The Labour Government won the elections in late 1964 with a tiny majority and was vulnerable to populist pressures exerted by a handful of right-wing Midlanders. One sign of the atmosphere of bitterness was the election of the Conservative Peter Griffiths in Smethwick. Griffiths had run a campaign under the slogan: 'if you want a nigger for a neighbour vote Labour' and on his entry to the House of Commons he was denounced by Prime Minister Harold Wilson as a 'Parliamentary leper'. The Conservative party backed a new Bill by the Midlands MP, Sir Cyril Osborne, which set out to deny entry to all migrants from the Commonwealth, except for those with parents and grandparents born in Britain. The Bill was thrown out in March 1965, but only a few months later, the Labour Government introduced a White Paper modifying the 1962 Act, which went some way towards mollifying Sir Cyril and his supporters.

The 1965 White Paper reduced the numbers of employment vouchers, erasing the unskilled category and cutting the numbers of skilled vouchers to 8,500. It also tightened up the regulations on students, dependants and visitors, brought in health checks for new migrants, gave the Home Secretary the power to repatriate migrants, and introduced police powers over the registration process.

Part Three of the White Paper also announced new resources and financial assistance for local authorities for housing, employment and health, and introduced a new National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants to replace the Commonwealth Immigrants Advisory Council, which had been set up in 1962.

The 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, the ensuing amendments and the White Paper set a pattern throughout the 1960s for the way Britain would deal with inward migration from the New Commonwealth.

After 1965, and the publication of the first Race Relations Bill, political argument began to pass from immigration control to the management of race relations. However, there was one more significant piece of immigration legislation. In 1967, it became clear that a number of Kenyan Asians, who held British passports, were exempt from the provisions of the 1965 Act and were therefore entitled to enter Britain.

The prominent Conservative MP for Wolverhampton South West, Enoch Powell, began a populist anti-immigration campaign and the Labour Government introduced a new Act early in 1968. This new Act withdrew the right of entry of remaining Kenyan Asian passport holders and, for the first time, distinguished between citizens who were 'patrials' - those who possessed identifiable ancestors in the British Isles - and those who were not. It was clear that 'patrials' would be exclusively white and, for a time, the 1968 Act settled the major political arguments about immigration controls. In the next few years political debate shifted more positively towards discussion about race relations.

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