영국 노동당 정부(1964-70)의 이민-인종정책

Abstract

This thesis aims to study the development of British immigration-race policy established by Harold Wilson’s Labour government from 1964-70. Today, Britain is a multi-racial, multi-cultural society in which less than 10% of its residents have ancestors who immigrated to Britain from the British Empire and New Commonwealth after 1945. Facing the unwanted inflow of British subjects with darker skin and unfamiliar cultural backgrounds, British governments have introduced various legislative and administrative measures to stem the inflow of these people and to integrate already-settled immigrants into society. The 1964-70 Labour government period is especially critical in establishing the two-fold strategy of exclusive immigration policy on one side and inclusive immigrant policy on the other side, which has been passed down even until today. Scholars generally agree that the 1964-70 Labour government period is an important time in the development of British immigration-race policy, but the evaluation of this period among scholars has been significantly diverged. Scholarly opinions have differed due to varying emphasis on either immigration policy or immigrant policy. Scholars who emphasize restrictive immigration policy tend to criticize that the Labour government clearly intended to keep coloured immigrants out. On the other hand, other scholars who noticed that the first legislative measures to integrate immigrants first appeared in 1964-70 advocated the liberal feature of the Labour government’s years. It is important, however, not to consider immigration policy and immigrant policy separately. The two policies have been developed in the context of responding to the phenomenon of ‘coloured immigration,’ although the two were designed to fulfill different purposes. Around the time when Harold Wilson’s Labour government came to office in 1964, it abandoned its previous position of firm opposition toward the immigration restriction system adopted by the previous Conservative government. Furthermore, the Labour government even tightened immigration restrictions, at the same time designing the Race Relations Act to integrate already-settled immigrants. With this linkage of the exclusive measures at the border with the inclusive measures inside the border, the Labour government aimed not only to satisfy the public through the immigration restriction but also to maintain support of the intellectuals who had advocated Labour’s former anti-restriction stance. However, the two parts of the race-immigration policy, composed of restrictions on one side and integration on the other, proved to be exceedingly weighted toward the restriction side. Moreover, the attempt to integrate immigrants was significantly limited due to the perspective of coloured immigrants as ‘a problem.’