 Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Avinash Pallival and I am the Deputy Director of the SOAS South Asia Institute. And on behalf of SOAS and on behalf of the Institute, please allow me to welcome you for this very promising conversation around a very important book that has recently been authored by Dr. Ian Sanjay Patel, who's with us today. The title of the book, as you can see, as you know, is We Are Here Because You Were There, and it is On Immigration and the End of Empire. A topic which is not just of relevance to, you know, with this focus on Caribbean and the subcontinent, it's not just of relevance to people, you know, of a particular time or interested in a particular kind of history, colonial history, but it's very much a live issue. A live issue simply because the issues regarding citizenship, regarding migration are quite, quite important as we have seen in the past couple of years. It's quite central to what Britain is, and it's perhaps likely to become in the years to come as we try to figure out where the position of the country will be because it will be Brexit with Europe and other issues. So this, in my view, as someone whose focus is discipline narrowly on international relations, is a central issue for today and the way ahead. So, from that perspective, it's a very welcome intervention based on, from what I can gather, a lot of hard, you know, very, a lot of archival resources in Britain and elsewhere. And just to introduce you, introduce Ian to you, he is currently a LSE fellow in human rights, and his non-fiction writing has appeared in a variety of outlets, including the New Statesman, the London Review of Books. He was born in London, and he completed his PhD at Queens College University of Cambridge. Welcome Ian, thank you for joining us. And to discuss this book about immigration and the relationship between the Commonwealth and United Kingdom as of, you know, historically and also today. I would like to welcome Dr. Taylor Sherman, who is the deputy head of the department and an associate professor of international history at the London School of Economics as well. Research concerns the cultural and political history of India in transition from colonial rule to independence. So I cannot force, I cannot see anyone more suitable to really engage with the debates that have been made. You know, with the debates and the arguments made in this book. So, warm welcome to you, Taylor as well. I won't talk for too long. I just wanted to introduce yourself. I'm very much, I've enjoyed reading sections of the book. I must admit I haven't read it from cover to cover, but I do look forward to doing so. But I'm very much looking forward to this conversation. And on that note Ian, the floor is all yours. Thank you very much Avinash for the introduction and also for the invitation to speak today. And thank you very much Taylor for agreeing to discuss the book with me. I'm really delighted to talk about the book, which as Avinash mentioned is called We're Here Because You Were There, Immigration and the End of Empire, which published by Verso a couple of months ago now. And the aim of the book is really to provide something of a global history of migration and the end of the British Empire. And in particular post war migration to Britain between 1945 and 1973. And of course 1973 is the year when Britain finally joins Europe. And I think a rather intuitively obvious link between post war migrations of Britain and the end of the British Empire. But I think there were certain complexities within this link that to my mind, when I set out to write the book remained unclear. In particular, I was aware that this story of post war migration tends to be told as a domestic affair, rather than a much bigger story implicated within the international politics and diplomacy of decolonization. And when thinking about post war migrants to Britain I was particularly interested in those who came in the late 1960s and early 1970s. And little had been written about this period in the existing literature. And in the late 1960s, it was South Asian British citizens resident in East Africa, that in particular were bothering British officials facing majoritarian policies in Kenya, designed to squeeze Kenyan non citizens. And these Kenyan South Asians were making good on their British citizenship and leaving or attempting to leave for the UK. And the book is perhaps the first full length study of migration out of East Africa of Kenyan South Asians in 1967 1968, as well as the migration of Ugandan South Asians in 1972, following the expulsion order of Idi Amin. And in telling these episodes were immediately directed to another story. Because the migration of South Asians to East Africa in the first instance redirects redirects us to questions of intra imperial migration, including the emigration of white Britons in the so called British world. And it turns out that these episodes in Kenya and Uganda in the late 1960s early 1970s are also very revealing ones for post war British policy. When the Kenyan South Asians attempted to migrate to Britain Britain passed the Commonwealth immigrants act in 1968. And this was unique among the post war immigration laws in that it was directed against all British citizens per se, and remarkably blocked the citizens from entry and residence in their own legal homeland. And on the basis that because they'd never lived in Britain, their nationality and their citizenship was more of a consular status, rather than a fully fledged citizenship including normal citizenship rights, not least the right of entry. The Commonwealth immigrants act in 1968 left these Kenyan South Asian British citizens stateless in reality, although they still remain described British citizens in law. It's a very strange piece of legislation and it set up particular questions in my mind, regarding the rights of a national with respect to the state to which they belong, and states unreconstructed sovereign power at the level of membership and borders. And of course the late 1960s is also the time when the first major treaties of international human rights law are coming into effect. Eventually in 1973, the European Court of Human Rights found that the effects of the 1968 Commonwealth immigrants act on certain individuals among Kenyan South Asians were racially discriminatory. Those are the words that we used and a form of degrading treatment, no less. Human rights issues attendant on the 1968 Commonwealth immigrants act are well known. But what had not been written written about were the diplomatic attempts by British officials to foist Kenyan South Asians on to Indira Gandhi's government for permanent settlement in India. So, before they passed this piece of legislation that they knew was going to have various implications at the level of human rights they tried to settle this question diplomatically. And Britain, in a particular period between 1967 and 1973 tried to, and they sometimes succeeded here and they sometimes failed, tried to exploit India's complicated relationship after 1947 with so called overseas Indians. Despite the fact that the overseas Indians in question were often full British citizens. In a briefly that's the story of Kenyan South Asians in 1968. And I began to see this story as something of a lost a lost episode in our understanding of global 1968. The East African South