‘Penniless Orientals of the Pedlar Type’: The Republic of Ireland and Commonwealth Migrant Rights 1940s-1970s

Especially as regards Commonwealth citizens, the Republic of Ireland’s immigration policy has been seen as dependent (even if surreptitiously) on that of the UK. Although the value placed on the Common Travel Area undoubtedly imposed serious limitations, Irish discretion was significant and often more restrictive. In 1948-9 the UK secured Ireland’s public commitment to extend reciprocal citizenship rights to all of the Commonwealth notwithstanding its exit but, in reality, Ireland successfully avoided this as regards the ‘new’ Commonwealth countries and the reach of Ireland’s aliens exemption law also remained deliberately opaque. Whilst broadly mirroring the UK’s extension of immigration control to the Commonwealth in 1962, Ireland retained apartheid South Africa as partially privileged and only comprehensively exempted those UK citizens born within the UK. From 1973, the UK largely abandoned any privileged treatment for Commonwealth citizens. However, in entirely removing such privileges in 1975 and imposing visas on new Commonwealth countries from 1976 Ireland went beyond even this. These divergences reflected the greater strength of religiously, ethnically and even racially homogenous nationalism in Ireland compared to the UK and the fact that, whereas Ireland left the Commonwealth in 1949, the UK remained a leading member of this increasingly divided but also increasingly diverse grouping.  N.B. The Final Version of this paper was published in Contemporary European History and may be viewed via https://doi.org/10.1017/S0960777324000651