A. J. P. TAYLOR observed that at the beginning of the 20th century “a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police”. The modern law of immigration control has its 100th anniversary next month. The passage of the Aliens Act 1905 remains an illuminating episode in British legal history because of the ease with which irrational prejudice provoked a legislative response, but also because the scheme adopted by Parliament protected immigrants.

The arrival in this country of large numbers of Jews fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe and settling in the East End of London led the Conservative MP for Stepney, Major William Evans Gordon, to call for legislation. In the House of Commons in January 1902, he moved an amendment to the Queen’s Speech complaining that English families were being “ruthlessly turned out to make room for foreign invaders” who were bringing disease and crime with them. In some schools “few English children are to be found”. He objected to “advertisements on the walls in a foreign tongue”. In a particularly poisonous metaphor, he argued that “ten grains of arsenic in 1,000 loaves would be unnoticeable and perfectly harmless, but the same amount if put into one loaf would kill the whole family that partook of it”.

The Conservative Government’s response was not to denounce such irresponsible rhetoric but to establish a Royal Commission on Aliens, which reported in the summer of 1903. The chairman was a law lord, Lord James of Hereford, who, according to Robert Stevens’s encyclopaedic study of the House of Lords as a judicial body, was rumoured to be Randolph Churchill’s homosexual partner. One of the other six members of the royal commission, surprisingly, was Major Evans Gordon.

The royal commission rejected all the sensational claims about aliens. The proportion of the population who had come from abroad was significantly lower than elsewhere in Europe. The new arrivals had not caused health hazards or a crimewave. Indeed, the royal commission noted, approvingly, that “the foreign prostitute is generally far more sober than the English”. Foreign workers had skills not found in the domestic workforce: about 10 per cent of the alien population of this country worked as tailors. Only 1 per cent of aliens received Poor Law payments. They “send their children regularly to school, and are rewarded by the quickness with which these children acquire knowledge and the number of prizes gained by them”. (You expect to see a footnote reference to the Yiddish concept of nachas, parental pride). But the royal commission nevertheless recommended controls on immigration, over the dissent of two of its members. Lord Rothschild and Sir Kenelm Digby, recently retired from a senior position in the Home Office, rightly pointed out that the report’s findings did not justify the recommendations.

The embattled Conservative Government led by Arthur Balfour (it was to lose the general election of 1906 to the Liberals in a landslide) saw a cause on which it might unite its members. A 1904 government Bill would, if enacted, have conferred a broad power on the Home Secretary to exclude aliens from this country, and would have allowed the Local Government Board to define areas of the country from which aliens would be excluded. It met with substantial opposition in the House of Commons and had to be withdrawn.

A much revised Bill became the 1905 Act, despite the assurance from Keir Hardie, Labour MP for Merthyr Tydfil, that “there is no demand for this Bill from the working classes”. It created a body of officers with power to refuse permission to enter the country to “undesirable immigrants”, including those with no means of financial support. But there were three important limiting provisions. First, it applied only to “steerage passengers” (those with the cheapest tickets) and only if they arrived on a ship carrying more than 20 alien steerage passengers.

Secondly, there was an exception for those coming here to avoid persecution on political or religious grounds, which was true of a very substantial proportion of the Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe.

Thirdly, the Act created a right of appeal to an immigration board. The Act did not impose any quota.

By introducing some immigration controls, the Government no doubt had history on its side. The promise of Emma Lazarus’s poem inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty — “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” — was already subject to limits imposed by Congress. The increasing ease of international travel made inevitable the imposition of some immigration controls. But the 1905 Act was a poor effort.

It ignored the facts found by the royal commission, its controls were easily evaded by those not arriving on a steerage ticket in the company of 20 others, and it failed to adopt defensible criteria. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, leader of the Liberal Opposition, explained during the third reading debate that he was voting against the Bill because “the man most likely to make a good citizen has no chance to come into this country unless he has money in his pocket. But the worthless man, the scamp, the lazy man can come in if he has money in his pocket.”

By comparison with what followed, the 1905 Act was a surprisingly moderate measure, for all the anti-Semitic prejudice that provoked parliamentary action. The day after war was declared on Germany in August 1914, Parliament considered and approved in less than 24 hours the Aliens Restriction Act, which conferred broad powers on the Home Secretary to prohibit or restrict aliens from landing in this country. The 1914 Act was introduced as a temporary, wartime measure. But it was extended in 1919 for one year, and then for many years afterwards. If the 1905 Act had remained in force, a large proportion of the European Jews murdered by the Nazis would have been entitled to find refuge in this country.

The author is a practising barrister at Blackstone Chambers and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. This is an extract from a lecture given last night in association with the Jewish Museum’s exhibition Immigrants to Britain 1905-2005

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