Asians who carried British nationality was seemingly on a fault line between colonial and post colonial worlds. And according to competing official discourses about them, they belonged neither to post colonial Kenya, nor to post colonial India, nor to Britain. And Britain seemingly was here seized by kind of post war, nativism that was very much a departure from the imperial idealism of preceding decades. And looking back on the episode as a whole. I soon realized that the, the year seemed too late. Because after all the age of decolonization is entering its late phases in 1968. And of course, British direct imperial rule at all but ended by then. So why were there still colonial British citizens in East Africa at that time. And as we step back. The stories, the story of the book is not only about the circumstances of of these migrants. South Asian princess citizens in East Africa, but also looking at those migrants in order to explore a wider series of paradoxes about post war Britain and post war Britain's place in the international order after 1945. So I already alluded to the post war migrants to Britain were described as immigrants in the 1960s as if they were outside British nationality. This was both in political discourse and in the titles given to immigration laws. But this was misleading. It was misleading for British officials to call these migrants immigrants since they were in fact, mostly British citizens or Commonwealth citizens which was another status within British nationality law. So they were not aliens. In fact, so this was a strange slippage or fudge that British politicians were able to take advantage of. And the reason they were able to do this was because of a wider paradox or tension. And this is the central paradox or tension that British nationality and citizenship remained imperial throughout the age of decolonization and all the way to 1981. And remarkably in 1981 that Britain created something recognizable as a national citizenship around the territories of the British Isles. Prior to this between 1948 and 1981 British nationality was primarily defined by a single non national citizenship around the territories of the British Isles but also around the territories of the Crown colonies, creating colonial independence, who for various reasons ended up keeping their status, even after various colonies, such as India and Kenya gained independence. So in principle, if not in practice, all colonial citizens carried full rights of entry and residence in Britain as set out in the 1948 British Nationality Act all the way to 1981. They were unable to access these rights because of immigration laws. So before addressing this question of how and why British nationality and citizenship remained imperial throughout the age of decolonization. I would like to acknowledge that there's something of a strange reality here in the sense that British immigration laws in 1960s and early 1970s were targeting citizenship rights provided in British nationality law. So bizarrely, it's the post war immigration laws, not British nationality law itself that's dictating who belongs and who doesn't belong in Britain. And so until 1981 post war immigration laws sought to constrain the provisions of British nationality law itself. So there's something of an internal contradiction here. So then, let's move to this question of, of why successive post war British governments refused to dismantle the imperial structures of British nationality in particularly in the 1960s when former empire is ending, and instead chose to pass immigration as so many bandages on nativist wounds as the imperial heartland became home to more and more non white migrants. So in order to answer this in the book I explore the relationship between Britain's post war imperial citizenship and its status as a Commonwealth centric power, rather than a nation state, at least in the first post war decades. So let's take another step back. Post war migrants were arriving in Britain in the 1950s because of the generous citizenship rights granted under the terms of British imperial citizenship, which British officials terms Commonwealth citizenship. So in other words, the purpose of creating a post war British imperial citizenship in 1948 was to give constitutional life to the post war Commonwealth. And this I argue is part of a post war idealism that saw the Commonwealth of nations as the latest iteration of British imperial idealism. What I'm telling you about here is that various British officials were not prepared to dismantle imperial citizenship in the 1960s, because this would be to give up on Commonwealth idealism. The Commonwealth being the vehicle through which Britain tried to contend in the making of the post world. It was presented as multi racial, and thus an answer to the United Nations, and it was also presented as a grand constitutional and political receptacle of so called Anglo centricity in world politics. And this was the last vestige of pre previous imperial dreams of a British led world government. So my conclusion in the book is that Britain, for a short period, appeared to want to have it both ways. It wanted a Commonwealth based on perceived Anglo centricity abroad, including imperial citizenship. And yet at the same time, it wanted exclusivist immigration laws at home. So, what do we learn about post war Britain here well Britain self image in the 1960s is at the very least confused, if not self deceived, in particular ways, and what what was Britain after 1945. Was it a nation state with an imperial constitution and imperial citizenship. Was it at the helm of an imperial British Commonwealth, or was it more modestly part of a multilateral Commonwealth of Nations, alongside other freely associated states. Now there was a good deal of confusion and changeability here. Britain tended various times to present itself as an embattled small island yet with a crucial world role. It was also had a relationship to human rights and the rule of law. And yet it was forced to deploy sovereign power in the face of immigration crises and other forms of crisis. So there was a something of a confusion here and by the late 1960s Britain's reputational power, particularly the United Nations was closer to bankruptcy than apogee. So returning to post war migration and immigration laws, Britain passed clearly what were exclusivist and racially discriminatory immigration laws, particularly in 1968 and 1971. Britain presented nothing less than a tearing of British nationality along racial lines, a form of indirect racial discrimination as as set out by the European Court of Human Rights in 1973. And as Britain did this, there were a range of international figures concerned with international racial equality, who criticized British immigration policies and argued that British decolonization contained unreconstructed to rejuvenate British imperialism. So postcolonial leaders including Indira Gandhi Julius Nerare, Hastings Bander and Eric Williams as well as a slew of postcolonial diplomats writers and intellectuals criticize British immigration policies and cast doubt on the future of the Commonwealth. And Britain was of course being criticized also at the UN General Assembly and in various Commonwealth fora. And yet Britain in the late 1960s still refused to dismantle the structures of imperial citizenship or allow the entry of non white