizenship from many people who had derived their status of British subject from their connection with those terri- tories and who were regarded by the British Government at the time of the passing of the 1948 Act as potential citizens of those countries. The United Kingdom did not feel able to grant citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies to all these people from India and Pakistan who had failed to acquire such citizenships. They often had no connection with the United Kingdom or a Colony then existing. The status of British Subject without Citizenship has therefore remained in existence longer than originally expected, but as people have obtained other citizenships they have ceased to hold it, and since it relates to people born before 1949, the numbers are diminishing.
8
8. Other problems developed as more countries of the Commonwealth became independent. Some of these countries did not, at independence, confer their citizenship on all the citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies who had ties with them. Kenya, for instance, did not give its citizenship automatically to citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies born in Kenya before indepen- dence, unless one parent had been born there. There were similar problems with British Protected Persons linked with some territories. So significant numbers of people, for instance in East Africa and Malaysia, did not acquire local citizenship on independence and remained citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies or British Protected Persons even though they had no close connections either with the United Kingdom or with one of the remaining Colonies. Often they hold no other citizenship.
9. Over the years the 1948 Act has been amended about 40 times. There have been various reasons for this. A large number of Colonies have become independent and it has been necessary to withdraw citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies from people who acquired citizenship of the newly independent country but had not at the same time a close connection with the United Kingdom or a continuing Colony. Other amendments have been needed when countries, for example South Africa and Pakistan, have left the Common- wealth, to provide that although their nationals were henceforward foreigners in United Kingdom law they were to continue, for a limited time, to retain their eligibility to acquire our citizenship by registration as if they had continued to be Commonwealth citizens, rather than by naturalisation. Important amend- ments in the qualifications for acquiring citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies were made in the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 and the Immigration Act 1971. Apart from these amendments there have been others, for example to meet the United Kingdom's obligations under international agreements. As a result of these numerous amendments British nationality law has become difficult to follow.
10. The most serious drawback to the status of citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies is that it does not provide a ready definition of who has the right of entry to the United Kingdom. In most other western countries, citizens- and citizens only-automatically have the right of entry. Under our system, a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies may not have any close ties with the United Kingdom, or even with a remaining Colony. So, when successive Governments have found it necessary to control immigration from the Common- wealth, they have felt obliged to distinguish between the citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies whose close ties with the United Kingdom gave them a claim to be freely admitted here, and the remainder. These distinctions within a common citizenship have been hard to follow. They have caused confusion and have encouraged the belief that our immigration laws contain elements of racial prejudice. The Immigration Act 1971 increased the confusion, since not only did distinctions within the citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies continue, but the right of entry was also conferred, to a limited degree, on certain citizens of other Commonwealth countries. As a result, for example, certain Australian and Indian citizens may have a right of entry to the United Kingdom which some citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies do not possess.
11. As a background to discussion of all the issues, it will be useful to give some idea of the number of people involved. Altogether there are about 950
9
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.