The evolution of British immigrant integration policy after World War II:

a historical and political science perspective Immigration into the UK reached record intensity after World War II. The accep-tance of immigrants was motivated by both the country’s foreign policy and internal economic situation. Most immigrants to the Isles were inhabitants of the former territo-ries of the British Empire, migrating en masse to the former seat of power in the early postwar decades. The United Kingdom also attracted those who had political reasons not to return to their homelands, subordinated to the Soviet Union after the war. The Isles also welcomed two waves of political migrants fleeing the Eastern Bloc after the bloody conclusion of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the Warsaw Pact interven-tion in Czechoslovakia in 1968. The openness of the UK to large numbers of immigrants in the postwar period was also determined by economic considerations. The country, with its rapidly growing economy, needed a labour force. This state of affairs continued into the second half of the 1970s, when the economic crisis necessitated a reduction in the recruitment of for-eign workers