Post 1945 Background
At the end of the Second World War, the Royal Air Force (RAF) decided unilaterally not to re-impose its pre-war ban on recruiting British subjects not of “pure European descent”. Although the British Army and Royal Navy declined initially to revise their peacetime recruiting ban, in 1947 the Cabinet decreed that they should accept volunteers from the UK’s ethnic minority community.
As the UK’s ethnic minority population expanded the number of service people drawn from this population also increased gradually. There was very little growth in recruitment until the 1960s and an unofficial quota limited the number of ethnic minority personnel serving in the Army to a maximum of 3%. The Royal Navy and the RAF did not apply any form of quota in the 1960s.
In 1998 the Ministry of Defence and the Commission for Racial Equality entered into a “Partnership Agreement” to promote employment through improved racial equality practices. This aimed to eliminate all forms of racial discrimination and harassment in the Armed Forces.
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