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Antisemitism in the United Kingdom

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Significant Jewish migration from Eastern Europe in the years prior to World War I saw some antisemitic opposition, which would result in increasingly restrictive immigration laws. An emerging fascist movement in the 1930s, which launched antisemitic campaigns, was accompanied by a government policy of restricting the inflow of Jewish refugees from Nazi controlled territories. Notwithstanding sympathy for the Jews following the Holocaust, immigration controls to Mandatory Palestine were maintained, while Zionist attacks on British forces in Palestine caused some resentment and would trigger anti-Jewish riots in 1947. In the second half of the 20th century, while the Jewish community became generally accepted, antisemitic sentiment persisted within British fascist and other far-right groups as well as Islamist groups.

History

11th to 13th centuries: Persecution and expulsion

Jews arrived in the Kingdom of England following the Norman Conquest in 1066. The earliest Jewish settlement was documented in about 1070. Jews living in England from around King Stephen's reign (reigned 1135–1154) experienced religious discrimination, while Jewish moneylending activity was strictly controlled and heavily taxed. It is thought that the blood libel which accused Jews of ritual murder originated in England in the 12th century: examples include Harold of Gloucester, Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln, Robert of Bury and William of Norwich. In 1181, the Assize of Arms forbade Jews from owning a hauberk or chain mail. The York Massacre of 1190, one of a series of massacres of Jews across England, resulted in an estimated 150 Jews taking their own lives or being immolated. The earliest recorded images of antisemitism are found in the Royal tax records from 1233.

In 1253, Henry III enacted the Statute of Jewry, placing a range of restrictions on Jews, including segregation and the wearing of a yellow badge. Its practical application is not recorded. In 1264–7, the Second Barons' War included a further series of massacres of Jews, with the objective of destroying the records of debts held by moneylenders. In 1275, Edward I enacted the similar Statute of the Jewry, which included the outlawing of usury. The first dated portrait of an English Jew is the 1277 antisemitic caricature Aaron, Son of the Devil, in which he wears the English yellow badge (two tablets) on his upper garments. After being expelled from a number of towns during previous decades, this early Jewish presence in England ended with King Edward I's Edict of Expulsion in 1290. Subsequently, converted Jews were allowed to live in the Domus Conversorum (house of the converted) with records up to at least 1551.

17th to 19th centuries: Readmittance and emancipation

Jews were readmitted to the United Kingdom by Oliver Cromwell in 1655, though it is believed that crypto-Jews lived in England prior to then. Jews were subjected to discrimination and humiliation, which waxed and waned over the centuries, gradually decreasing as Jews made commercial, philanthropic and sporting contributions to the country.

However, Jews were restricted by laws aimed primarily at Catholics and nonconformists, such as the Corporation Act 1661 and other Test Acts, which restricted public offices in England to members of the Church of England. The Jewish Naturalisation Act, which allowed Jews to become naturalised by application to Parliament, received royal assent on 7 July 1753 but was repealed in 1754 due to widespread opposition to its provisions. For the purpose of Catholic emancipation, the test acts were repealed in 1828 but replaced by George IV with the Oath of Abjuration Act, which declared an oath of abjuration, containing the words "upon the faith of a Christian," to be necessary for all officers, civil or military, under the crown or in the universities, and for all lawyers, voters, and members of Parliament.

Despite these restrictions, it has been suggested by William D. Rubinstein that antisemitism was lower in the United Kingdom than in a number of other European countries and that this was so for a number of reasons: Protestants shared with Jews an emphasis on the Old Testament, a self-perception as a chosen people with a direct covenant with God, and a distrust of Catholicism; with fewer Jews in the UK, Jews had a lesser commercial and financial role than in some other countries, reducing both real and perceived conflicts, and; Britain's early adoption of constitutional government with liberal principles acted to promote individual and civil liberties. In 1846, at the insistence of Irish leader Daniel O'Connell, the obsolete 1275 law, "De Judaismo", was repealed. There continued to be opposition to emancipation from figures such as Thomas Carlyle who believed that all Jews should be expelled to Palestine, disliking what he perceived as Jews' materialism and archaic forms of religion. In 1858, the Jews Relief Act 1858 removed the restriction of the oath of office for the Parliament to Christians, allowing Jews to become MPs. In 1871, the Universities Tests Act abolished the requirement for university staff and students to be adherents of the Church of England. In 1890, under the Religious Disabilities Removal Bill, all restrictions for every position in the British Empire were removed being thrown open to every British subject without distinction of creed, except for that of monarch and the offices of Lord High Chancellor and of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

