TNAG-2099-FCO40-2988-HM-Overseas-Civil-Service-(HMOCS)-policy-matters-1990 — Page 10

CODE 18-77

CONFIDENTIAL

Reference

From:

C Hart

African Section

Research Department OAB 2/137 210 6209

Date: 27 April 1990

Miss Foulds. International Section, RAD.

NATIONALITY OF LOCAL OFFICERS IN COLONIAL GOVERNMENTS

1. Please refer to Mr Stone's minute of 20 April. Under the British Nationality Act of 1948 independent Commonwealth territories had their own citizenship but Colonies had a common U. K and Colonies (UKC) citizenship with the U. K. Protectorates had the inferior status of British Protected Persons, (BPP' s) for those born there but these people could become UKC by naturalisation more easily than aliens. Protectorates were common, often over part only of a territory. Uganda was

Uganda was a Protectorate as was Zanzibar. Nigeria was mostly a Protectorate, Kenya mostly a Colony. Status depended on the exact place of birth. Passports were issued locally to all inhabitants White or Black. They were different from those issued in the UK but all who needed them were not worried about the distinction. An African UKC and a British born UKC had the same status and this was the intention For this reason and to discourage calls for independence in the 1950's demands from some Colonial Governors for a local citizenship were refused.

2.

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At Independence all the African territories including the Mandate of Tanganyika where those born there were also UKC's, were given similar citizenship terms. Constitutions for each in turn were derived fom the previous ones by pasting them up and making manuscipt amendments. In general all those born in the territory who had a parent, and in some West African cases, a grandparent born there, automatically acquired citizenship of the new state. There was no distinction between former UKC's and BPP' s. Also those who were born elsewhere but whose fathers were entitled to citizenship, whether alive or had they been so at Independence, also qualified.

3. The rest, mostly Asians and Europeans, were given 2 years to register as citizens and to renounce their existing nationality. The British Nationality Act (number one) 1964 was designed to assure UK belongers only that they could revert as of right to UKC status if they had done this and wanted to change their status later. This, for the first time introduced belonger status in the UK law which the parentage provisions of the new constitutions implicitly had done for the African. This left the Asians with no such easy choice. They had either to take up the "local Option" or

CONFIDENTIAL