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They All Called Britain Home
📖 They All Called Britain Home
It is June 1948. The Empire Windrush steams into Tilbury Docks carrying 492 passengers from Jamaica. They have British passports. They have answered Britain's call for workers. The new National Health Service desperately needs nurses. London Transport needs bus drivers. They are British subjects in every legal sense. And yet a question mark hangs over the welcome. Jump back seven hundred years: Edward I expels every Jewish man, woman, and child from England in 1290 — roughly 3,000 people, some whose families had lived here for two centuries. Jump forward again to 2004: a million Polish workers arrive in a single decade, filling jobs no one else will take. The story of Britain is, in large part, the story of migration. The faces change; the reasons — economic need, persecution, opportunity, desperation — are strikingly constant.
What is a push factor in migration?: A reason that forces or encourages people to LEAVE their home country. Examples: persecution (Jews in medieval England), famine (Ireland 1845-52), war (20th century asylum seekers), poverty (Caribbean and South Asian migrants post-1945).
History glossary
- What is a push factor in migration?
- A reason that forces or encourages people to LEAVE their home country. Examples: persecution (Jews in medieval England), famine (Ireland 1845-52), war (20th century asylum seekers), poverty (Caribbean and South Asian migrants post-1945).
- What is a pull factor in migration?
- A reason that attracts people TO a specific country. Examples: labour demand (post-war NHS, London Transport), legal right to settle (British Nationality Act 1948), higher wages than home country, family and community networks (chain migration).
Medieval Migration: Jewish Communities (1066-1290)
Jewish communities arrived in England shortly after the Norman Conquest of 1066, initially invited by William I from Rouen (Normandy) because they could perform the economic function of money-lending — an activity forbidden to Christians by the Church, which condemned the charging of interest as sinful. By the twelfth
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🧠 Memory Aid: Push and Pull Factors
PPPW — the four main push factors across history:
- Persecution (Jews 1290, Huguenots 1685, Eastern European Jews 1880s)
- Poverty (Irish famine, Caribbean unemployment, South Asian poverty)
- Pogroms / political violence (Russian Empire, Nazi Germany, Somalia, Bosnia)
- War (20th/21st century asylum seekers)
LWF — the three main pull factors:
- Labour demand (post-war NHS, London Transport, factories; Edward III's cloth industry)
- Wages higher than home country
- Family / community networks (chain migration)
Windrush date: 22 June 1948 — same year as the British Nationality Act and the founding of the NHS.
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