1900s to 1920s: Finance and immigration

During the Second Boer War (1899–1902), some opposed to the war asserted that Jewish gold mining operators and financiers with their large stakes in South Africa were a driving force behind it, with Labour leader Keir Hardie asserting that Jews were part of a secretive "imperialist" cabal that promoted war. The Independent Labour Party, Robert Blatchford's newspaper The Clarion, and the Trades Union Congress all blamed "Jewish capitalists" as "being behind the war and imperialism in general". John Burns, a Liberal Party socialist, speaking in the House of Commons in 1900, asserted that the British Army itself had become "a janissary of the Jews". Henry Hyndman also argued that "Jewish bankers" and "imperialist Judaism" were the cause of the conflict. J. A. Hobson held similar views. According to one historian, "The Jew baiting at the time of the Boer War and the Marconi scandal was linked to a broader protest, mounted in the main by the Radical wing of the Liberal Party, against the growing visibility of successful businessmen in national life and the challenges. What were seen as traditional English values."

From 1882 to 1919, Jewish numbers in Britain increased fivefold, from 46,000 to 250,000, due to the exodus from Russian pogroms and discrimination, many of whom settled in the East End of London. By the turn of the century, a popular and media backlash had begun. The British Brothers' League was formed, with the support of prominent politicians, organising marches and petitions. At rallies, its speakers said that Britain should not become "the dumping ground for the scum of Europe". In 1905, an editorial in the Manchester Evening Chronicle wrote "that the dirty, destitute, diseased, verminous and criminal foreigner who dumps himself on our soil and rates simultaneously, shall be forbidden to land". Antisemitism broke out into violence in South Wales in 1902 and 1903 where Jews were assaulted. One of the main objectives of the Aliens Act in 1905 was to control such immigration. Restrictions were increased in the Aliens Restriction Act 1914 and the immigration laws of 1919.

In addition to anti-immigration campaigners, there were antisemitic groups, notably The Britons, launched in 1919, which called for British Jews to be deported en masse to Palestine. In 1920, the Morning Post published over 17 or 18 articles a translation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which subsequently formed the basis of a book, The Cause of World Unrest, to which half the paper's staff contributed. Later exposed as a forgery, they were initially accepted, with a leader in The Times blaming Jews for World War I and the Bolshevik regime and calling them the greatest threat to the British Empire.

1900s–1930s: "Civil" Antisemitism

During the first decades of the twentieth century, antisemitic discourse in Britain shifted to the mode of what scholars refer to as "civil antisemitism." "'Civil antisemitism' refers to the social and political pressures of the public sphere in which overt bigotry is seen as objectionable." British concerns with civility led to the development of techniques for disguising antisemitic rhetoric. Civil antisemitism because a recognized style of speech and mode of discourse, understood by listeners to have both overt and subtextual meaning. Antisemitic discourse was masked by rhetorical strategies. Antisemitic hatred was expressed through "polite" conversation; British sensibilities disdained more vulgar expressions of antisemitic attitudes but not the attitudes themselves. Parliamentary debates regarding the Aliens Acts of 1904 and 1905, for instance, displayed antisemitic rhetoric under the guise of concerns regarding immigration. The image of the "immigrant alien" stood in for that of "the Jew."

The practice of "civil antisemitism" incorporated antisemitic attitudes into mainstream discourse, masked by euphemisms and rhetorical strategies. This form of antisemitism is exemplified by British modernist writers, such as Virginia Woolf. "The Jew" became a figure used by modernist writers as a stylistic tool and technique. Woolf and her peers experimented with their writing through the lens of civil antisemitism. The shift to more subtle antisemitic expression thus impacted modernist British literature. Civil antisemitism was exemplified within parliamentary debates, fascist fiction and propaganda, modernist literature, and ethnographies. Notions of civility shaped British antisemitism in the first part of the twentieth-century. While "civil" manifestations of antisemitism appeared to display less overt hostility, they operated as hate rhetoric, albeit hate rhetoric that was submerged under "polite" conversation. Prejudices against Jews were simply "hidden." Civil behavior was considered key to British identity; concerns about Jewish immigration and assimilation thus intersected with notions of civility and Britishness.

