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137 to the early twentieth century was suffused with an array of national, racial, social, and economic anxieties. Britishers, long exalted to “rule the waves,” were no longer stridently confident about their position on the world stage, with the Empire seemingly under threat from an assortment of enemies, both real and imagined. Many became apparent, or were accentuated, as a result of recurrent military conflicts in South Africa, especially the Second Boer War of 1898– 1902. Politicians of every hue expressed alarm about “national efficiency,” as failings on the battlefield were linked inextricably to problems at home, ranging from urban overcrowding to the unhealthy condition of the working classes.1 Naturally, efficiencyquestions also reached into the economic sphere, impelled, on the one hand, by that irritating upstart and relative newcomer, the United States of America, and on the other, by the impressive industrial challenge of Imperial Germany. One correspondent, writing to the right-­ wing, populist newspaper the Daily Mail, revealed that their first remarkon entering any shop was “Show me no German goods!”2 It was in this nationally fraught and troubling context that British political and public opinion once again turned its attention to an internal concern, namely, the “destitute” or “pauper alien.” From the late 1880s onward, both houses of parliament habitually considered whether it was necessary to implement restrictive legislation against a relentless flood of penniless immigrants, who apparently came to Britain to deny the native Anglo-­ Saxon work, dwelling , and food.3 In the 1890s, in particular, the matter acquired increasing significance , with parliamentary debates and proposals for legislation occurring almost every year.4 Similar anxieties were expressed at the other end of the social and political scale, when in 1895 the annual conference of the Trades’ Union Congress passed a resolution that urged the implementation of restrictive legislation.5 All this was to culminate in 1902 with the convening of the Royal Commission for Alien Immigration, the lengthy deliberations of which eventually resulted in the passing of the 1905 Aliens Act. This was Britain’s Sam Johnson “TROUBLE IS YET COMING!” THE BRITISH BROTHERS LEAGUE, IMMIGRATION, AND ANTI-­ JEWISH SENTIMENT IN LONDON’S EAST END, 1901–1903 In Great Britain, the period from the late nineteenth 7 138 : The Circle Widens first piece of immigrant legislation and, although it was not as restrictive as many had hoped, it aimed to exclude specific immigrant categories, especially those who arrived with barely any visible means of support.6 At the time, it was claimed that Jews were not the Act’s primaryconcern, but even a cursoryglance at the political and popular discussion that underscored its passage illustrates that the reality was quite different. Jews were unquestionably the primary focus of anti-­ alien anxiety, since this group and no other formed the principal source of immigration to the United Kingdom from the 1880s onward. Although there are no wholly reliable statistics , historians estimate that between 120,000 to 150,000 Jews arrived in the United Kingdom between 1880 and 1914, from Romania, Austria-­Hungary, and the Russian empire. This demographic shift effectively doubled in size Britain’s Jewish community, though at no point did it amount to more than 1 percent of the entire U.K. population.7 In earlier decades, it was the Irish immigrant who bore the brunt of British domestic frustrations and fears, but by the late 1890s, despite regular protestations to the contrary, the term “destitute alien” unquestionably was synonymous with the immigrant Jew.8 Moreover, when considering matters related to national (in)efficiency, it was the Jewish immigrant who undoubtedly represented one of the greatest “national dangers” of all.9 By the early twentieth century, these concerns intensified, inextricably fusing a host of negative associations to the “alien Jew.” In early 1901, for example, one newspaper from London’s East End reported on its district’s “foreign undesirables” and how, in turn, their presence was sowing the seeds of the antisemitic “disease ” (though it claimed the British ramifications were not comparable with the “‘Judenhetze’ of the continent”).10 In this way, the immigrant Jew was to be doubly blamed: first, for intensifying the social and economic problems of the East End (with nationwide ramifications), and second, for encouraging the rise of an ideology whose reputation was sufficiently disreputable to condemn as continental.11 Within a few months of this gloomy diagnosis, anti-­ immigrant sentiment took a new turn in Britain, with the creation of a single-­ issue, mass political organization, the British Brothers...

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