Appeal for informants:
British Migrants to the Commonwealth Since the late 1960s.
I am a researcher in the History Program at La Trobe University and am seeking contact with people who are willing to contribute information and testimony, through writing or interview, about their migration experience from Britain. I am looking specifically at those who left Britain and emigrated to Commonwealth countries between 1967 and the present. This is to assist with the writing of a book about the ‘British Diaspora’ in the latter part of the 20th century.
My book with Alistair Thomson, ‘The ‘Ten Pound Poms’: Australia’s Invisible Migrants, will appear in June, 2005 with Manchester University Press, and I am currently writing another history of postwar British emigration this time to Canada between 1945 and the 1960s. These books examine the massive postwar exodus of British people in the turbulent years of the late 1940s 50s and 60s, charting the movement from one spurred by postwar austerity to the rising expectations of the late 50s and early 60s. The British story of these years is a powerful one, which has waited a long time to be told. But it usually stops when the largest surge of people leaving Britain began to decline, around the late 60s and the early 70s. This is in spite of the fact that, since that time, the British exodus to the countries of the ‘Old Commonwealth’ has remained one of the largest migrations - now often referred to as a ‘diaspora’ - in the western world. This is the story I now wish to tell, and it will be based on personal testimony from emigrants to Australia, Canada and New Zealand, and especially those who returned to Britain and have moved between countries since their original migration.
I would be glad to hear from anyone who was a part of this movement and would like to participate. People may contact me at the following addresses, and I will follow up with more detailed information and arrangements. Confidentiality will be maintained at all times.
Dr Jim Hammerton: La Trobe University, (Melbourne) Victoria, 3086 Australia.
By email: J.Hammerton@latrobe.edu.au
By mail: Dr J. Hammerton, History Department, La Trobe University, (Melbourne) Victoria, 3086, Australia.
By fax: 61 3 9479 1942
Telephone contact: 61 3 9479 2364 OR 61 3 9481 4884
