The penalties of miscegenation

Posted in Articles, Law, Media Archive, Politics/Public Policy, United Kingdom on 2016-06-15 20:58Z by Steven

The penalties of miscegenation

Patterns of Prejudice
Volume 6, Issue 3, 1972
pages 10-12
DOI: 10.1080/0031322X.1972.9969062

Mary Dines (1927-2011)

Paragraph 24 of “Commonwealth Citizens: Control after Entry: Immigration Rules” (Cmd. 4295) reads:

“If a man who was admitted as a visitor or student, or in some other temporary capacity, marries a woman who is a resident in the United Kingdom, he is not on that account to be granted an extension of stay or any other variation of conditions to enable him to settle here unless refusal would be undesirable because of the degree of hardship which, in the particular circumstances of the case, would be caused if the woman had to live outside the United Kingdom in order to be with her husband after marriage…”

These instructions are based on a rule announced by the Home Secretary in January 1969 as an “administrative procedure” and the principles involved were never submitted to Parliament in the form of a Clause or an amendment to a Bill. At the time, Mr. Callaghan stated that the intention was to put an end to the facility allowed to male fiancés to settle in the U.K. after marriage which then existed. This facility, he claimed, was being abused, particularly by Asians, as a means of seeking entry to the U.K. without an employment voucher. It is not proposed to go into the arguments about male fiancés at this stage and indeed experience has shown that this matter was used as a camouflage for the real motives behind the introduction of the new rules. A careful study of the wording confirms this and it should be noted that the Home Office say that the man marrying a resident here “is not on that account to be granted an extension of stay” (my italics).

In any discussion on racial prejudice in Britain the question of miscegenation is bound to arise. Even in colonial times the British showed a marked aversion to mixed marriages. Significantly the majority of those that did take place were between “other ranks” of occupying armies and local women in places like…

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