British Overseas Territories Citizen

The status of British Overseas Territories citizen relates to persons holding British nationality by virtue of a connection with a British Overseas Territory.

The British Nationality Act 1981 came into force on 1 January 1983, and divided Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies (CUKCs) into three categories:

There are categories of British national other than these three, but these consist of persons who were not CUKCs before 1983.

The year left between the passing of the British Nationality Act 1981 on 30 October 1981, and its going into force on the 1 January 1983, was intended to allow the local governments of the colonies to lodge complaints, but few colonials were aware of the pending change and the only colony which protested was the Falkland Islands, which was permitted to retain full British Citizenship.

All other colonials not already resident in the UK or the Crown Dependencies lost full British Citizenship, and the rights of abode and work in the UK, when the Act went into force. This caused anger in the affected colonies as the Act, which resulted from the desire to prevent ethnic-Chinese people in Hong Kong with UK and Colonies Citizenship from migrating to the UK prior to the planned 1997 hand-over of the colony to China, was seen as racist, especially as those colonials in affected colonies who possessed a qualifying connection to the UK sufficient to retain either British citizenship or a right to remain (in the UK) notification in their BDTC passports were usually white. The former colonials also objected to being described as dependent, especially in Bermuda, which had been self-reliant virtually since 1612, and largely self-governed since 1620. This resentment was exacerbated when full British citizenship was returned to Gibraltarians, ensuring that those from territories perceived as having negligible non-white populations retained free movement into the UK, with rights of abode and work, as did many of the whites in the remaining coloured colonies. Most non-whites in those remaining territories, by contrast, could only enter the UK as short-term visitors (with a date stamped in their passports by which they must exit) or with difficult-to-obtain entry clearances.

Conservative Party back-benchers hinted in the years following 1983 that the undeclared intent of the British Government was to revert to a single British Citizenship for UK and the territories following the hand-over of Hong Kong, but it will now never be known if the Conservative government would have done so as it had been replaced by Tony Blair's Labour Party government in 1997. Labour had insisted that the territories had been treated badly by the previous Government, and had made a single British Citizenship, restoring rights of free movement, abode, and work in the UK to BDT Citizens, part of the party's election manifesto. A white paper addressing the issue, titled Partnership for Progress and Prosperity: Britain and the Overseas Territories, was produced in 1999. This did not, however, have a high enough priority for Labour to table a Bill before its first term in Government ended. Although Labour was re-elected in 2001, it was again slow to act on its promise to the territories. The House of Lords, in which sat many former Governors of territories who felt the matter more pressing, consequently tabled and passed its own Bill then sent it down to the House of Commons to be confirmed, the reverse of the normal procedure. Thus enacted, the Bill became the British Overseas Territories Act 2002.

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