British citizens who were resident overseas, like the Kenyan South Asians. Instead, British officials beginning in 1967 conducted a global census of non white British citizens resident outside Britain, worrying about attempts by these people to migrate to Britain. And also worrying that when they finally did try to dismantle the 1948 act. This would not only have consequences for Commonwealth idealism, but it would also probably inspire a so called beat the band rush, which meant that Britain 10 British officials dared to sort of kick this question into the long grass. As the 1960s and early 1970s war on. And I would go so far as to say that by the end of the 1960s there was something of an associative realm within the minds of various British officials in, in which non white migrants conjured and embodied the stymied imperial ambitions of the Commonwealth. And Britain's embattled place within the international public sphere. So you're left with a situation where if Britain couldn't make good on its supposed claim on post war politics, all that was left to it was its sovereign power at the level of citizenship borders, belonging and migration. At the end of the book, I aim to have retold as a whole, the story of post war migration, not simply as a domestic affair and a reaction to non white migrants. This was not only in Britain itself, but also as a rather fit full adaptation of Britain after 1945 to shifting international realities norms and values that were far beyond its control. So a rather cultivated self image among British political elites and officials that was being damaged by international criticism of various kinds. And the immigration story and the migration story has an important place within this. At the end of the book we're left with a sense that actually in a way that we hadn't realized before the international politics of decolonization was very relevant to Britain's self image, and also to the trajectory of post war migration. And to the reputational costs, Britain suffered at the hands of it at the hands of its exclusivist immigration policies. And my aim and my hope is that by the end of the book, one sees clearly these remarkable correlations between the story of post war migration and the wider story of a rather long and fit full end to the empire. And overhanging the entire story is Britain's relationship, the question of Britain's relationship with India. In 1947 this, there are two aspects to India's importance to these stories. One is India's centrality to the Commonwealth, going back many decades, and, and also after 1945, and also the preponderance of South Asians among non white British nationals resident overseas. British officials, as I write about we're not we're not beneath trying to draw on diplomatic relationships in order to outsource and supposedly solve the question of post war migration and keep particularly South Asian British citizens resident overseas out of Britain. So I think I'll leave it there. Thank you Ian for such such a scent, but also such a detailed kind of exposition of your book and the arguments. Taylor, the floor is on us. Great. Thanks, Agnash and thank you Ian for this invitation. I spent the last 12 hours or so, not in a row for 12 hours or so reading this book and very much enjoyed it. Ian and I met a couple of maybe three years ago at the LSE, and we had this coffee where we both realized we were working on Indians overseas and I think we were both like, oh no, are you, are you saying what I'm saying am I saying what you're saying and and we, it turns out we were making similar arguments but about very different communities. And so it's nice to see your work come to fruition and to be part of this event. And also a huge relief that you are saying exactly what I was saying. So I wanted to make a couple of comments about the book and then I have I think three questions for you. So as I saw this as a kind of book launch event so I really have a lot of praise for the book so anybody who's on the fence about whether or not to buy it this these comments are for you and at first of all I was just impressed at the very addition in evidence in this book. So I, I spotted illusions to Vladimir Novikov to JRR Tolkien to Kazoo Shiguru and I enjoyed all those literary references. And it just shows that actually you're not just the historian slash sociologist but a writer, which made the book very enjoyable to read there are some beautiful terms of phrases, some lovely vignettes of portraits of characters not just important politicians but also ordinary migrants. And I think that's a real, you know it's hard when you're looking at policy to actually draw out colorful portraits of people is is hard and that's a real class of the book. The second thing that I was really struck by, especially as a for for an early career researcher is this huge breadth of the story that you're telling, and all the different sets of scholarship that you're drawing together right so British politics, decolonization, immigration, but not just immigration, immigration of South Asians immigration of people from the Caribbean. And that was there and the fate of minority communities across the former British Empire, everywhere from Trinidad to Kuala Lumpur and just the breadth of it is worth picking up because you tell that story very well. And I was also impressed by the third aspect that I think is worth me makes the book worth buying. I was impressed by the myth busting aspect of the book. In fact, I, I thought that the wind brush generation had been invited to Britain to fill post war. Labor shortages and that myth was busted for me and and really I found it very interesting that it was a complete surprise that the wind what rush generation arrived and and that instead the British had spent time trying to recruit Europeans, white migrants from Europe to fill their labor shortages so yes there were labor shortages after the Second World War. And yes, people arrived from the Caribbean but that doesn't mean that they arrived to at the invitation of British politicians so that was a real myth, busted for me. And I also thought one of the very important arguments here is that the British did not although we think of this period from 1945 to 1981 as the period of decolonization. They did not see it as such. And they did not accept the decolonization is what they were doing for a very, very long time. In fact, mostly they were reimagining and reconfiguring British power in the world, rather than accepting this retreat. And I think that's quite an important argument because it leads to the two, two other I think important arguments in the book. The first is that immigration control was always racialized. We're not new racists in Britain, we're old racists in Britain in a sense, in that in that sense. And the immigrants, the debates around immigration have always been racialized and heavily infected with racism, frankly, from from the very beginning. And that is a legacy of empire not just a practical legacy but also an intellectual one if it's, it is not too grand to say racism is an intellectual endeavor. And, and so for example I am an immigrant, but I never claim that publicly because my experience is not the same as non white immigrants. And it's precisely because of the racialization of this legislation that I am not seen as an immigrant in this country. And I can't claim the