The British Nationality Act 1948 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom on British nationality law which defined British nationality by creating the status of "Citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies" (CUKC) as the sole national citizenship of the United Kingdom and all of its colonies. The Act, which came into effect on 1 January 1949, was passed in consequence of the 1947 Commonwealth conference on nationality and citizenship, which had agreed that each of the Commonwealth member states would legislate for its own citizenship, distinct from the shared status of "Commonwealth citizen" (formerly known as "British subject"). The CUKC consolidated British citizenship by putting Britain's colonial subjects on equal footing with those living in the British Isles, and was likely made to try and avoid decolonisation. Similar legislation was also passed in most of the other Commonwealth countries. The Act was largely the result of a bipartisan ideological commitment to "a definition of citizenship including Britons and colonial subjects under the same nationality" and at a time "before large-scale migration was considered possible". It formed the basis of the United Kingdom's nationality law until the British Nationality Act 1981, which came into force in 1983. Most of its provisions have been repealed or otherwise superseded by subsequent legislation, though parts remain in force. Background to the Act Broadly speaking, nationals of the United Kingdom, the Dominions, and the various British colonies had always shared a common citizenship status of "British subject". However, in 1946 the Canadian parliament passed the Canadian Citizenship Act, which established a separate Canadian citizenship. In response, a Commonwealth conference met in London in 1947, where it was agreed that each of the Commonwealth member states would be free to legislate for its own citizenship, while still retaining elements of a common Commonwealth citizenship. The resulting legislation passed by the United Kingdom for itself and its colonies was the British Nationality Act 1948, which was introduced by a Labour government. It marked the first time that married British women gained independent nationality, regardless of the citizenship of their spouses. Legislation passed in the other Commonwealth countries included Australia's Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948, New Zealand's British Nationality and New Zealand Citizenship Act 1948, and Southern Rhodesia's Southern Rhodesian Citizenship and British Nationality Act, 1949. Provisions of the Act The Act created the new status of "citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies"