This year (2025) marks the centenary of the passing of the ‘Special Restriction (Coloured Alien Seamen) Order, requiring maritime workers of colour to register with the police and forcing them to bear a Certificate of Registration.
9 September 2026Blog series Untold lives
Author Florian Stadtler, University of Bristol
The 1925 Special Restrictions (Coloured Alien Seamen) Order was a racially exclusionary order that initially applied to Welsh port cities in Barry, Penarth, Port Talbot, Newport, Swansea and Cardiff, and in northern England in Liverpool, Salford, Newcastle, South Shields, Hull, and Middlesbrough before being universally implemented across Britain in 1926.
Its aim was to prevent and regulate the numbers of overseas mercantile mariners and bar them from settling in Britain. It required them to provide proof of their British nationality as citizens of empire. Such proof was often difficult for sailors to obtain as they did not have passports and any discharge certificates were, in contrast to white mariners, deemed not acceptable proof of nationality, stripping a large number of people of colour of their British citizenship.
In part, the Order was driven by the lobbying of the National Sailors and Fireman’s Union, endorsed by the Board of Trade, to restrict access for foreign sailors to the maritime labour market, which government officials took up. This discriminatory order had huge implications and led to much harassment.
Mary Fazel's letter to the India Office, 1926 - IOR/L/E/9/953 f.120
Letter from the India Office to Mary Fazel, 27 August 1926 - IOR/L/E/9/953 f.116
The distress caused is evident from Mary Fazel’s correspondence with the India Office. Mary Fazel, who lived in Bootle near Liverpool, was the wife of Fazel Mohamed who worked as a fireman on board ship.
On his disembarkation at Cardiff on 1 August 1925 he had been registered as an ‘alien’ by local authorities, who refused to accept his Certificate of Nationality and Mercantile Marine book in spite of the fact that he was lawfully a British subject.
She appealed to the India Office to help redress this unjust treatment, documented in correspondence between her and officials for over a year. The Order led to much hardship for the family, as without proof of nationality he was unable to find employment aboard ship and experienced police harassment in the street.
It took over 11 months for Fazel Mohamed to receive the necessary documentation from India proving that he was a British subject. The Official Letter from the India Office on 27 August 1926 must have come as a great relief.
As the example of Mary Fazel shows, she and her husband had knowledge of their rights and appealed directly to the authorities to seek redress from discriminatory treatment.
The Home Office did face opposition to the Order. The India and Colonial Office were not supportive and the order also led to protests. For example, as is evident from the Durrant Press Cutting from 13 May 1927, the forced registration and threat of deportation led to a mass demonstration on May Day in Cleveland Square, Liverpool, where many Indian seafarers resided.
They lobbied that the requirement for Aliens Certificates for Indians be abolished and an end to the stop and search policy by the police which they saw being arbitrarily implemented.
They appealed to the Indian National Congress for an inquiry about the condition of Indians living in England and demanded equal treatment as British subjects and citizens of empire.
Durrant Press Cutting, 13 May 1927 - IOR/L/E/9/953 f.62
Renewed in 1938 and 1942, the Order was finally revoked that same year, as Britain faced a manpower shortage in its war effort.
To find out more, please visit South Asian Britain: Connecting Histories, a new digital resource developed in partnership with the British Library, University of Bristol and Queen Mary University of London and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/X001520/1).
Creative Commons Attribution licence CC-BY.
Florian Stadtler, University of Bristol
Remaking Britain: South Asian Connections and Networks project.
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