same experience I don't claim the same experience as as immigrants from the Caribbean or South Asia. And that that heavily racialized immigration controls is central to your arguments and I think very important to bring that out. I think what you show us is kind of an old story so in another guys I do masters on the comparative history of empires. And what we see is that every empire is building on a previous empire so nothing is really new. And empires don't end, I think, is what you're arguing they become something else. And the British Empire hasn't ended it's become something else they British politicians tried to make it into the Commonwealth. And to reconfigure British power in the world. And, but in so doing. And you show that they really failed to fully grasp the nature of empire. They didn't really understand it, even as they were reconfiguring it. And in particular, they didn't have a full understanding of the repercussions of empire for the colonized that as late as 1967 they were trying to figure out which colonized subjects had traveled where in their former empire, and to whom they might have some responsibility is incredible I mean, is in one way, not surprising because yes, maybe they were, they didn't have all that control that sometimes assumed that they had, but also incredible that they just didn't fully grasp the repercussions for empire for the colonized and that's a failure that of course we live with today in Britain. So, I think those are the important arguments and that's my pitch for why people listening might want to read by the book. So I have some questions for you. And I thought that this was an important reframing of empire of decolonization as really empire becoming something else, rather than ending. In some ways it's also the story of one piece of legislation this 1948 British Nationality Act, which with a big boom, granted citizenship Commonwealth citizenship to everyone in the empire, including people who were in recently colonized states, like India Pakistan whose citizenship of the empire only ended when their own citizenship regimes came into place. And it's a remarkable piece of, as you claim and I agree with you, of liberal imperialism of liberal imperialist legislation. And I wanted to know where it comes from you hinted in the book that it was drawing in part on the fact that Canada, I think was about to issue its own legislation. But I'm thinking is I'm wondering, is it part of a larger reimagination of the British Empire that was taking place during the Second World War. So during the Second World War, they rethink empire as something where they have responsibility to develop money, they're reimagining it as they as they think about how they're going to pay off their war debts and rebuild after after the war. And so is what do you have any hints about the larger historical thinking that went into this extraordinary piece of imperial legislation. Does it is it part of that reimagination that comes in the Second World War with the Second World War, or does it really kind of come out of the blue in 1948, and you know, it just kind of mistakenly become law without too much thought. So that's my first question I have two more, but I'll let you answer that. Thank you so much, Taylor for those comments and you know your kind words about the book. I really appreciate it. And yeah, I do agree, you know that the a lot of this story does come down to one piece of legislation a remarkable piece of legislation. And it's interesting because it quite late in the book in 19 and we're already in 1967. An official in the Commonwealth office says, you know, why did we pass this act and having part I think the way he phrases it is having passed it, we now have to pay for it. And it's a sort of reckoning with, you know, that what that piece of legislation and the fact that in the late 1960s, it was, it hadn't been dismantled. And immediately, one thing to note straight away is I think there was, there appears to have been very little understanding, perhaps close to nil that the piece of legislation in 1948 would lead to such a large migration of people to Britain, specifically, specifically non white migrants. That was not foreseen by Clement at least government. So I think that's, that's quite important to realize I tend to see it more as, as you said, an act of liberal imperialism and also something of a constitutional device that Britain had long been engaged in. So, if we go back before 1948, 1948, the, the other really key piece of legislation on British nationality occurs in 1914 and this is really an attempt to, for the first time, codify British subjecthood and clarify the relationship between Britain and the so-called white dominions, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and so on. And the idea here is to promote imperial unity in the face of the expressions of nationless and sovereignty by the white dominions and retain a kind of imperial coherence. So what's interesting is that in 1948, Clement, you know, the lawmakers within Clement at least government decide to recodify British subjecthood. They call it something else, they call it citizenship of the United Kingdom and colonies, but essentially it's, they're retaining the scheme of British subjecthood and then British subjecthood actually remains on the books. This is part of the sort of oddities and complexities of British nationality law, British subjecthood remains on the books until 1981. You have many centuries of a kind of unbroken expression of British subjecthood and that always had a kind of imperial currency to it. And clearly, Britain was thinking about what the Commonwealth would be in after 1945 and having a strong and generous unilateral recodification of British subjecthood, now called citizenship of the UK and colonies was a powerful message, even though that Britain had no way of making sure that the new citizenship laws in places like Canada, and other places, and would actually reciprocate that these generous terms of a Commonwealth citizenship so called. And so, so that's the story of, you know, why the acts was passed. And there's a lot more to this there's also Indian diplomats who were pushing heavily for a common Commonwealth citizenship and urging the whole of the Commonwealth towards free movement. And so it was only really Britain that really decided to make good on this demand and create a unilateral non national citizenship. But then there's this other bigger question of you know why in the 1960s, did they not sort of dismantle it in the first And instead, past these immigration laws. And the first one is not in 1968 in 1962. And it, and actually, it's, it doesn't affect British nationality because it's an immigration law, but it does end the centuries long rights in principle of a British subject to travel to imperial heartland. But they were careful not to dismantle the 1948 act and, and there's there's two ways of looking at this I think you could either argue, as I've mentioned that there, this Commonwealth idealism. There was an unwillingness to finally let it go, even though Britain realized the economic gains of integration within the European economic community. There was a tension there and that Commonwealth idealism needed to be preserved in the form of the 1948 act. And then there's also this much more practical fear that when you finally do dismantle the 1948 