Why did Britain decide that it needed a mass wave of immigration from the Commonwealth nations (1950s onwards)?
We had a National Health Service and nationalised transport system and needed to run both on the cheap. Britain was recovering from the war and was basically skint. There was plenty of work available in the UK because of reconstruction, the recovery of heavy industry and newly emerging financial services – so few British residents wanted low paid jobs in hospitals, on the buses and the London Underground. So we recruited cheap workers from the West Indies and the Indian sub-continent where there was large scale unemployment. France’s recovery involved much higher taxation and a policy of not expanding until it could be afforded. That is why France now has a health service and transport system that makes the UK seem like a third world country and tax rates that would have the British rioting in the streets.
