Asylum

Period	Refugee Movement
1560-1575	Dutch Protestants - the Hugenots - fled religious persecution in the Spanish Netherlands and settled in London and East England.
1665	In 1655, Oliver Cromwell lifted the earlier persecution of the Jewish community and they were permitted to acquire a house for a synagogue and burial grounds. Thereafter, Jewish settlement was never questioned, and a mixture of immigrants arrived from Amsterdam, Spain, Portugal, North Africa, and Northern Italy.
1780s	Roman Catholics and the aristocracy fled the 1789 French Revolution and came to Britain.
1848-1880	This was a period in which many European countries experienced turmoil and revolution and many thousands fled to a stable England. These included Karl Marx and Victor Hugo.
1880-1914	During the Tsarist anti-Semitic pogroms of the 1880s, 100,000 Ashkenazim Jews sought sanctuary in Britain.
1914-1918	More than 250,000 Belgian refugees fled to the UK, escaping the fighting of the First World War.
1936	The Spanish Civil War breaks out between the Socialist Republicans and right wing Royalists under Franco. Refugees from the Basque region arrived in Southern England, many housed in a large refugee camp in Southampton - including including Luis Portillo, an academic and father of Michael Portillo, the former conservative MP.
1933 -45	80,000 Jews from Germany and other European countries were admitted into Britain, including over 7000 children. A number re-emigrated, mainly to the US, but an estimated 55,000 made Britain their permanent home. This settlement was to transform British intellectual and cultural life - the giants include Freud, Popper and Karl Gombrich
1940-60	250, 000 Polish refugees granted refugee status in the UK, initially fleeing Nazism, and then Communism.
1940 -60	50,00 refugees from Eastern Europe granted asylum from countries such as Romania.
1956	17,000 Hungarian Nationals including 1,466 children flee after the USSR invades Hungry.
1968	5,000 Czech nationals arrive in the UK.
1972	President Idi Amin of Uganda ordered the expulsion of the country's South Asian Population. Many held British passports and therefore came and 29,000 settled in the UK.
1973	3,000 Chileans flee after the military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet on 11 September 1973. Both Sheffield and Rotherham accepted a considerable number of these political exiles.
1979-84	24,000 adult refugees most of whom were South Vietnamese including many government officials. 300 unaccompanied Vietnamese children enter the UK either as part of special programmes or by being rescued from the sea.
1991	Break up of the government of Somalia lead to 7,500 applications being made to the UK many of which are accepted. Many seek asylum in the UK because the French stick to rigidly legalistic criteria that accept no Somalis because they have no state to flee from.
1992-97	2,500 Bosnians enter the UK as refugees following the break up of former Yugoslavia
1994	The assassination of President Habyarimana of Rwanda is the signal for campaign of genocide by the Hutus against the Tutsis.
1999	Renewed heavy fighting in Sri Lanka leads to 5,130 applications for asylum being made to the UK.
1999	4,345 Kosovar refugees following the ethnic cleansing policy introduced by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY).

(Sources: Care and health, Refugee Council UK,
http://www.refugeeweek.org.uk/refugees/contribution.pdf,
http://www.una-uk.org/countries.html)