act, you have to reckon with all the dis dispersed British protected persons and British citizens, carrying these colonial citizen, this colonial nationality who may try to, as it in the in the parlance of the time beat the ban and Britain just sought to defer and defer this final reckoning and even in the late 1970s there's some new work coming out by Philip Murphy on this that even in the late 1970s Britain was still sort of worrying about finally pulling the plug on the 1948 act and what and what that was going to trigger. And this is still, you know, this is still going on with the recent legislation vis-a-vis Hong Kongers carrying British nationality so as you as you sort of said there's this sort of huge story about the effects of imperial citizenship and Britain was unable to control it finally. Thanks. So my second question is really about how I mean it ties to what you said about India and its influence on the 1948 act. Another Indians were very keen to protect overseas Indians via Commonwealth citizenship and Rafael Khan, a collaborator of mine has written about that elsewhere and so it's quite interesting to see how much influence India had over British legislation at this point. And so I saw in the book that India protested against the 1960s, the legislation in the 1960s calling it discriminatory and that the British as they prepared this legislation they were worried about Indian protesting so Indian protests. So all that makes sense to me but what I was surprised by and found very interesting is about the 1950s that they got that when the British they passed this 1948 British Nationality Act people started migrating to Britain it was a surprise they wanted to stop them. They got rather than pass new legislation they tried to get Commonwealth countries to agree to help them stop migration in other ways. And so Indian Pakistan agreed to help Britain reduce migration from South Asia by by not issuing passports to their own people if they wanted to go to Britain. And I was surprised that Indian Pakistan agreed to play along with this game. What surprised me even more was that Caribbean governments refused to play to to to help Britain limit migration from the Caribbean to Britain in the 1950s. And then those Caribbean governments were not yet independent to have British people in the Caribbean refusing to help British people back at home limit migration and so I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about those negotiations if you know anything more about them between parts of the British Empire in the 1950s to try to restrict my the migration of Caribbean people to back to Britain. Thanks Taylor. Yeah, absolutely I mean as you sort of said this is this is also needs to be seen in terms of transnational history and and that's why it's particularly good to speak to you about it because your new work together with Rafaela Khan is sort of shedding new light on on on in on the way that India perceived this with respect to overseas Indians and and Rafaela Khan as you said has a has has new work coming out on this idea of Commonwealth citizenship as India saw it so it's important to recognize this is a transnational history even though that my book is is much more was sort of within the British perspective. And, and, and yes you know it's it's interesting that Britain in the first instance approach the problem of post war migration is something that could be outsourced to either colonial or Commonwealth governments. And there's actually work, new work coming out by color to make a natural john, which talks about this long relationship that Britain and India had at the level of controlling Indian migration. All together, and particularly to the Britain. But it but it's interesting. I suppose there's this, there's two different stories here which which I sort of tried to bring attention to is is that the story of post war migration is not simply these laws these immigration laws. So this in this vast diplomatic set of stories in which these problems are Britain is attempting to resolve privately and drawing on the sort of long standing assumptions of cooperation. And Britain at various points was was quite confident about this and every step of the way, the British officials tried to resolve these questions diplomatically, because they they obviously it was it was only it was always a last resort passing legislation, because they were fearful of the implications of legislation. Not simply, you know, and this included the reactions of governments like Canada and Australia to something like the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act. If they hadn't solved these problems diplomatically then they would pass legislation, but as you said, particularly vis-a-vis Caribbean governments in the 1950s, they were not able to to to British officials dismay. They were not able to stop migrants coming from places like in particular Jamaica. And I think the British cabinet had around a dozen meetings during the 1950s saying we are going to have to do something eventually about this question but we don't want to do it and if we do do it. We want to sort of being more like the white dominions who've always been, have always been discriminatory at the level of immigration and we want to retain our sort of imperial idealism on these questions, if possible. Interesting. And the will to retain this idealism. My very last question is picking up on something you said in your summary. You said Britain wanted to have it both ways they wanted to reconfigure the Empire as the Commonwealth and centre its power in the world in the Commonwealth. And they also wanted to have an to retain or create an exclusive understanding of Britishness at home. I, you know, I see resonances that in that, of course, in the Brexit debates. And you might call it cake ism or Johnson ism. I mean, I don't want to give him as much importance to to give him an ism. I, I wondered if I wanted to ask you about whether there were any subtle differences in this having it both ways cake ism kind of ideology with respect to power and identity. Where are there any differences were there any differences between Labour and Conservative governments? I could discern none in your book. It seems like there's this amazing continuity between them. And I wondered if you might have more to say about whether Labour or the Conservatives had variations of this cake ism ideology. Thank you, Taylor. Yeah, you know, that that is a very good question. And I was also struck by the level of continuity between successive post war governments, you know, as you move as you move from the Conservative Government in the 1950s, early 1960s, into Harold Wilson's Labour Government, and then eventually into Edward Heap's Conservative Government, there was a remarkable level of continuity, you know, originally Labour sort of set itself up against the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962. And then it and then it sort of changed its policy and decided that this question of immigration had formed into something akin to a bipartisan consensus. You know, what is interesting, I think there's various ways of looking at this. There's also something we haven't mentioned is the creation of the British Indian Ocean Territory in 1965. And that's something that, you know, sort of, again, the that story begins with Harold Wilson's Labour Government and