Skills are in short supply in the UK. And the number of migrant workers is set to rise over the next few years. It’s all happened before, but what attracts people here and what’s different now?

In the 1950s, Britain suffered a chronic shortage of labour. There was hard work to be done rebuilding the country after the war, but there weren’t enough people to do it. Jobs in nursing, transport and factories remained stubbornly unfilled. So Britain opened its doors to the Commonwealth and invited workers to take up residency here to get the country back in shape. By 1960 around 150,000 West Indians and 60,000 Indians and Pakistanis had arrived in Britain. Most stayed to make it their home.

Why did they come and how did they find it?
‘We came here to earn money, to educate our children and to secure a bright future,’ says Mr Baldev Singh, 62, who arrived from India in 1963. Living conditions were tough. Many Asian men lived together while their women were still ‘back home’. Singh went from one unskilled job to the next until he discovered life on the buses. ‘The bus driving was the best job I had because it was the one in which I was given comprehensive training. I enjoyed meeting people of the new country,’ he says.

Rupa Dev, 55, a professional tailor from Pakistan took on a series of jobs in the rag trade in the Midlands. ‘My husband couldn’t find work at first so I went out and got a job as a garment finisher. I had four children to feed,’ she says. Language was a constant barrier for many years. ‘One of the first things we saved up for was a TV. That’s how I learnt to speak English,’ she says.

Dev finally decided to buy a sewing machine of her own and worked as an outdoor machinist, freelancing from home and saving time and money spent commuting to work. Most importantly, however, she was still able to look after her kids as she worked, ‘Which meant I could work for more than one employer at a time, doing the hours I wanted and still be around for the children,’ she explains.

Some immigrants viewed the UK with a sense of adventure. ‘I thought I’d come and see what it was like. All my friends and family were heading off to London and I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. I thought I’d try it out for a couple of years. But look at me, I’m still here after 45 years,’ says Mrs Jo Philips, 65. She worked as a teacher in Dominica but in Britain she could only find work on a production line, ‘You took what was offered because we were a community trying to establish ourselves,’ she says.

Children of all three, Singh, Dev and Philips have gone on to do A levels and degrees and are currently employed in banking, medicine and marketing. They all agree that migrating to the UK was worth the initial hardship – it allowed their children opportunities that could only be imagined in their mother countries.

What’s happening now?
Fifty years on, Britain is once again facing a massive skills shortage across a whole range of industries including accountancy, teaching, nursing, administration and IT. Employment and Equal Opportunities Minister, Margaret Hodge, wants to relax employment restrictions for certain key workers from abroad rather than opt for the wholesale permanent importing of labour. Graduates with skills in short supply no longer require two years’ relevant postgraduate employment before working in the UK. Procedures for granting work permits are being simplified and extended to five rather than three years.

So, unlike half a century ago, the migrant workers today are not likely to stay. Antipodean workers who commonly worked in London restaurants and pubs are now entering Britain’s offices as secretaries and accountants. ‘I thought I’d come and work in London because New Zealand, although it’s a lovely country, is really isolated. Coming to Britian means that I can earn money whilst travelling. I’m getting to see places that I would never would have otherwise,’ says New Zealander, Samantha Rudd, 25, currently an accountant for Sainsburys.

‘Since we’ve got a purpose here we are prepared to work hard at whatever we do. Travelling around the world means we’re open to people and suggestions. I think we make good employees.’ Rudd continues, ‘British employers like Antipodean workers because we work on a temporary basis, which means they don’t get stuck with permanent members of staff. And we like the flexibility because we can just zip off to Europe for a week or two and then come back to work.’

Even though there are IT specialists of all nationalities currently working in Britain, the dearth of staff continues. Britain – along with Germany, France, Canada, Australia and America – is desperate and is now recruiting recruiting as far afield as Bangalore, fast becoming the IT capital of India. The Internet means some IT jobs can be conducted remotely from around the globe and staff are not required to take up residence in the home country of a company.

Vinod Chhabra, 35, originally from Sri Lanka is currently working in computing for a major film distributor in London. ‘I’ve worked in America as well and the opportunities in London are comparable – the wages are excellent so I am trying to get as much work done as I can while I’m here. I really don’t know what the future has in store so you have to make the most of what you’ve got,’ he says.

The shortage of teachers in the country recently meant that some schools closed their doors to children for a day as they pulled back to four-day weeks. So acute is the problem that teachers are being recruited directly from South Africa. Wendy Grant, 36, is a black deputy head teacher in an inner city school in London. ‘We’ve got teachers from South Africa, Australia and Ghana whose level of teaching is good, but at the end of the day we know that they are going to leave and we need teachers who are going to stay,’ she says.

Britain needs skilled workers and the issue is once again high on the national agenda as it was two generations ago. We are at a crossroads. Do we recruit from abroad, train up from within, or both?

NB: Some names in this article have been changed.