(November 19, 2021 at 1:31 am)Helios Wrote: The most historically ignorant statement i have ever heard "the UK has not historically been multicultural "
Yeah accept
The Celt
The Romans
The Saxons
The Vikings
The Irish
The Scots
The Welsh
The Normans
The Dutch
......Need I go on....
I know racists hate having brown people in their country but face it there is no single UK identity from a historical perspective.
Yeah.
Today there are over 200 nationalities in my state. Wasn't always that way.
Australia had the white Australia policy (The immigration Restriction Act of 1901) It was relaxed in 1966 and finally abolished by legislation in 1975.
Of course, we had all kinds during the gold rush of 1850, but groups like the Chinese were not permitted to get their families, so after a while most of them just died out.
When I was growing up Australia was pretty much an homogeneous society, with the dominant group being Anglo-Celt.
That changed a bit in the mid 1950's when we reluctantly allowed Southern Europeans, mainly Greeks and Italians. There was a severe labour shortage.
Although we allowed Greeks and Italians, we really preferred people we thought of (wrongly) as being just like us; Brits***. We encouraged them to come by subsidising their boat fare; they paid 10 pounds. That had to be repaid if they left Australia within 2 years. I knew a lot of Brits growing up. Never met one who had become an Australian citizen. Many went back to the UK in later life, having forgotten why they left.
*** We had a proportionally large Irish population until the white Australia policy was repealed.. Still a lot of us around, but proportionately not as many. That was due to the British practice of sending their criminals to Oz until 1868.
