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Belgian refugees were scattered throughout Britain by 1919. Virtually all were
repatriated, and in 1921 there were 9,892 recorded in Britain.

POLES
In the 1931 census there were 44,462 people claiming Poland as their birthplace. Those
who arrived during WW2 and stayed on, constitute the core of the present-day Polish
community. In 1951 there were 162,339 Polish-born people in Britain. By 1971 the
figure had dropped to 110,925.

POWs during WW2, and POST-WAR LABOUR RECRUITMENT
There were 334,000 German and Italian POWs employed in areas such as agriculture.
Some 15,700 Germans and 1,000 Italians remained after the war. The rest were
repatriated. After WW2, work-permit schemes recruited Germans, Italians, Ukrainians,
Austrians and Poles, although not all remained. Kathleen Paul writes: "A conservative
tally of the total number of aliens recruited under the Attlee government [July 1945October 1951] yields around 345,000 … By 1952, 110,000 work-permit applicants had
been resident in the country for over four years and may be counted among those
aliens who planned to make their home in postwar Britain."
We have not considered internal British Isles migration, for example, from Ireland, and
we conclude at the point when immigration levels changed dramatically.

SOURCES
(1) Paul Johnson, The Offshore Islanders: A History of the English People,
(London: Pheonix Paperback edition, 1992), pp. 19-20.
(2) Scotland's Story magazine (Glasgow: First Press Publishing, 1999), no. 2,
(3) Guy de la Bedoyere, Eagles Over Britannia: The Roman Army in Britain, (Stroud,
Glos.: Tempus Publishing Ltd, 2001), p. 25.
(4) de la Bedoyere, Eagles, p. 17.
(5) Johnson, Offshore Islanders, p. 23.
(6) Johnson, Offshore Islanders, p. 25.
(7) Leslie Alcock, Arthur's Britain: History and Archaeology AD 367-634, (London:
Penguin Classic edition, 2001), pp. 278-279.
(8) Alcock, Arthur's Britain, p. 279.
(9) Alcock, Arthur's Britain, pp. 310-311.
(10) Johnson, Offshore Islanders, p. 31.
(11) Lloyd and Jennifer Laing, Anglo-Saxon England, (Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1979), pp. 55-56.
(12) Johnson, Offshore Islanders, p. 62.
(13) Archie Baron, "Hidden Exodus", The Listener, 1 November 1990, pp. 26-27.
(14) Johnson, Offshore Islanders, p. 107.
(15) Oliver Wright, "Leicester spurns its anti-Semitic founding father", The Times, 17
Jan. 2001, p. 3.
(16) Commission for Racial Equality [CRE], Roots of the Future: Ethnic Diversity in
the Making of Britain, (London: CRE, 1996), p. 9.

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