What was happening in Britain 1948-1968?

On 22 June 1948, the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury in London, delivering hundreds of men from the West Indies.

Many had returned to rejoin the RAF. Others had been encouraged by adverts for work.

The day marked what would become a massive change to British society - the start of mass immigration to the UK and the arrival of different cultures.

As mass immigration continued in the 1950s, so did the rise of racial violence and prejudice. Many areas including Birmingham, Nottingham and west London experienced rioting as white people feared the arrival of a black community.

On one hand, these men and women had been offered work in a country they had been brought up to revere. On the other, many were experiencing racial prejudice they had never expected.

Legislation had allowed people from the Empire and Commonwealth unhindered rights to enter Britain because they carried a British passport.

Under political pressure, the government legislated three times in less than a decade to make immigration for non-white people harder and harder. By 1972, legislation meant that a British passport holder born overseas could only settle in Britain if they, firstly, had a work permit and, secondly, could prove that a parent or grandparent had been born in the UK.

In practice, this meant children born to white families in the remnants of Empire or the former colonies could enter Britain. Their black counterparts could not.

While government was tightening the entry rules, racial tension meant it had to try to tackle prejudice and two race relations acts followed.

In 1945, Britain's non-white residents numbered in the low thousands. By 1970 they numbered approximately 1.4 million - a third of these children born in the United Kingdom.