Migrants are the "physical rejects" of other countries; Britain harbours "a pool of ill health... which is constantly being replenished". These quotes could easily have come from one of the UK's right-wing newspapers today. In fact, they come from a 1958 editorial in the Birmingham Post in response to the annual meeting of the British Medical Association, where fears of migrants casting the UK back into the dark ages of tuberculosis (TB) were rife. Ten years earlier, in July 1948, the UK's National Health Service launched. And the month before that, the Empire Windrush, carrying 492 migrants from Britain's West Indian colonies, docked at Tilbury, heralding the start of mass migration to the UK.
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