Migration at the Turn of the 20th Century

I'm Tony Kushner from the University of South hampton,

and we're going to be covering British immigration and refugee

policy from the mid nineteenth century through to nineteen

thirty three, and to do so,

and I will do so in an international context.

It's been up surprising,

to consider that before the early twentieth century,

people could move around the world with any need for

paperwork, passports, visas, and the like.

These are existed in some forms, but were very primitive

and unsystematic.

What happened afterwards was the creation of what's been

called Paper War were used to walls being created. For

example, between America and Mexico by the Trump regime, but

before that, there was the creation of this bureaucratic

infrastructure of paper walls.

What I'm going to do in this lecture is to see how Britain,

responded to mass migration,

which was increasing through the nineteenth century,

and moving from a position of token be free entry,

to one where it was starting to be the first country to

restrict immigration.

On a systematic and permanent level.

So in the mid nineteenth century,

not only did Britain allow people to move in if they could

have the means to do so, it also welcomed

refugees as part of its self belief that this was a superior

country and it didn't matter where people were coming from

or what their politics were. They would be allowed in.

So on one extreme, we could see Karl Marx, the Communist,

coming to Britain in eighteen forty nine,

not being liked is politics, not being liked,

not being liked as a foreigner,

but with the absolute right to come here. Two years later,

someone from the other political extreme general rosas,

the Argentinian military right wing dictator who had carried

out massive massacres was also allowed in and settled in the

town of South Hampton.

So it was a that Britain took in allowing anyone to come in

and the and the belief that

doing so, it would,

not be damaged and that these people will be harmless.

So what changes in the late nineteenth century to stop this

happening? There is a change in numbers of people coming,

a massive movement of people from Eastern and Southern

Europe, West and northwards, but there's also linked to that

a loss of confidence,

of Britain's ability to be able to all of these people, and a

growing agitation

in the late nineteenth century,

to have permanent measures of control.

There have been temporary times of of alien control,

aliens being people who were not born in the British empire,

but these were tended to be around times of war and were

very quickly repealed. So in the late nineteenth century,

when people were starting to look for presidents for for legislation,

they found it very difficult to find anything that was suitable

because the assumption of being just the free entry of people.

From nineteen hundred, this became a political issue.

The conservative party saw it as a way of attracting a mass

electorate. There were mass newspapers like daily mail,

daily express coming into existence, and this led to a

demand for immigration control.

And it came in the first permanent measure,

the aliens Act of nineteen o five.

Nineteen o five aliens Act was quite a weak measure.

It was limited those who had seen as undesirable immigrants.

So if you traveled first or second class,

that meant that you weren't subject to these measures at

all. So it was some ways a sort of class measure,

but also particularly aimed at East European Jews who come to

Britain, increasing members.

The estimates are that something like a hundred and

fifty thousand settled permanently from Eastern Europe.

Perhaps as many as half a million spent two years in the country,

an even greater number of perhaps as several million came

through as trans migrants,

people going from one country to other in our migratory route.

So it was aimed particularly at poor East European Jews, but

even then there was a desire to keep the right of asylum in place,

and this led to what was called the asylum and clause in the

nineteen oh five aliens Act. And what it did was say that if

anyone claimed that they were a refugee.

That was all they had to do,

then they would be exempt from the the egg inside.

So it made it very difficult for the small number of aliens

officials in British ports to deal with that,

that issue. So impact of the aliens Act of nineteen o five

was relatively small. It was known about internationally,

so it might have stopped people coming,

and it could be arbitrary if you were let or not.

But the asylum clause was very important and those that

opposed the law liberals and the new Labour Party,

were very very insistent as well as the the Jewish

community of Britain that it should be remain remain in

place and emphasize of a sort of national identity that

Britain had its pride in that tradition of letting in the oppressed,

through who'd been subject to political or religious persecution.

But in nineteen fourteen,

all of those attempts to sort of modify the act went out of

the window with the set of the First World War and an extreme

nationalism that followed it.

A temporary aliens act was passed and that was made

permanent in nineteen nineteen with the Alien restriction Act,

which made it almost impossible to get into Britain unless you had substantial

to support yourself, or,

and this was very difficult to prove that you were going to a

job that no one in Britain could fill.

So the numbers coming after nineteen nineteen were very,

very small. A number of refugees was in the hundreds,

not even the thousands,

and there were more people deported because the home secretary

had the power to deport aliens he didn't like.

And it could be just minor offenses such as gambling in a

street or not telling the police that you change your

residence or could lead to deportation.

And this was very much within an intern National framework.

America, which had been the open door for migration,

its statue of liberty proclaiming itself as the place

where the oppressed could find relief shuts its doors,

but does so in a very discriminatory way in nineteen

twenty one and nineteen twenty four.

The American government has definitions of immigration,

which are based purely on race. So those from Eastern Europe,

I'll see is particularly problematic and Jews within that,

as well as those from Southern Europe and those from the

Far East. So it's a very racial policy, and it leads to a

decline of a latent place of of migration before nineteen fourteen.

Other countries are Africa and elsewhere Australia,

which have been places where migrants had gone in big

numbers before. Now I found it very, very difficult.

In a we've gone from an open door world in the mid

nineteenth century to one of paper walls by the 1920s.

And just a example of how restrictive the UK was,

there was a group of a thousand Ukrainian

Jews escaping from violence, there's pogroms,

which are killing thousands of people, civil war famine, desperate

people who tried to get to America and were turned back at Dallas Island,

a place where immigration control was implemented by

American authorities sent back to the place where they came

from, in this case, Southampton,

and they remained there these thousand Ukrainian Jews and a

number of of Christians,

mennonites who have been persecuted for their religious

beliefs for up to nine years. So it was a small

town almost near South Hampton.

Now the international airport where people couldn't go back.

They couldn't go on, and Britain would not allow them.

The home secretary,

Joyce and Hicks said they are not of the class of people that

we want nor does America. So they stay there, made their own

life there, but were not allowed to settle.

At the same time,

Britain's role in the international sphere is

recognized by its mandates of Palestine,

which happened in the very early post war period with the

collapse of the Ottoman Empire,

Britain took control of Palestine,

which was an area of military significance of strategic

importance, but it also in nineteen seventeen,

with a buffer declaration,

had declared was going to be a Jewish homeland at the same

time as promising the Arabs that they would also have their

own homeland. So this was a a sort of very problematic,

formula that they created with the welfare declaration.

And the,

result was that Jewish immigration in the 20s did take

place, again desirable immigrants,

but there was increasing Arab unrest,

and that meant that numbers were restricted. So we have

moved from the mid nineteenth century where migrants and

especially those who are are persecuted or suffering economic,

problems, and particularly East European Jews,

two million of whom emigrate, before nineteen fourteen,

by night thirty three and the onset of Nazism have really

nowhere left to go.