[The Guardian] The big picture: last call for Commonwealth arrivals, 1962

The big picture: last call for Commonwealth arrivals, 1962

Striding hopefully towards a new future, a couple from the Caribbean arrive in Britain, the day before a crackdown on immigration begins

This picture of a young couple arriving at Gatwick airport from the Caribbean on 30 June 1962 was taken on the evening before the Commonwealth Immigrants Act came into force. The act had been passed by Harold Macmillan’s Conservative government to halt the flow of citizens from current and former British colonies. It was designed in particular to bring to an abrupt end the “open door” welcome for people from the West Indies – characterised by the arrival of the Empire Windrush in 1948 – to help rebuild the so-called “mother country” after the war. Macmillan had been under pressure from his militant backbenchers, some in the newly formed far-right Monday Club, to introduce the bill. Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell called it “cruel and brutal anti-colour legislation”.

The couple in the picture, striding confidently across the tarmac from their BOAC plane in their Sunday clothes, therefore represent perhaps the last moment that Commonwealth citizens from the Caribbean arrived in Britain with unclouded hope. In the subsequent decade, two further immigration bills tightened the legislation against the free movement of families, and the subject became an emotive and divisive political issue right up to the present moment, with the draconian nationality and borders bill passing through parliament.

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