David Cesarani

Anti‐alienism in England after the first world war

Beginning with a study of the origins of the 1919 Aliens Act and the campaigning for and against the legislation, this article makes it clear that anti‐alienism in the immediate post‐war period focused almost exclusively on the Jews. The workings of the Act in the 1920s are examined in some detail, as are the protests by Jews against its enforcement in many cases. The anti‐Jewish attitudes which appear to be entrenched in the responses of the state and political parties in these years suggest that Fascist anti‐Semitism of the 1930s was less of apolitical aberration than some commentators have claimed.

An alien concept? The continuity of anti‐alienism in British society before 1940

Anti‐alienism has usually been seen as a peripheral phenomenon in British society and politics. However, if anti‐alienism is understood broadly as a form of discourse as well as a political movement it emerges as a continuous and central theme. Anti‐alienism was the popular response to the first mass immigration into Britain, overwhelming earlier pro‐alien traditions of asylum. Anti‐alien legislation and the state apparatus for enforcing it established mechanisms for the transmission of anti‐alienism as a concept, movement and set of practices from the 1880s to the 1940s. Seen in this context, internment in both world wars was made possible by accumulated administrative experience and a popular opinion habituated to anti‐alien practices.

An embattled minority: The Jews in Britain during the First World War

Previous research on the impact of the First World War on Jews in Britain has concentrated on its effects on German or Russian immigrants. This article examines how English Jews were affected, analysing the dilemmas and complexities deriving from Jewish identity at a time of extreme nationalism. On policy regarding the oppression of Jews in Russia, the creation of all‐Jewish units, special facilities for orthodox Jews and the conscription of foreign Jews, the Anglo‐Jewish minority found itself at odds with the ethnic majority. The resulting tension contributed to outbreaks of anti‐Jewish violence in 1917 and eroded the position of Jews in British society.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Suburbs: Social Change in Anglo-Jewry Between the Wars, 1914–1945

The belief in upward social mobility is cherished in Anglo-Jewry today, but it is substantially a myth. The inter-war years saw some dramatic cross-class mobility registered unambiguously by occupational and geographical change. But for a more significant section of the Jewish population, the experience was one of stasis or sideways movement. Occupations and addresses changed, but this only gave an illusion of genuine social mobility. And far from being a period of ‘fusion’ with the ‘old community’, it was time of extreme friction and fission between and within each stratum of Jewish society. It was not until after 1945 that a largely homogenous suburban and predominantly middle-class Anglo-Jewry emerged. Nor had it arisen as a consequence of any merger between ‘new’ and ‘old community’. The latter had simply disappeared by a process of inanition and been supplanted by new men (and women) and new money.

Alien internment in Britain during the twentieth century: An introduction

Alien internment in Britain remains unexplored and its significance at most is seen as limited, as ‘an unimpressive footnote’ in modern British history. The introduction explores how internment has been remembered (and forgotten) in a general process of marginalization. It highlights the weaknesses of existing literature and indicates how the essays in this volume confront many of the untouched or unanswered questions of this tragic, comic and often very frightening subject.

Dual heritage or duel of heritages? Englishness and Jewishness in the heritage industry

The construction of an Anglo‐Jewish heritage in the 1890s was part of the struggle against exclusionary tendencies in English culture and politics. Continuing efforts to meld Anglo‐Jewish with English heritage from the 1900s to the 1940s were influenced by the imperative of communal defence and resulted in a distorted historiography along with a selective approach to the preservation of archives and monuments.

Anti‐Zionist politics and political antisemitism in Britain, 1920–1924

Anti‐Zionism in Britain in the early 1920s was inextricably bound up with an assault on the Jews as Jews which obscured the substantive issues of Palestine and Jewish‐Arab relations. As a result, Jews were later inclined to disregard the case anti‐Zionism made.

How Post-war Britain Reflected on the Nazi Persecution and Mass Murder of Europe's Jews: A Reassessment of Early Responses

During the 1990s historians began paying attention to how societies in the postwar era reflected on the destruction of Europes Jews between 1933 and 1945 and soon a consensus evolved that there had been a brief burst of media coverage and outrage related to the liberation of the concentration camps and war crimes trials in 1945–46 which soon faded. However, from 1999 a number of historians looking at the USA and other countries went beyond the identification of a postwar ‘silence’. They argued that it was broken by a deliberate effort of Jewish organisations, mainly in America, for the purpose of creating sympathy for Israel and the Jews more generally. This contribution re-assesses recent trends in the scholarship concerning post-war responses in Britain to the Jewish catastrophe of 1933–45. It argues that we are mistaken if we look in the past for representations of what we recognise today as ‘the Holocaust’ or if we treat the apparent marginalisation of the Jewish experience as a sign of malevolence or indifference. It concludes by suggesting that if during the 1950s there was a dropping off of publications about the Nazi persecution and mass murder of the Jews, this may have been because the market was satiated.

Anti-Zionism in Britain, 1922–2002: Continuities and Discontinuities

Since 1902 Britain has been engaged with Zionism. This prolonged involvement offers a case study of diachronically shifting patterns of anti-Zionism and their relationship with patterns of anti-Jewish discourse in a specific national context. This article begins with an account of political anti-Zionism in the 1920s, a model for all subsequent anti-Zionism and a benchmark of virulence. It surveys political discourse concerning Zionism during the conflict between Britain and the Zionist movement in 1930–31 and 1945–48, while Britain held the Mandate for Palestine. It then examines left-wing anti-Zionism in Britain in the 1960s and 1980s. It concludes with an analysis of rhetorical attacks on Israel, mainly from the left, since the second Intifada, and in the wake of 9/11.

Antisemitism in the 1990s: A Symposium

We recently addressed the following statement and questions on the strength and nature of anti-Semitism in the 1990s to a number of Jews and non-Jews throughout the world: Talk of a ‘revival’ or ‘resurgence’ of anti-Semitism is now commonplace. This seems to be the result of developments in the former USSR and in Eastern and Central Europe since 1989, but also of increasing reports of anti-Semitic incidents taking place throughout Western Europe and similar problems emerging in North America, South America, Australia and South Africa. 1) How serious is the recent ‘resurgence’ of anti-Semitism? Is this in any sense a global phenomenon? Is talk of a ‘revival of antisemitism’ justified? 2) What are in your view the most important contemporary manifestations of anti-Semitism? Should anti-Semitism still mainly be seen as a phenomenon of extreme right- and left-wing politics and ideology, or is contemporary anti-Semitism more seriously present in popular culture, within political and social elites, in the school playground? 3) What role, if any, do you think the conflict between Israel and the Arab world is playing in fostering anti-Jewish sentiment? How important is the emergence of Islamic fundamentalism in this context? To what extent is anti-Semitism today taking the guise of anti-Zionism? 4) Finally, if there is indeed an upsurge in antiswemitism, what do you think are its major causes? What part is nationalism, particularly in the Commonwealth of Independent States and in Eastern and Central Europe, playing in causing or exacerbating contemporary anti-Semitism? Do you agree that there was until recently a post-Holocaust taboo on anti-Semitism that has now been lifted?