Irish Immigration to Britain, 1911–1951: Patterns and Policy

T^rom the early nineteenth century until the 1950s Ireland was the main Jsource of immigration into Britain, although over this period as a whole the intake of Irish was heavily off-set by emigration from Britain, and Britain was not the main destination for the majority of Irish emigrants.1 From the early 1960s 'New Commonwealth' immigrants began to exceed those from Ireland.2 Heavy migration, de-industrialization and periodic famine had become features of Irish society in the early nineteenth century. The ratio of Ireland's population to that of England and Wales was declining from the 1820s, and the trend was accentuated by the severity of the Irish Famine crisis of the later 1840s. In the second half of the century a fairly stable demographic pattern emerged, with secular population decline, late marriage, declining rates of nuptiality and fertility, and continuing heavy emigration,3 which together reflected the rigid sexual mores of post-Famine Ireland and the stem family system of land inheritance. High and sustained rates of emigration were accompanied by a growth in the size of agricultural holdings; marital fertility remained high, while non-agricultural employment within Ireland was contracting. This long history of migration can be viewed in strictly economic terms as a rational reaction to circumstances: in other words, as part of the general, secular process of rural-urban drift within a more or less integrated Anglo-Irish or Atlantic economy. Colonial dependency, direct rule from Westminster and free trade with Britain after the Act of Union limited and perpetuated deficiencies in the Irish urban-industrialized sector. The Irish became