In 1900, after years of political campaigning by activists in the East
End of London, Thomas Dewar and William Evans-Gordon were elected to
Parliament. Their aim was to bring about limits to alien (and
especially Jewish) immigration.
Major William
Evans-Gordon travelled widely in Eastern Europe gathering evidence for
his campaign to limit immigration, as shown on this map from the book in
which he argued his cause. |
In 1903, they helped to persuade Parliament to call a Royal Commission
into the effects of alien immigration into Britain. Two years later the
first
Aliens Act, limiting immigration into this country, was passed.
Now the majority of East European Jewish migrants arriving at British ports were travelling as
transmigrants
to more distant destinations. New York and Cape Town were their
destinations, not London, Leeds or Manchester, and the ship owner became
legally responsible for preventing alien immigrants from landing
illegally at British ports.
Between 1880 and 1914, an estimated one million Jewish
transmigrants
arrived at the British ports of Grimsby, Hull, Hartlepool, Leith,
London, Newcastle and Southampton. After arrival at an east-coast port
of entry, most crossed Britain quickly to the western ports for the
next leg of their journey.
At places like Glasgow, Liverpool, London and Southampton, they would
board steamships destined for transatlantic ports such as New York,
Buenos Aires, and Quebec, or for Cape Town. The burdens associated
with mass immigration were now shifted to more distant lands.
Many migrants had relations already settled overseas who were willing
to pay for the cost of their journey. Most Jewish immigrants to the US,
Canada and South Africa travelled on what were known as pre-paid
tickets. Such tickets were relatively cheap - with passage to America
falling to just £2 10s (two pounds and ten
shillings) in the early 1900s.
A page from a
passenger manifest for 1909 showing Jewish transmigrants leaving for
South Africa (by pre-paid tickets) on board the ships of the Union
Castle line. Many of these same individuals can be tracked in the
papers of the Wilson Line (on one of whose vessels they arrived in
London) and the register of the Poor Jews Temporary Shelter.
|
The patterns of migration common throughout the 19th- and early
20th-century virtually came to a halt in Britain with the outbreak of
the First World War in 1914.
A limited number of Jewish migrants continued to travel to, and
through, Britain in the years between the First and Second World Wars,
although the United States had by then placed its own severe
limitations on immigration, which limited the number of transmigrants
arriving in Britain. With the rise of the
nazis
in Germany in the 1930s, many Jewish refugees sought entry to Britain,
but only some 50,000 arrived. After the foundation of the state of
Israel in 1948, many East European Jews sought refuge there. By this
time, mass Jewish immigration to Britain had all but ceased.
For the first-generation arrivals in Britain,
naturalisation
was a means to settling permanently and acquiring citizenship in their
adopted home. They and their children (born British citizens) are a
good example of the ability of an immigrant group to integrate with
their host community whilst retaining a unique cultural and religious
identity.
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