As a companion piece to our earlier immigration law timeline, here is an attempt at a nationality law timeline. I know that UK nationality law is complex but I confess I had not anticipated quite how long this one would take. With immigration law, much of the detail is set out in secondary legislation, so a timeline of Acts of Parliament paints a very incomplete (but I think still interesting) picture. With nationality law, the detail is set out in the primary legislation, making this exercise somewhat more difficult.

I have gone right back to the start and I have tried to capture the major changes as they occurred. Where something did not really change (such as rules on acquisition by descent) I have not mentioned it even if the rule was preserved in new legislation.

This exercise owes a huge amount to Fransman’s British Nationality Law (3rd edition) and the scholarship of its authors, Laurie Fransman himself but also Adrian Berry and Alison Harvey. Mistakes in the timeline are my own, though; please do point any out and I’ll look at doing a revised version. I’ve already made a few minor tweaks to the immigration one after feedback.

It is interesting to see how the phases of obsession with different aspects of nationality emerge from the timeline. Until 1948 the principal issue in British nationality law was transmission from parent to child abroad, outside the British empire. As international travel grew, it transpired the common law rules of allegiance were insufficient. In parallel with that, presaged by an abortive experiment in 1708, the nineteenth century saw the introduction of a proper naturalisation process in order to accommodate and integrate the wave of migration from the rest of Europe during the years. The nineteenth century also saw Parliament legislate to treat women as the property of their husbands, a position only reversed in 1948. Women continued to be discriminated against in passing on their nationality status to their children until at least 1981 and those injustices were only retrospectively corrected in 2014 – far too late for many.

The post war period from 1948 to 1997 was primarily about the end of empire, although further legislation to address various outstanding issues continued up until 2014. Changes to address the status of adopted children and the stateless were also made. The thirty-year period from 1962 to 1981 witnessed the unedifying demotion of some citizens to a second class status which denied them residence in their country of nationality. Finally, from 2002 onwards we see a number of measures aimed at “integration”, including tests, ceremonies, the abandoned probationary citizenship measures, and widened citizenship deprivation powers.

If you spot any mistakes or glaring omissions, get in touch and let me know.