Control and Citizenship: The Case of St. Helenian Agricultural Workers in the U.K., 1949-51

Abstract

This article uses a hitherto unexamined, small scale labour recruitment scheme to demonstrate mechanisms used to control Black colonial migrants in postwar Britain. The recruitment of one hundred men from the tiny island colony of St. Helena in the late summer of 1949 blended elements of foreign labour recruitment in postwar Britain (which mainly comprised east European refugees) and Black colonial migration to the mother country. The cross currents of these two migratory waves are examined within the context of postwar social citizenship and the recodification of British nationality legislation in 1948. Working mostly from bureaucratic records of the scheme’s implementation in Britain, the paper argues that the St. Helenians were constructed as poor candidates for assimilation on the basis of their skin colour, and that subsequent policy reinforced this official assumption and worked to isolate and marginalize these men. Moreover, this marginalization was purposefully undertaken in order to maintain control over British citizens who, because of the colour of their skin, were assumed to pose a threat to the social stability of the postwar welfare state. It is argued that control was exercised through a process of obfuscation in which the rights of St. Helenian British subjects in the U.K. were obscured in order to lessen their sense of possibilities and keep them separated from an indigenous population that, it was assumed, would be hostile to them. The paper offers by way of comparison a brief synopsis of social issues and policy regarding east European foreign labour, as well as some theoretical foundation for the discussion of citizenship, race, and national identity issues. It is the main contention of the author that the social citizenship of the postwar period, combined with the statutory liberality of the 1948 British Nationality Act, created the context in which a racialized construction of Britishness formed the basis of a policy meant to restrict and control the access of Black colonial migrants to full citizenship of the comprehensive British welfare state.