Whitehall and the Jews 1933-1948: British Immigration Policy and the Holocaust (review)

The Jewish Quarterly Review, XCIII, Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2003) 597-601 Louise London. Whitehall and the Jews 1933-1948: British Immigration Policy and the Holocaust. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xiii + 313. Investigating the way in which the British government reacted to the plight of refugees fleeing persecution in Europe is a potentially uncomfortable and salutary experience, and nowhere is this better demonstrated than in Louise London's authoritative study, Whitehall and the Jews 1933-1948: British Immigration Policy and the Holocaust. In assessing whether the mandarins in Whitehall did as much as they could to assist Jews fleeing fascist and Nazi Europe, London has set out to challenge a popularly held view that the British government reacted from humanitarian considerations, throwing open its doors to all Jewish refugees who wanted to enter the country and then readily accepting them as permanent residents. While the impetus for this study came from the author's own experiences—she is a lawyer specializing in immigration law and the daughter of refugees from Eastern Europe who found a safe and largely welcoming haven in Britain— she has tackled a sensitive and unpopular subject with objectivity and skill, making this a work of seminal significance. Whitehall and the Jews is essentially a study of the immigration policies adopted and implemented by the British government between 1933 and 1948. These dates are significant in that, unlike earlier monographs on the subject, including A. J. Sherman's Island Refuge: Britain and Refugeesfrom the Third Reich 1933-1939 (1973) and Bernard Wasserstein's Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945 (1979), London's study encompasses both the pre-war period and the duration of the Second World War, making it the most comprehensive account of the subject to date. Much of the strength of Whitehall and the Jews lies in the emphasis which the author has placed upon the historical context of government policies . From the outset, the reader is provided with critical insight into the evolution of legislation after the introduction of the Aliens Act in 1905. It was at this juncture that legal restrictions were first applied to those— mainly Jews—seeking to enter Britain from abroad, and these restrictions laid the foundation for future decisions concerning immigration policy in Britain. It is hard to miss the analogy of an influx of Jewish refugees fleeing the pogroms of Eastern Europe in 1905 and hundreds of thousands of disenfranchised and dispossessed Jews desperately seeking refuge in the 1930s and 1940s. Nor is it difficult to take this comparison a step further into the 21st century, as London has, and to replace Jews with Bosnians or another ethnic group, and therefore to conclude that Britain's record of humanitarian hospitality towards asylum seekers leaves much to be desired. 598THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW London must be congratulated for her exemplary use of unpublished material , especially of official documents. Her persistent research into public archives has resulted in a penetrating and unrivalled insight into the workings of the British government. In examining the ways in which their response to the escalating Jewish refugee crisis was consistently inactive or reactive rather than proactive, she has demonstrated how so-called national interest remained the guiding principle throughout. This included, where possible, shifting the financial responsibility to voluntary agencies. Thus the author describes how, following Hitler's accession to power as chancellor of the German Republic in January 1933 and the immediate implementation of restrictions against non-Aryans, there was a sudden influx of Jews into Britain from Germany. This set off alarm bells in the Home Office, not least because of the financial implications of supporting these refugees. The avoidance of any drain on the public purse is a recurring theme throughout this book, and so it is no surprise that the open-ended assurance, given by the Board of Deputies of British Jews in 1933, that "all expense, whether temporary or permanent accommodation or maintenance, will be borne by the Jewish community without ultimate charge to the state,"1 came as a great relief to the government. Less comfort resulted from Hitler's annexation of Austria in 1938, which heralded a reign of...