TNAG-0979-FCO40-1198-Implications-for-Hong-Kong-of-changes-in-British-nationality-1980 — Page 69

APPENDIX B

NATIONALITY LAW UP TO THE PRESENT

Some

(This material was contained in paragraphs 3-12 of the Green Paper.

adjustments have been made to the figures of population to bring them up to date so far as is possible).

Before 1949

1.

Before 1 January 1949 when the 1948 Act came into force, everyone who owed

perpetual allegiance to the British Monarch (for example, by birth in the United Kingdom, a Dominion or a Colony) was a British subject.

There were

also large numbers of people to whom British protection had been granted

(British Protected Persons). But the need to identify the people of each

self-governing Dominion by means of a distinct national status more narrowly

defined than British nationality was increasingly felt in those countries.

Eventually, in 1946, Canada created its own citizenship, although still within

the framework of 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.

The British Nationality Act 1948

2. 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

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