1930s

Popular sentiment against immigration was used by the Imperial Fascist League and the British Union of Fascists to incite hatred against Jews in the 1930s. However, a planned fascist march through the east end of London, with its large Jewish population, had to be abandoned due to the Battle of Cable Street in 1936, where police trying to ensure the march could proceed failed to clear barricades erected and defended by unionised dock workers, socialists, anarchists, communists, Jews and other anti-fascists. Other antisemitic organisations in the 1930s included the Militant Christian Patriots and the Right Club. The Évian Conference in 1938, attended by 32 countries, failed to reach agreement on accepting Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. While Britain eventually accepted 70,000 up to the outbreak of World War II, in addition to the 10,000 children on the Kindertransport, there were, according to British Jewish associations, more than 500,000 case files of Jews who were not admitted. Louise London, author of Whitehall and the Jews, 1933–1948, stated that "The (British immigration) process...was designed to keep out large numbers of European Jews – perhaps 10 times as many as it let in."

It was difficult for the refugees to find work, regardless of their education, except as domestics. This also meant that Jewish refugees who were physicians could not practise medicine, even though there was a shortage of health care providers. Some of the concern was economic. During a period of high unemployment, the British were concerned about losing job opportunities due to the influx of refugees. German Jewish refugees were discouraged from speaking German and encouraged to assimilate into the culture, which was often accomplished at the expense of their personal history and identity. A law was enacted in the 1930s to ensure that no more than 5% of the total students in a school were Jewish, limiting the rate at which Jewish children could be admitted to state schools. The press, which was generally not supportive of refugees, incorrectly reported that there were more Jews in Britain than had been in Germany in the summer of 1938. Kushner and Katharine Knox state in their book Refugees in an Age of Genocide, "Of all the groups in the 20th century, refugees from Nazism are now widely and popularly perceived as 'genuine', but at the time German, Austrian and Czechoslovak Jews were treated with ambivalence and outright hostility as well as sympathy."

World War II and its aftermath

When war was declared, Britain no longer allowed immigration from Nazi-controlled countries. The Bermuda Conference of the Allies held in April 1943 held to consider the issue of European Jews, whether liberated or under Nazi rule, by which time it was known that the Nazi regime intended to exterminate them where it could, did not result in agreement on practical steps, with the overriding focus remaining on winning the war. Nevertheless, 10,000 Jews managed to find their way into Britain during the war. Britain did not allow Jews to immigrate to Palestine, though some did so illegally.

During the war, Ministry of Information intelligence reports found examples of prejudice against Jews, including refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe, in almost all parts of the country, with Jews being a "scapegoat as an outlet for emotional disturbances". Immediately following the war, a large number of refugees entered the UK, but few were Jewish Holocaust survivors as immigration policy barred Jews because it did not consider them easily assimilable. A cabinet minister argued in 1945 that "the admission of a further batch of refugees, many of whom would be Jews, might provoke strong reactions from certain sections of public opinion. There was a real risk of a wave of anti-semitic feeling in this country". Nevertheless, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, undisguised, racial hatred of Jews became unacceptable in British society.

Post-War

Anti-Jewish sentiments became widespread around 1947 in response to fighting between the British Army and Zionist groups in the British Mandate for Palestine. In August 1947, after the hanging of two abducted British sergeants by the Irgun, there was widespread anti-Jewish rioting across the United Kingdom. Antisemitic activity from fascist groups, Jeffrey Hamm's British League of Ex-Servicemen and, later, Oswald Mosley's new fascist party, the Union Movement, included antisemitic speeches in public places, and from the rank-and-file fascists, attacks on Jews and Jewish property. This resulted in the formation of the 43 Group, led by Jewish ex-servicemen, which, from 1945 to 1950, broke up far right meetings, infiltrated fascist groups, and attacked the fascists in street fighting. In the 1960s, groups such as the British National Party, founded in 1960, and the National Socialist Movement, founded in 1962, maintained a far right tradition.

After lobbying by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Jews, along with other groups, received formal legal protection from the Race Relations Act 1965, which outlawed discrimination on the "grounds of colour, race, or ethnic or national origins" in public places in Great Britain, and from successor legislation. However, far right groups, such as the National Front, founded in 1967, and a new British National Party, founded in 1982, continued to express antisemitic views.

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