Jon Bloomfield examines the similarities between the 1905 Aliens Bill and the current Illegal Migration Bill and inflammatory rhetoric around refugees
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Sports presenter Gary Lineker provoked huge controversy in March when he criticised the Government’s new asylum legislation – the Illegal Migration Bill – and tweeted that the language used when talking about refugees “is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 1930s”. Lineker was fiercely condemned by ministers – and most of the press – for the comparison. His comments jarred with the rose-tinted view of many about the UK’s historical track record on receiving refugees.
It was noticeable that no one commented on the startling similarities between the language being routinely used in the current debate and that employed in Britain at the start of 20th Century, when the country experienced large numbers of Jewish immigrants escaping persecution from Tsarist Russia and eastern Europe.
My grandparents arrived on these shores then, as part of the influx of Jews fleeing from pogroms. They arrived in the East End of London with little money and no English. Their story is familiar to many Jews living in the UK today, whose grandparents or great grandparents arrived in similar circumstances to face the venom of a hostile press and an aroused local population with a Conservative Government pushing through the country’s first anti-immigration legislation, the 1905 Aliens Act.
The country has seen periodic outbreaks of anti-immigrant hysteria ever since, whipped up by right-wing nationalist politicians – from Oswald Moseley to Enoch Powell to Nigel Farage – and their supportive press.
We saw a bout of anti-migrant rhetoric in the years prior to the EU Referendum of 2016. We are seeing another outburst now, focused on refugees. Priti Patel’s proposal to abolish any rights to claim asylum for those caught crossing the Channel by deporting them to the east African country of Rwanda has been followed by Suella Braverman upping the anti-refugee rhetoric.
In the House of Commons in October, she declared: “Let us be clear about what is really going on here: the British people deserve to know which party is serious about stopping the invasion on our southern coast.” It was the first time a minister had used the military language of invasion. She continued in similar vein when introducing the Illegal Migration Bill: “There are 100 million people around the world who could qualify for protection under our current laws. Let us be clear. They are coming here.”
It could have been 120 years earlier, when the Daily Mail ran a regular series of news stories and opinion features under the strapline ‘The Alien Invasion’ prior to the 1905 legislation.
The common features between then and now are striking: the key role of the right-wing press; the similar arguments deployed; and the repeated efforts to mobilise cross-class alliances behind the anti-migrant cause, aided by elements within the left and trade union movement.
The Emergence of Antisemitism
The UK’s Jewish population expanded rapidly before the First World War from around 60,000 in 1880 to 300,000 in 1914. This was an age of the wholesale emigration of Europeans across the Atlantic and beyond.
For Germans, Poles, Italians and Irish, this resettlement was driven by economic hardship, cheap shipping and the hopes of prosperity in a new land. The same factors drove more than two million east European Jews to move westwards during the four decades prior to the War, with the harsh reality of religious persecution and ethnic pogroms giving added urgency to their flight. More than 80% headed for America. Canada and South Africa were other favoured destinations, while England often served as a trans-migratory hub, a stop-off point on a longer journey.
Prior to the Enlightenment it had been Jews’ religion that demarcated them from others. But after their political emancipation following the French Revolution, it was their race that was increasingly the object of scorn and attack.
In both France and Germany, the late 19th Century saw the emergence of strong antisemitic movements able to mobilise both the petit-bourgeoisie and the poor.
In England, the sudden arrival of Jews into an already densely packed, poverty-stricken east London offered the opportunity for right-wing press owners and ambitious politicians to stoke up anti-Jewish prejudice.
Igniting the Spark
There have been two constant elements stirring the immigration pot throughout the Brexit years and with the current refugee controversy: the Conservative tabloid press and Nigel Farage. It was no different 120 years ago. Then, as now, the Daily Mail led the charge and there was a smart, well-heeled operator with the demagogic, populist touch to front the campaign – Major William Evans-Gordon.
At the start of the 20th Century, the Daily Mail ran regular news stories and opinion pieces under the heading of ‘The Alien Invasion’.
Stories such as that on 18 September 1902 focused on the impact of migrants on “the British workman”, depressing his wages and increasing his hours. A flavour of the opinion pieces is evident in the account on the same day by Viscount Mountmorres headed ‘The Foreign Invasion of London. A view from the dockside’. Here he wrote that as the huge liner docks so “out of her bowels swarms a horde of dirty, half-starved, evil-smelling immigrants – Poles, Russians, Germans, Italians, every nationality under the sun. They swarm out and over the ship’s side until they cover the dock as a cloud of locusts a field of green corn”.
Elected as an MP for Stepney in the 1900 General Election, Evans-Gordon linked up with other east London Conservative MPs in calling for curbs on “alien” immigration. In the next few years, he became the central figure in Britain’s immigration debate.
He co-founded the British Brothers’ League in 1901 and then convinced the Government to introduce legislation which became the Aliens Act of 1905. Its proponents claimed that it was intended to restrict immigration and thereby supposedly halt the undercutting of British labour. The Jewish Chronicle more accurately suggested that the legislation really had nothing to do with Jews but was a protectionist measure intended to appease the working-classes at a time of unemployment and so help to retain the seats of Conservative MPs.
A Numbers Game
The UK’s recent debates over EU immigration, Brexit and refugees all contain strong echoes of the original arguments around the Aliens Bill.
Numbers feature prominently. Anti-immigration campaigners regularly exaggerate the number of newcomers entering the country or make false claims of likely numbers to follow.
During the Brexit campaign, Michael Gove and the Vote Leave camp claimed that following Turkey’s entry into the EU (unlikely then, improbable now) 76 million people could flood into the country. Braverman’s latest assertions about the danger of the country being “overrun” with “tens of millions of arrivals” is simply a politician trying to terrify the public.
The UNHCR figures for the year to September 2022 showed that 44,190 people sought asylum in UK; 8% of total applications to the EU+ group of 30 countries. In the same period, Germany had 127,730 applications and France 95,510, while Turkey is currently hosting four million refugees mainly from neighbouring Syria.
Yet numbers rarely cut much ice with anti-immigration campaigners.
During the debate on the 1905 Aliens Bill, opposition MP Charles Dilke pointed out that “the Board of Trade and the (Royal) Commission, very frankly face the facts, and the Commission in its report says – ‘it will be observed that the proportion of alien immigrants in this country is comparatively small’”.
Yet, in a subsequent debate Evans-Gordon played the Braverman card: every year there are 1.5 million Europeans making their way westwards while there are 5.5 million Jews in the Russian empire who could all be coming here. The fact that the large majority were heading elsewhere was ignored.