then and then goes and then Edward Heap's Conservative Government is very integral to that story also and what happens to the inhabitants of the Jaguars archipelago. I mean, I think at the level of human rights attention. There's a particular level of attention we need to give to the 1968 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, which occurred under a Labour Government. You know, Edward Heap's Conservative Government is traditionally given a lot of credit for accepting Ugandan South Asians after the expulsion in 1972, but as I write about that story is a lot more complicated than it's been tends to be presented. And I think that continuity is quite remarkable that there was such a consensus between Labour and Conservative Governments and it's very hard to sort of say that one is doing more or less than the other. So there's some further questions there, I think. Yeah, thank you. That's it for me, Avinash. I'm happy to hand back to you. Thank you so much, Taylor and Ian for that really fascinating conversation. I have a lot of questions coming up myself but you know more about the fact that look, I'm a citizen of India living in the UK, and I have all sorts of voting rights in the United Kingdom. So I actually don't have an incentive to give up my Indian citizenship because I don't feel the need to do so. This way I can get the best of both worlds. And it makes me wonder that perhaps in the post war context there was this liberal idealism, right. British imperial idealism and as we mentioned or you know, even empire becoming something else and citizenship being very kind of important sort of a platform of what it becomes. And it makes me wonder where has empire come today because both the conversation about empire and the Commonwealth has kind of really resurfaced in some fundamental ways and what is it that let UK keep or continue allowing citizens from Europe and not the European Union, for example, to actually vote in its national life. And it's even daily council life to be honest. What purpose does it so today but again this is a bit off topic in the sense that it's more contemporary than than historical but I made me wonder what the afterlives, and what the transitions are and what does it really mean if anything at all today, to keep that you can come take that question at your convenience it's not, you know, I just wanted to put it out there to all the audience is thank you for listening so patiently. Now, could I request you to raise your hand or put your question in the Q&A box so that I can read it out if required but you're more than welcome to come and introduce yourself but please do introduce yourself either whether you're writing the question on the Q&A box or kind of asking directly so I'm looking forward to hands coming up hopefully soon but we do have one question by, sorry, I raised my hand, just to show that I'm okay with hands. The first question but is by some anonymous and anonymous attendee and Taylor I mean, I mean, again, it's, you know, I would like to continue this as a conversation format so Taylor please do come in with your thoughts to the question is it's a bit off topic but do you see some similarities to what happened there as in the United Kingdom in the 1960s and what is thought to be done now in India. I'll be with a religion based assessment with the passing of the Citizenship Amendments Act two years ago that intends to put restriction on citizenship entitlements of immigrants from Kothamkotas to India. Perhaps you could, would you be able to speak to that Taylor, I think you may be better placed than me. Gosh, I'm not really well versed, but I see, I see. Yeah, I think I, I would rather comment on something that I know much more about I can see why the question was asked and I can see parallels that I'm not sure I can go here in way apart from to say yes I see why you're asking. Sorry, not my field. I mean, in a similar way to Taylor I'm not sure I can shed too much light on this either but you know one thing, one thing I would say is that, you know, India in 1950 did have a more definition of citizenship, particularly with respect to overseas India and then in the 1955 Act, there are certain constraints and what's interesting is that as far as I, as far as I know about this question that these adjustments to legislation are all going back to a piece of legislation in 1955. And in that sense, you could, you might be able to sort of compare that to these adjustments to legislation in in in Britain, and the sort of centrality of citizenship laws upon state succession and how important these questions are. And the, and you know the implications for minority groups. Thank you. Thank you for that. There is a question from our Facebook live chat from Johan Chacko, who is a PhD candidate and a good friend here at SOS and Johan's question is how much of the journey from the Citizenship Act of 1948 to the Commonwealth Immigration Restrictions of 1968. Would you attribute to the decline of the round table movement and its power. Again, it's a question, both of you could kind of share your thoughts on. I mean, that's a very interesting question in the sense that what the question may be getting that getting at is the sort of the, the intellectual origins of Commonwealth idealism. And one of the things that I wanted to allude to in the book is the fact that the Commonwealth itself tends to be seen in Britain in the British public sphere media and among politicians as a sort of, you know, not very significant constitutional edifice and a sort of set of constitutional devices rather than something that was really integral to British identity, Britain's role in the world, self image, etc. And the, the intellectual origins of this are very much go going back to the round table movement these sort of dreams of imperial federation, even a British world states and the need to core, among others have written very important books on this question and the kind of the Commonwealth idealism that was that was coming out of it which reached the sort of apogee before the Second World War and then very abruptly sort of came to an end. And what's interesting, and what I wasn't able to do in the book is really sort of trace those, the, the, the vestiges of that that particular form of Commonwealth idealism after 1945. I imagine there's a lot more to be to be written on it but what I would say is that there's a kind of there's a memory of those intellectual origins and what the Commonwealth could be and the point here is that the empire evolves that it has new iterations and that it tends to be quite sort of self effacing. And in that sense the Commonwealth is the highest stage of empire, not its end. Thank you so much Ian Taylor I was wondering if you have any, you'd like to add something. No, any more questions questions and comments are highly welcome. While, while audiences kind of, you know, think a little bit more and join us with some more thoughts in the coming minutes I have, I mean, I'm wondering about if I may go back take you back to perhaps I'll try to ask a more historical question rather than a contemporary one and it's really kind of exploratory rather than based on any, you know, for grounded on any knowledge of my part at least would I mean, when I think of the United Kingdom its relationship with, you know, this the contract with the citizens it's kind of economic strategic version of its relationship with Europe, during the torture right he is. We see a very in kind of a very potent departure in some ways of continuities and other. Was there anything peculiar about the issue related to citizenship in that period which got kind of dislocated from you know the larger sort of the liberal idealism that we that you kind of elucidate upon in the post war years. This is a moment of a very considerable break in some ways from the past or not given what else is going on in part to write Britain. You know, that's such an interesting question and it's sort of. I suppose that it's the kind of question that I'm now turning my attention to, because the this, you know, this particular story I'm telling this sort of framed kind of bookended by at the end by Britain's joining the European 1923. So what happens in the 1980s is at the level of citizenship and what that means for that right politics is, is a very interesting one I'd like to, I'd like to know more about that myself. I don't know if, if either of you have any thoughts on that, or know anymore, I myself am not, not quite sure, but what I, what I imagine that that the story goes on, I'm quite, I'm quite sort of confident in that and that's why I was interested to read. So earlier that Philip Murphy has some new work coming out on this. And I imagine that there is that you know there is something to say on that question. I want to ask you about you sort of at various points, you say, I think it's the 1960 is it 6768 act that you, you say is the origin of the hostile environments. Right, where they, they get the Home Secretary gets powers to deport people, certain categories of migrant have to register with the police. And I wanted you, I was to say a little bit more about that and obviously I on the one hand yes obviously but on the other hand I think is that just the origin of a state fostered hostile environment in the sense that it wasn't the environment hostile, but in a non official way in the 50s and 60s and it just becomes officially hostile with that act and I wonder if you would engage a little bit with this idea of the hostile environment who creates it who's responsible for it and the role that this immigration legislation has in in creating that hostile environment. Thanks Taylor yeah I am. It's obviously not a main argument within the book but I do sort of rather tantalizingly and refer to the 1971 immigration act as the ultimate source of the hostile environment. You know, the 71 act was really an attempt by Edward Heath's government to regularize modern British immigration policy. Heath had run on a campaign that promised a kind of agreement that his government would would review and bring some kind of coherence to British immigration policy. And, and one of the things that the 71 act did is that it created a category of the something called the the patrial. The patrial is, it's not an neologism it's not a new word it's an archaic word. I think it shares an etymology with patriot, and really what the patrial was was somebody who had an ancestral connection to Britain. Technically not at the level of blood or race but at the level of territorial connection. So again this is a kind of indirect racial discrimination. You have this category that was created, and part of the rules attendant on the act said that it was up to the individual to prove that he or she was a patrial. And many, you know, many decades later in under more recent policy this led to the children of Commonwealth migrants, not being able to prove their documentation. And it speaks to really the very, the very, I mean, the origins of the Windrush scandal, as well as the hostile environment or a sort of strange mix of immigration law and nationality law and as I as I sort of said there's, there's some internal connections between the two. And in, and in, and in from those internal sort of contradictions, the word that was sort of not really fully resolved until quite late, you have the conditions that led to both a kind of particular environment for for immigrants and also for the Windrush scandal. But you know one of the interesting sort of anecdotes or episodes in the book is the reaction of the veteran Indian Diploma upper pond to the to the 71 act and he is in London and confronts privately the British Home Secretary and says, you know, this is a particularly sort of punitive piece of legislation. So, I think we can. So really, it's, I would say, I'm not trying to draw a direct causation but simply that it sort of lays the kind of legal architecture for the kind of policies that would and scandal that later occurred, particularly in the Windrush scandal and you know there's a sense that British officials are always sort of struggling to keep up with the with the oddities and complexities of their own immigration and nationality law which is famously notoriously Byzantine. Thank you, Taylor and we now do have a couple of more questions. So, the first one is by Natasha, please. I apologize for my pronunciation was incorrect. It's, you know, she thanks you for the fascinating talk and promises very constantly so to buy the book and read it for a longer answer to a question, but as she research is citizenship in the French Empire she was, she's a little fixated on your use of the term citizen. And in Natasha's understanding, you know, they were. There was never a sharp distinction in the British Empire between citizen and subject as per the French was the term was this term being used specifically post 1948 in the 1960s and 70s that is the precise question. Thank you Natasha for the for the question and, you know, these sort of comparative questions with respect to the French Empire are very, you know, very interesting and my, my colleague LSE Bronwyn Mamby has has written on on some of those comparisons from a sort of legal perspective. And it is a particularly confusing question this relationship that I think persists to this day. Between, you know, the idea of citizen subject which is of course, also the subject of an influential book by my mother Monday. And of course there's also the kind of what these also an international law. This tends to be on, you know, nationality rather than citizenship so there's a, the, the question of which term we use is, is quite important, I think. And, as you might expect the answer to the question is, is a little complicated in the sense that I think as I alluded to earlier the 1948 act does not abolish British subject hood. It means the scheme of British subject hood but also introduces a parallel scheme of nationality called citizenship of the UK and colonies. A British, a British, British subject hood is retained. Also confusingly, the 48 act introduces something called Commonwealth citizenship which is a kind of underlying status that combines citizenship with the UK and colonies and Commonwealth citizenship of an independent Commonwealth state. So there are some sort of complexities here now some scholars would say, and I would, I would agree that we, we shouldn't really call the citizenship between 1948 and 1981 British citizenship, which is the current legal term and that only comes into 1981. But what's interesting is that among politicians, British politicians they did actually the most commonly used term was simply British citizenship. And this referred to both people born in, you