Report from Across the Pond: Legislation has been designed to reduce the UK’s non-white population, according to leaked government paper

Photo from Brexit campaign.  Courtesy of Don Roth

The United Kingdom left the European Union after the 2016 Brexit vote, which looked to be fueled in no small part to concerns with immigration.  A recent scandal suggests that concerns with race, immigration, and citizenship run deep in the UK.

Amelia Gentleman for The Guardian reports that foundations of the Windrush scandal, in which British citizens were subjected to immigration enforcement and removal,

“lay in 30 years of racist immigration legislation designed to reduce the UK’s non-white population, according to a leaked government report.

The stark conclusion was set out in a Home Office commissioned paper that officials have repeatedly tried to suppress over the past year.

The 52-page analysis by an unnamed historian, which has been seen by the Guardian, describes how “the British Empire depended on racist ideology in order to function”, and sets out how this affected the laws passed in the postwar period.”

KJ