After the Second World War Britain needed labour to rebuild bombed cities, run new public services and staff the new National Health Service. The British Nationality Act 1948 confirmed that citizens of Commonwealth countries had the right to live and work in Britain. The arrival of the Empire Windrush at Tilbury Docks on 22 June 1948, carrying around 500 mostly Jamaican migrants, has come to symbolise the start of large-scale post-war Caribbean migration.
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In the 1950s and 1960s significant numbers also came from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, settling in cities such as London, Birmingham, Bradford, Leicester and Glasgow. Their work in the NHS, public transport and the textile industry was central to Britain's post-war economy.
You may be asked which ship docked at Tilbury in 1948 (the Empire Windrush), or what the British Nationality Act 1948 did.
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