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".
Maj Evans Gordon MP and Parliamentary colleagues
to address restricting further immigration of destitute foreigners
BBL Poster, 1902
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."
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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25 comments:
At present, the British fully support the Kiev regime, whose idols are Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych, who killed more than a million Jews during World War II.
That's why I don't want to know anything about Great Britain.
The Stepney Bishop and the Conservative MP for Stepney both had the same strong views. No wonder the initial establishment of the League happened in the Stepney Meeting House.
The Jewish Historical Society of England was founded in 1893, the oldest historical and learned such society in Europe. The society, based in London, has active branches throughout England. The aim of the society is to make the results of historical scholarship for both a general and specialist audience.
The number of Jews arriving from Russia, Poland and Romania were shown to be only a quarter of the foreign population arriving between 1893-1902.
As I knew none of this I feel like I have learnt something and that's always a good thing
Nothing changes, It's shameful to read of such activities and groups.
This detailed account underscores how economic insecurity, xenophobia, and political opportunism coalesced in late 19th-century Britain to fuel anti-immigrant sentiment, particularly against Eastern European Jews, shaping policies and public opinion in ways that echo into our present
I've learnt more Hels. The migrants worked long hours, they deserved better.
Irina
I understand what you are saying, but Australia has been a British nation since our very beginning. So I have read and written a great deal about Victorian and Edwardian history in Australia and Britain, even when I am mortified by racist behaviour and legislation.
My great great great great father in law ended up in the East end in the early 1800s after immigrating from "Russia" It was what is now Poland. he was avoiding the horrendous conscription laws that the czars placed on Thee Jewish Pale . That is also a reason for mass immigration especially of young men.
Other family members immigrated to Melbourne as a result of Pogroms in the 1880s.
Joe
Major Sir William Eden Evans Gordon (1857–1913) was a British politician, military officer and diplomat, a very influential man who held Stepney from 1900-7. Evans Gordon was heavily involved in the passing of the Aliens Act 1905 which sought to limit the number of would-be immigrants allowed to enter Britain even temporarily.
Jstor
If Jews accounted for only a quarter of the foreign population arriving in those years, why were the Jews most persecuted? And why did the Anti-Alien Act of 1905 not mention Jews specifically?
Perhaps the flood of Jews from Eastern Europe from the late 19th century onwards limited British willingness to make space for hungry immigrants and persecuted refugees, and they were too cautious to include vicious racism in the Act.
Jo--Anne
As I mentioned, I loved lecturing in Victorian and Edwardian history, but I still didn't know Sir William Eden Evans Gordon MP's name nor the Aliens Act 1905 and the Aliens Restriction Act 1914. So we all have a lot to learn.
jabblog,
similar shameful activities and legislation occurred in other countries, even earlier than in the UK.
The U.S Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, while broader than the British Act, targeted French and Irish immigrants.
Canada's legal system used to refer to individuals who were not permanent residents as "foreigners".
Australia classified people from countries at war with it as "enemy aliens," regardless of their length of citizenship before the war started.
roentare
re the present, more than "echo" into our societies.
The Trump administration is vastly expanding deportations . At the US's Immigration and Customs Enforcement, they have been instructed to meet a quota of 1,200-1,500 arrests per day. Raids are being carried out at all sort of workplaces and communities. People, including children, are now being detained at immigration court, at ICE check-ins, in front of courthouses and even schools.
I know that although the use of their law continues to face legal challenges, the administration has already sent hundreds of people to El Salvador etc outside the U.S., where they are now incarcerated in inhumane conditions.
https://afsc.org/news/trumps-executive-orders-immigration-explained
Margaret
you would have thought that as Britain rapidly industrialised and the factories required workers in rather dangerous or unpleasant conditions, industrial authorities would have warmly welcomed immigrants. Immigrants were people who had no choice but to accept long hours, poor pay and dangerous conditions.
mem
I have heard that story many time before but I didn't realise that immigrants fleeing Eastern Europe started in the early 1800s. My Russian family all got to Australia in the inter-war period and my Czech in-laws got here in 1951.
It is always too easy to blame lowered living standards and filthy over-crowded conditions on immigrants, when there were most likely the same conditions in poorer areas before the immigrants arrived. I remember when I was young living in a country town, homes when Greeks and Italians and other Europeans lived were always cleaner and better cared for than some homes occupied by British descendants. I remember the home of my sister's best friend, small wooden shack, tiny dark rooms, cooking smells that never left, etc.
River
We all understand that the Industrial Revolution was much harder for the British working class than for the wealthier families *nod*. The poor back then already suffered long working days, poor pay, chronic exposure to cold and wet, unhygienic rooms, inadequate food,, disease, and dangerous working conditions. So how on earth did immigrants, who worked like slaves, damage the British economy?
Hello Hels, I wasn't aware of such severe anti-immigrant activity in Britain at this early date, but somehow it doesn't surprise me. Today such deliberate cruelty, but many magnitudes more intense and vicious, is happening in the U.S. Sometimes political cartoonists can express a truth better than the proverbial thousand words; by coincidence, this crazed anti-immigration theme was the theme of today's blog from Debra She Who Seeks:
https://shewhoseeks.blogspot.com/2025/07/sickening-and-horrifying.html
--Jim
Parnassus
Almost all nations on the planet had indigenous populations, increased over the generations by immigrants from other parts of the world. We were almost all from other parts of the world, or the children of our migrants parents, grandparents and so on.
The USA, once a bastion of freedom (perhaps not for all) and the rule of law, has become in 2025 a symbol of a deeply sick society.
Thank you, She Who Seeks.
I understand complete health checks wherever a ship docks at a new country, just in case the would-be migrants suffer from untreatable, fatal and rapidly spread diseases. But Alien Laws that prevent so-called paupers, petty criminals, coloured people, members of wrong religions, communists etc are obscene.
There always a group that throughout history, that is bullied. Here it the Lgbqt plus.
I never understood the reason for pecking order. Like chicken in a chicken coop.
peppy
I am disgusted that we democratic moderns haven't learnt anything from the racism, hatred and destruction of earlier peoples. Are the LGBT communities you referred to gaoled, tortured or deported?
Your final paragraph says it all. Anti-semitism, xenophobia and racism is deeply entrenched in English society and we are again in an era where the right are emboldened and their views becoming mainstream
Mandy
sigh.... not much has changed :( The British Brothers' League might have been a low point in British history at the turn of the century, but modern anti-Semitism is gross as well.
Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host with a huge following, sparked a right-wing media meltdown after interviewing a Holocaust-denying podcaster on his new online platform in Sept 2024. Carlson called Darryl Cooper "the best and most honest popular historian" in America. Cooper in turn called Winston Churchill the "chief villain of the Second World War," said CNN. Cooper also suggested that the Holocaust was an inadvertent consequence of poor German war planning
https://theweek.com/politics/tucker-carlson-interview-darryl-cooper-holocaust
Such an important piece of history—shows how migration debates have long been tied to economic fears and politics. Your family’s story really brings it to life and reminds us how complex these issues are.
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