British Jews have experienced antisemitism – discrimination and persecution as Jews – since a Jewish community was first established in England in 1070. They experienced a series of massacres in the Medieval period, which culminated in their expulsion from England in 1290. They were readmitted by Oliver Cromwell in 1655. By the 1800s, an increasing toleration of religious minorities gradually helped to eliminate legal restrictions on public employment and political representation. However, Jewish financiers were seen by some as holding disproportionate influence on British government policy, particularly concerning the British Empire and foreign affairs.
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.Prestwich, Michael. Edward I p 345 (1997) Yale University Press. . 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.Jewish Ireland. Jewishireland.org 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.Mcgeever, Brendan, and Satnam Virdee. "Antisemitism and Socialist Strategy in Europe, 1880–1917: An Introduction." Patterns of Prejudice 51.3–4 (2017): 229 J. A. Hobson held similar views.New Liberalism, Old Prejudices: J. A. Hobson and the "Jewish Question" John Allett Jewish Social Studies Vol. 49, No. 2 (Spring, 1987), pp. 99–114Doctrines Of Development, M. P. Cowen, Routledge, page 259, quote:"Rampant anti-Semitism should be recognized, not least because it is John A. Hobson, one of the most rabid anti-Semites of the period, who is the inspiration, alongside Schumpeter and Veblen, for..."The Information Nexus: Global Capitalism from the Renaissance to the Present, Cambridge University Press, Steven G. Marks, page 10, quote: "And in England, the Social Democratic Federation newspaper Justice state that "the Jew financier" was the "personification of international capitalism" – an opinion repeated in the anti-Semitic diatribes of John A. Hobson, the socialist writer who wrote one of the earliest English books with "capitalism" in the title and helped to familiarize Britons with the concept" 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.David Cesarani, The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry 1841–1991, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994) p. 98. One of the main objectives of the Aliens Act in 1905 was to control such immigration.David Rosenberg, 'Immigration' on the Channel 4 website 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.Andre Liebich: "The Antisemitism of Henry Steed", Patterns of Prejudice, Vol. 46, No. 2, 2002. Retrieved 21 December 2016.
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."