know, in somewhere like Leeds, as well as someone born in Nairobi. So, with that said, the most, we should, we should, yeah, we should try and distinguish between citizens of the UK and colonies, citizens of an independent Commonwealth country, both of whom are within an overarching category of Commonwealth and the idea and but also within politicians discourses, you know, British subjects still crops up. And interestingly, after 1967, there's another category which is created privately among British officials called UK passport holders under the acronym UK pH, which is Britain's British officials way of dealing with the fact that you know whether they're British protected persons or full blown British citizens they they have passports and that's going to be a problem with respect to their attempt to enter the UK so I suspect that that questions probably raised more questions than it that it answered but but I hope that that was helpful in some sense. Thank you. Thank you Ian there are two more questions. First of it is, does the book, or are there any other works that look at the Ugandan than Kenyans that who returned to India, especially I think in the early 70s if I'm correct, if I'm not wrong. And then there is a question by Saudi, who is a freelance journalist and she asks, would you agree that the fate of someone like Shamima Begum has everything to do with the deprivation law of 1948, effectively making it a two tier citizenship system. Thank you very much for those questions. And to answer the first question about which which I think was specifically about East African South Asians who who returned to India, either in the late 1960s and 1970s. There's no single book on this. And, and, and I think it's very much a book that ought to be written. What we do know and what I sort of describe in the book is that there were, you know, there were quite a few thousand of these East African South Asian British citizens who did quietly return to India. You know, quite a few thousand. And, and Indira Gandhi's government tended not to publicize this because it didn't want to sort of emphasize a kind of capitulation to, you know, Britain's attempt to sort of foist its own nationals onto to India. And sort of tracking what happens to those communities and then presumably their naturalization as Indian citizens. And you know the places they tended to enter, whether it was, or, or, or, or catch or wherever it might be that would be fascinating to to read about. There, there tends to be not too much on the on the Kenyan episode as a whole. But Randall Hansen wrote about it in his book a few years ago and there's new work coming out on the Ugandan age, the Ugandan Asian expulsion more, more broadly which was, you know, and part of the story of my book and another work is that when the Ugandans were expelled from the South Asian Ugandans were expelled in 1972 by the army. They were settled across the world and there was a huge diplomatic effort by British officials to sort of have these people settled in third countries, even though some of them carried rich nationality. And some of them went to India some of them went to Canada and other places I mean it's a really vast dispersal. And there's, there's a new chapter on this, but in Becky Taylor's new book, which is just out on refugees in modern post war Britain. And I believe the rear couple is working on a new study of the Ugandan Asian expulsion. The second question about the. Sorry, I'll just add there's a PhD student called Sarah Cozeman, who's working in Belgium on again on on the Indian side of the expulsion of Asians from East Africa, looking at how hard India worked in the 70s to keep Indians, of people of Indian origin from returning to India so I would check out her work as it as it becomes available sorry go ahead in. Thanks Taylor yeah absolutely. Sarah Christmas wrote a brilliant article on has already published a brilliant article on the Ugandan expulsion, and many of the files that she refers to I also look at, and of course as we mentioned Taylor and Rafaela Khan, also looking have new work coming out on India's relationship with overseas Indians in Sri Lanka and Burma. So there's a huge story to be told here and I think that the, you know, the final transnational history of this story remains to be told you know from the perspective of East African governments. The South Asian governments and I only, I do touch on that transnational history but I inevitably overweight the British story. Oh, don't worry it's nice to see your cat Taylor. She's a famous zoom bomber she loves the attention. Sorry. I can see. Yes she has our attention. And you know the, the second question is also a really interesting one in the center and I don't know much about this but what I, what I was, I was able to. I'm sort of hesitant to comment on it because I don't know the case properly, but I did ascertain that from what I understand that there's an assumption here that, you know, anybody who has a relationship with a former British colony could somehow in some residual sense could be deemed to belong to it so there's a sense that, you know, whether a government in question. Many of us in Britain have only one citizenship but because of these histories, there could be an argument that we might be deemed to belong to another government. And that I think is implicated in the story that I'm selling in the book. Sorry, I think I missed the last bit. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for such really detailed responses. Very important interventions Taylor, there is one, you know, one compliment really not a question by one of the audience members Dr Shabana Marshall, who was a senior lecturer at St Mary's University from Tukanum, who had to leave unfortunately for your fascinating insights that certainly by the book and thought that this is very useful for informing a discussion around South Asian heritage month, which is commencing in mid of July. I think that's, and of course isn't more tanks coming from those whose questions you have very help to respond to unanswered on that note. Could I, could I, you know, just thank you both for this fascinating conversation. It's a very important kind of walk back at a very important moment of history and a particular quite kind of legislation which defined post war, post war United Kingdom and you know, it's various afterlives I'm very much as you can see from some of the questions that are asked. Both my knowledge and interest are, you know, it becomes it goes up as we come more closer to time. And I'm very much looking forward to reading both of your work, especially if you're working on the touch right period and for your next project. Okay, sorry, there's one question I think before we stop which was asked, and I'm not sure whether the answer this is by the genus Saudi Hawaii. Did we cover that about the impact of Shamim on big, you know that the fate of someone like Shamim on big and is everything you know, I'm sorry I missed my internet got stuck at some point, did we. Okay, thank you sorry about that. So yes, thank you. And to everyone thank you for joining this afternoon. And once again, I would, you know, eco Taylor's point, please buy this book, it's fascinating. And yes, what, you know, look forward to seeing you all in the next session of South Asian Institute. Thank you. Thank you very much. Bye everyone.