British Brothers' League
Template:Short description Script error: No such module "Infobox".Template:Template otherScript error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters". The British Brothers' League (BBL) was a British anti-immigration, extraparliamentary,[1] pressure group,[2] the "largest and best organised" of its time.[3] Described, in the 21st century, as proto-fascist,[4] the group attempted to organise along paramilitary lines.[5]
History
The group was formed in May 1901[6] in East London as a response to waves of immigration that had begun in 1880 and had seen a rapid increase in the numbers of Russian and Polish Jews, as well as others from Eastern Europe, into the area.Template:Sfn As a result, Captain William Stanley Shaw formed the BBL to campaign for restricted immigration with the slogan 'England for the English' and soon formed a close alliance with local Conservative MP Major Evans-Gordon.Template:Sfn Initially the League was not antisemitic and was more interested in keeping out the poorest immigrants regardless of background, although eventually Jews became the main focus.Template:Sfn The organisation promoted their cause with large meetings, which were stewarded by guards whose role was to eject opponents who entered and raised objections.[7]
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The League claimed 45,000 members, although membership was actually fairly irregular as no subscriptions were charged and anyone who signed the organisation's manifesto was considered a member, with Tory MP Howard Vincent amongst them. As a result attempts to militarise the group largely failed, although the movement continued to organise demonstrations against immigrants.Template:Sfn The Aliens Act 1905, which restricted immigration, was largely seen as a success for the BBL and, as a result, the movement by and large disappeared.Template:Sfn
It officially carried on until 1923, albeit on a tiny scale, and was associated with G. K. Chesterton and the distributist movement.Template:Sfn Nonetheless, they resurfaced from time to time with new immigrant scares, and shortly before the outbreak of the First World War they received a public donation of ten shillings from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who had been caught up in a growing public swell of Germanophobia as war loomed.[8]
The league also left behind a legacy of support for far-right groups in East London and this was exploited by the British Union of Fascists, the British League of Ex-Servicemen and Women, the Union Movement and the National Front who gained followings there.Template:Sfn
References
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- ↑ Albert Lindemann, Esau's Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews (CUP, 1997)
- ↑ J. A. Cloake and M. R. Tudor, Multicultural Britain (OUP, 2001)
- ↑ D. Glover, Literature, Immigration, and Diaspora in Fin-de-Siècle England: A Cultural History of the 1905 Aliens Act (CUP, 2012)
- ↑ Sam Johnson, '"Trouble Is Yet Coming!" The British Brothers League, Immigration, and Anti-Jewish Sentiment in London's East End, 1901-1903' in Robert Nemes and Daniel Unowsky (eds), Sites of European Antisemitism in the Age of Mass Politics, 1880-1918 (Brandeis University Press, 2014)
- ↑ Robert Benewick, The Fascist Movement in Britain (Allen Lane, 1972)
- ↑ Richard S. Levy (ed) Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution, Volume 1 p86 (2005)
- ↑ Robert Winder, Bloody Foreigners: The Story of Immigration to Britain, Abacus, 2013, p. 258
- ↑ Winder, Bloody Foreigners, p. 264
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Bibliography
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External links
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- Pages with script errors
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- Political advocacy groups in the United Kingdom
- British nationalism
- Far-right politics in the United Kingdom
- Anti-immigration politics in the United Kingdom
- Antisemitism in the United Kingdom
- 1901 establishments in the United Kingdom
- 1923 disestablishments in the United Kingdom
- History of immigration to the United Kingdom
- Proto-fascism