British Brothers League

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 as proto-fascist,[4] the group attempted to organise along paramilitary lines.[5]

British Brothers' League
Formation1901
FounderWilliam Stanley Shaw
Extinction1923
TypePressure group
PurposeOpposition to immigration
Location

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.[7] 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.[8] 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.[9] The organisation promoted their cause with large meetings, which were stewarded by guards whose role was to eject opponents who entered and raised objections.[10]

Anti-immigration poster, from 1902

The League claimed 45,000 members, although membership was actually fairly irregular as no subscriptions were lifted and anyone who signed the organisation's manifesto was considered a member, with Tory MP Howard Vincent amongst those to do so. As a result of this, attempts to militarise the group were largely a failure, although the movement continued to organise demonstrations against immigrants.[9] 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.[8]

It officially carried on until 1923, albeit on a tiny scale, and was associated with G. K. Chesterton and the distributist movement.[11] Nonetheless they would resurface from time to time as new immigrant scares and shortly before the outbreak of the First World War they were even given a public donation of ten shillings by Arthur Conan Doyle, who had been caught up in a growing public swell of Germanophobia as war loomed.[12]

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 in the same environs.[13]

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References
  1. Albert Lindemann, Esau's Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews (CUP, 1997)
  2. J. A. Cloake and M. R. Tudor, Multicultural Britain (OUP, 2001)
  3. D. Glover, Literature, Immigration, and Diaspora in Fin-de-Siècle England: A Cultural History of the 1905 Aliens Act (CUP, 2012)
  4. 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)
  5. Robert Benewick, The Fascist Movement in Britain (Allen Lane, 1972)
  6. Richard S. Levy (ed) Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution, Volume 1 p86 (2005)
  7. Benewick 1969, p. 25.
  8. Barberis, McHugh & Tyldesley 2000, p. 175.
  9. Benewick 1969, p. 26.
  10. Robert Winder, Bloody Foreigners: The Story of Immigration to Britain, Abacus, 2013, p. 258
  11. Dorril 2007, p. 350.
  12. Winder, Bloody Foreigners, p. 264
  13. Thurlow 1987, p. 108.
Bibliography
Barberis, Peter; McHugh, John; Tyldesley, Mike (2000). Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organizations: Parties, Groups and Movements of the 20th Century. A&C Black. ISBN 978-0-8264-5814-8.
Benewick, Robert (1969). Political Violence & Public Order: A Study of British Fascism. Allen Lane. ISBN 978-0713900859.
Dorril, Stephen (2007). Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-025821-9.
Thurlow, Richard C. (1987). Fascism in Britain: A History, 1918–1985. Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-631-13618-7.
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