The 1942 Beveridge report formed the blueprint for social change in post-war Britain, promising a welfare state for those making huge sacrifices in wartime.

What's more, those making sacrifices didn't just come from the British Isles. Many came from places like the Caribbean islands and South Asia.

When Britain suffered huge labor shortages as a result of the war, the word went out to all the colonies of the Empire.

Thousands from the Caribbean answered the call, persuaded by the prospect of a steady job with a good wage.

They became known as the Windrush generation, named after the HMT Empire Windrush, a troop ship which carried the first group of postwar West Indian immigrants to Britain.

Many worked in areas like transport, the newly-formed NHS and the construction industry. 

And despite contributing greatly to the UK's postwar recovery, many members of the Afro Caribbean community faced extreme racism and hostility from the local population. 

South Asian influx  

Besides Afro-Caribbeans, the other main group of migrants to Britain came from South Asia.

Like the Windrush generation, some emigrated to the UK to meet postwar employment needs. Others moved as a result of the 1948 Nationality Act, which essentially granted British citizenship to people from Commonwealth countries. 

They came here to start a new life and help rebuild their adopted country from the ravages of war. One was Sudhir Misra, who came to Britain from India in 1952. He tells CGTN Europe that the UK wasn't what he expected.

"My biggest shock was everything seemed so small compared to India," he says. "I thought how could such a small country conquer India and run it? 

"Initially I didn't encounter any racism, the locals were all very friendly. We were all recovering from the war, because they must have been working with Indian soldiers. However later on it (racism) grew. 

"They were getting more hostile, not so much at work but in accommodation. You used to go house to house to find if you could stay there and there would be a sign saying 'no dogs, no Irish allowed'. 

"A couple of times I went for accommodation – they agreed on the phone, but when they saw my face they said the property was no longer available."

For Misra's generation, their priority was to find work and provide for their families. 

But as more immigrants came to Britain, the aspirations of their children were very different to that of their parents. 

Changing aspirations

Dipak Ratti's family originally settled in Dundee in Scotland when he was five years old. The reminders of the war were everywhere.

"The first signs of being in postwar were the air raid shelters where we played," he says. "Changes were apparent with the NHS, maybe more social mobility – I grew up in the 60s, when some of the class barriers disappeared culturally between people.

"Our parents had a very narrow aspiration for success in life, meaning academic, going up the career ladder. Which is alright, but I think for us our aspirations changed as we wanted to see more of the world, know more people and have a broader view of the world. It wasn't purely the economic or academic ladder that my parents wanted."

For Ratti's wife Mina the cultural shift was even bigger. Her family struggled to accept her aspirations as a young Asian woman growing up in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s.

"As far as my mother was concerned, it was about bringing me up so I could cook and then get me married as soon as possible – which really wasn't my aspiration at all," she tells CGTN. "I wanted to be independent, I was seeing things on the TV – places you could go, things you could be, and I thought I wanted to do that."

That growing sense of independence felt by Mina, Dipak and others from their generation helped drive the huge social changes that Britain experienced from the late 1950s onwards.

Those changes included new laws for racial and sexual equality, reforms to education, and more rights for women at home and in the workplace.

None of these rights were easily won, but the changes in the years following World War II most definitely laid the foundations for the multicultural society that Britain is today.