British Brothers' League 1901-5, London

Britain’s monarch could expel foreigners to protect the security of the realm in the late C19th, but free movement of labour was gener­al­ly unquestioned. Migration wasn’t an urgent issue until Conserv­ative politicians agitated in the 1880s-90s, and the media got on board. 

Migrants in a crowded Poplar market, 1904

The Guardian

The feared immigrants were mainly East Europ­ean Jews. In the Pale of Set­tlement, they were allowed to live on a permanent basis. From 1880s on, with the terrible anti-Semitic pogroms, many fled. 150,000 settled in the UK, including my Russian grandmother. Then there were other Russ­ians and Poles, Ital­ians and Ger­mans who moved to the East End, and were seen to lower living standards in the UK.

Emerging trade unions were worried that low-skilled migrants acc­epting long hours and low pay would undermine real English workers’ struggles. During the 1890s, the Trades Union Congress/TUC passed 3 resolutions calling for immigration controls.

Jewish trade unionists wrote the remarkable Voice from the Aliens to counter a nasty resolution at the 1895 cong­ress. They unionised themselves and made strenuous efforts to co­op­erate with existing labour bodies. Influential non-Jewish activ­ists in William Morris’ Soc­ial­ist League support­ed them, as did tailors’ leader George Mac­donald etc. But the dockers’ leader, Ben Tillett, described Jewish immigrants as the "scum of the contin­ent who made slums even more foetid and congested".

BBL Poster, 1902

The migrants organised their own public meetings to challenge BBL propag­anda through an ad-hoc Aliens Defence League, temporarily housed in Brick Lane. They proposed practical solutions: unionising migrant workers so they could fight alongside indigenous workers for better conditions for all, and creating fair rent courts to deal with landlords.

The Daily Mail continued its campaign against the arrival of Jews from Russia: "In Feb 1900, a British liner called the Cheshire moored at Southampton, carrying refugees from anti-Semitic pogroms in Russia. They had breakfasted on board, but they rushed as though starving at the food. These were the penniless refugees and when the relief committee passed by they hid their gold, and fawned and whined, and in broken English asked for money for their train fare."

In 1901, hatred continued. Bishop Cosmo Lang of Stepney in East London accused immigrants of swamping areas once populated by Eng­lishmen. Major Will­iam Evans-Gordon, Conservative MP for Stepney in 1900 elected on a strong anti-immigration platform, ag­reed. Along with neigh­bour­ing Conservative MP Samuel Forde-Ridley and Capt William Stan­ley Shaw of the Middlesex Regiment, Evans-Gordon forged a pop­ul­ist anti-immigrant movement called the British Brot­h­ers’ League/BBL. It was launched in the East End in May 1901.

Init­ially the BBL was most int­erested in protectionism, although it soon emphasised more rabid anti-foreigner rhetoric. Henry Norman Wolverhampton MP publicly deplored the UK being made into the "dump­ing ground for the scum of Europe". He joined the campaign and advised other nations to "dis­in­fect their own sewage".

The Eastern Post and City Chronicle happily reported BBL activities and demanded that the government end the foreign flood which had submerged East London. Within months the league claimed 45,000 members, although a member was anyone who signed the BBL's petition. The League promoted its cause with large meetings, with guards whose role was to eject disruptive opponents.

The BBL’s East End strongholds in Shoreditch, Bethnal Green and Limehouse solidified around the immigrant ghetto of Aldgate and White­chapel. BBL members, mostly local factory workers or unempl­oyed, were convinced by BBL propaganda that their precarious work sit­uation (low pay, overcrowded housing, poor sanitation) was caused by immigrants. But Captain Shaw also boasted of his elite recr­uits: Oxford grad­uates, city merchants and 40 Tory MPs.

The league’s opening rally in 1901 drew opponents. BBL supporters wrote to the press about socialist foreig­ners upsetting the meeting. Local newspapers noted that 260 big brawny stewards roughly ej­ected foreigners. So when the BBL held another large rally at the People’s Pal­ace Mile End in Jan 1902, the 4,000 supporters were again protected by guards. [A technique later used by the British Fascists]

BBL supporters filled a petit­ion pressing MPs to halt immig­ration. When the government launch­ed a Royal Commission on Alien Immigration in 1903, Evans-Gordon chaired it and set the agenda. The Royal Commission inves­tigated the BBL’s own charges - that immigrants:
ar­rived destitute and dirty;
practised insanitary habits;
spread in­fectious diseases;
were a burden on the rates;
disposs­es­sed nat­ive dwellers;
caused native tradesmen to lose trade;
worked for rates below local workers;
included crim­in­als, prostitutes and anarch­is­ts; and
formed a non-assimilating commun­ity.

Britain is the Promised Land and immigrants are undesirable

The 1905 Aliens Act satirised

The Royal Commission struggled to back up its charges in its 1903 report. After all, the immigrants themselves lived in overcrowded conditions and mostly worked 12+ hours a day. Their dedication to educ­ation and self-improvement denied claims that the migrants low­ered living standards. 

Still the Tory government passed Br­itain’s first modern immigration law, 1905 Aliens Act. Alth­ough the word Jew did not appear in this Act, the legislation was large­ly seen as a success for the BBL, which could then close down.

This Act put an end to the Vict­or­ian Golden Age of migration which had benefited from cheaper trans­port costs and growing labour dem­ands. The Alien Act’s most important provision was that Leave to Land would be refused to those migrants who could not support them­selves. To screen the migrants properly, the Act allowed them to disembark only in app­roved ports where an Immig­ration and a Health Officer could in­spect them.

By the time the Act passed, the Tories had fallen to Lib­erals in a landslide. The discretionary powers were transfer­red to the new Home Secret­ary, Herbert Gladstone, who used them to instruct all members of the Immigration Board. From 1906 the press was allowed to attend board meetings and in 1910 im­m­igrants were permitted legal assist­ance. The refusal rate under the new Act was low alth­ough some groups, eg gypsies, were disprop­ort­ionally af­fect­ed. The act remained for eight years before being subsumed into the more stringent 1914 Alien Restriction Act.

Tailoring workshop, East End c1910

The Guardian

Nothing is new; the League left behind a legacy of support for far-right groups. Enoch Powell warned of rivers of blood, Oswald Mosley wanted forced repatriation of Caribbean immig­rants who flooded in, Margaret Thatcher spoke of Britain’s towns being swamp­ed and Nigel Farage said parts of Britain were like a horrid foreign land.