In 1919 tension between returning white servicemen and ‘coloured’ seamen erupted in violent confrontations in many port cities, with some deaths. Many white merchant seamen were drafted into the armed forces and replaced by migrant seamen who formed the majority of many of the merchant crews on Atlantic convoys. Meanwhile, a quarter of a million Belgian refugees were welcomed to Britain temporarily, most returning home after the war. During the War anti-German feeling in Britain erupted into violent incidents and large numbers of Germans and Austrians were interned as ‘enemy aliens’ (see ‘Germanophobia’). The first half of the 20th century was one of low immigration except for crises created by the two world wars. Rights struggles were aided with the organised support of Britons of all backgrounds and stripes and have seen, in their course and aftermath, a more public role for immigrants and their children in all aspects of British life. Migrants, of course, didn’t encounter resistance alone. Arrivals from Britain’s then-current and eventually former colonies coupled with Britain’s closer integration into the European Economic Community and its successor the European Union altered patterns of migration and led to, as it had in eras before, organised efforts for rights by migrant groups and hostility from, in particular, politicians and the British press. However, less than half a century later, on the verge of the huge upheavals to all European societies caused by the two world wars, the scale, scope and nature of migration to Britain was set to change. In Britain it was the 1905 Aliens Act which introduced this new period of immigration control. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries simultaneously saw unprecedented movement of populations, and increasing restriction on those migrations.
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