were also significant groups of Australians and - oddly enough - Japanese. These numbers slowly faded over the years; the lure of jobs only available to British citizens, the slow acknowledgement that the USA was not coming back, etc.
This left the thorny question of the colonies and their citizenship. The ones we owned were simple; we were at this point a ius sanguinis nation, and it was quite easy to decide that all those in our current colonies were UK citizens. This meant giving UK citizenship to the slaves held in many colonies, and to people who had not been born in those colonies or in the UK. The numbers of this latter group turned out to be very low, surprisingly enough - and as for the former, it seemed to be the least that we could do. This did leave questions over future colonies which would be decided on a case by case basis as said colonies were developed. This led to quite a debate - there were large elements of the Labour party who felt we should abjure any new colonies and tried to cause trouble at this stage. There were also a lot questions about Ireland, mainly from Gerry Fitt. We assured him that Ireland would remain a separate citizenship and that, within the bounds of quarantine etc, we would eventually assure free access to the UK. That caused another fairly lengthy row, especially as Gerry [39] wanted assurances that people in Northern Ireland could still take out Irish citizenship - which we couldn’t give at this stage. Nor could we consent to convert a Republic of Ireland passport to a Kingdom of Ireland one, and that idea has remained firmly blocked by the Irish House of Lords to this day. Ted Heath started asking about North American Indians and Australian Aborigines but got fairly short shrift, so that question remained for another day. However, after four very long sessions, we managed to send it off to the Lords, where they produced a veritable horde of amendments - it was in the end the second slowest piece of emergency legislation to be ratified, and it was also one of the first major pieces to be fully revisited in 1985. To be honest, it needed more debate and better drafting; but, like most of the emergency legislation, time was of the essence. The main purpose was to leave no one intentionally stateless - although even to this day there are a few thousand diehards who have not taken out UK citizenship.
One of the small privileges of my job was a small entertainment allowance. I decided to use it invite one of Oxford’s foremost historians to dinner; I had enjoyed his book, although it more covered the half-century before the Dislocation proper. Luckily, some of the better places in London still had some un-rationed treats at that time, and if you stuck to fish, which seemed to have massively improved in quality since the Dislocation, you could still dine reasonably well. Professor Stoye was waspish, in command of his details, argumentative and very thought-provoking. He gave short pen - some would say poison pen - portraits of a number of European leaders, many of which turned out to be pretty accurate and some of which were a little off beam. He said that we wouldn’t be respected until we had fought a war, and that we were likely to get a frosty reception in a number of places. His main feeling was that ignorance and absolutism were marching hand in hand, and that, providing we could get through our food crisis - and he made some rather harsh suggestions on that matter - then within a decade we could either ignore Europe completely or just make it dance to our tune. His comments were that we should concentrate our diplomacy on the smaller and middle ranked powers; they were more likely to be receptive and in need of friends - and, as they were smaller, could be reformed more easily. He specifically warned against three figures as being false friends, and left with a Parthian Shot of “ and god help you if Frederick the Great gets a British education ”. We kept in contact
This left the thorny question of the colonies and their citizenship. The ones we owned were simple; we were at this point a ius sanguinis nation, and it was quite easy to decide that all those in our current colonies were UK citizens. This meant giving UK citizenship to the slaves held in many colonies, and to people who had not been born in those colonies or in the UK. The numbers of this latter group turned out to be very low, surprisingly enough - and as for the former, it seemed to be the least that we could do. This did leave questions over future colonies which would be decided on a case by case basis as said colonies were developed. This led to quite a debate - there were large elements of the Labour party who felt we should abjure any new colonies and tried to cause trouble at this stage. There were also a lot questions about Ireland, mainly from Gerry Fitt. We assured him that Ireland would remain a separate citizenship and that, within the bounds of quarantine etc, we would eventually assure free access to the UK. That caused another fairly lengthy row, especially as Gerry [39] wanted assurances that people in Northern Ireland could still take out Irish citizenship - which we couldn’t give at this stage. Nor could we consent to convert a Republic of Ireland passport to a Kingdom of Ireland one, and that idea has remained firmly blocked by the Irish House of Lords to this day. Ted Heath started asking about North American Indians and Australian Aborigines but got fairly short shrift, so that question remained for another day. However, after four very long sessions, we managed to send it off to the Lords, where they produced a veritable horde of amendments - it was in the end the second slowest piece of emergency legislation to be ratified, and it was also one of the first major pieces to be fully revisited in 1985. To be honest, it needed more debate and better drafting; but, like most of the emergency legislation, time was of the essence. The main purpose was to leave no one intentionally stateless - although even to this day there are a few thousand diehards who have not taken out UK citizenship.
One of the small privileges of my job was a small entertainment allowance. I decided to use it invite one of Oxford’s foremost historians to dinner; I had enjoyed his book, although it more covered the half-century before the Dislocation proper. Luckily, some of the better places in London still had some un-rationed treats at that time, and if you stuck to fish, which seemed to have massively improved in quality since the Dislocation, you could still dine reasonably well. Professor Stoye was waspish, in command of his details, argumentative and very thought-provoking. He gave short pen - some would say poison pen - portraits of a number of European leaders, many of which turned out to be pretty accurate and some of which were a little off beam. He said that we wouldn’t be respected until we had fought a war, and that we were likely to get a frosty reception in a number of places. His main feeling was that ignorance and absolutism were marching hand in hand, and that, providing we could get through our food crisis - and he made some rather harsh suggestions on that matter - then within a decade we could either ignore Europe completely or just make it dance to our tune. His comments were that we should concentrate our diplomacy on the smaller and middle ranked powers; they were more likely to be receptive and in need of friends - and, as they were smaller, could be reformed more easily. He specifically warned against three figures as being false friends, and left with a Parthian Shot of “ and god help you if Frederick the Great gets a British education ”. We kept in contact
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