John Bull's Island

Immigration and British Society, 1871-1971

Colin Holmes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317382720
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

There is a strong but unreliable view that immigration is a marginal and recent phenomenon. In fact, immigrants and refugees have come to Britain throughout its recorded history. In this book, first published in 1988, Colin Holmes looks at this period in depth and asks: who were the newcomers and why were they coming? What were the distinctive features of their economic and social lives in Britain? How did British society respond to their presence? The resulting book is a major historical survey of immigration which synthesises and evaluates existing work and weaves in new material on a wide range of immigrant minorities.

PART ONE

Introduction

‘England with all the follies of feudalism and toryism which are peculiar to it is the only country to live in’, Alexander Herzen to Karl Vogt, quoted in E. H. Carr, The Romantic Exiles (London, 1933), p. 135.

‘“Have you ever heard”, said Jonah, “of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Alien Enemies?”

Adèle shook her head.

“I think you must have”, said Jonah, “some people call it the British nation.”’, Dornford Yates, Berry and Co (London, 1920), p. 226.

1.

‘WHEREVER homo sapiens made his first and on the whole regrettable appearance, it was not in Britain: all our ancestral stocks came from somewhere else’.¹ Indeed, ‘The British are clearly among the most ethnically composite of the Europeans’.² Even so, there has been some reluctance to recognise this fact. The English, particularly, have long taken a deluded pride in their valorous ancestry, whose virtues were far more pleasing than those of the mongrel breed satirised in 1701 by Daniel Defoe in The True-Born Englishman.³ However, it would be difficult to locate an epoch when some immigration did not take place.

But who needs to be considered when examining this process of inward movement? At the moment the term ‘immigrant’ has been given a precise definition in official statistics. The Office of Population Censuses and Surveys in its calculations of movement into the United Kingdom, has adopted the international statistical definition which categorises an immigrant as any person who, having resided abroad for a year, has declared an intention on entry of staying for a minimum period of one year. However, the OPCS has stressed that this categorisation does not correspond with any current legal definition.⁴ Outside official sources the term has been used in a variety of ways, and, with a frightening elasticity, it has even been stretched to include those children born in Britain to immigrant parents.⁵

Viewed from an historical perspective, immigration between 1871 and 1971 involved some groups which arrived in Britain in order to find work on a temporary basis. The Irish minority contained many such sojourners into the twentieth century. Student sojourners of various nationalities also arrived. Other groups, such as the West Indians who came after the Second World War, intended a lengthier if not in every case permanent period in Britain in their search for work and subsequent self-improvement. Both groups, the sojourners of varying duration and those newcomers who settled permanently, are deserving of attention. Indeed, a wide range of people who for economic, social or cultural reasons, or a combination of these, took a decision to leave their native countries with the intention of staying temporarily or permanently in Britain require consideration. In addition, Britain witnessed over many years the arrival of refugees such as those who came in the 1930s from Nazi Germany in search of a base, temporary or permanent, from political, religious or racial persecution, or a mixture of such pressures.⁶

It should not be assumed, however, that groups were always susceptible to an easy categorisation or that a predictable future awaited them. At times, for example, governments were faced with dilemmas over what constituted a refugee.⁷ Moreover, a mixture of personal and impersonal forces meant that over the course of time some sojourners became reconciled to a longer stay. Furthermore, the hopes of refugees were often dashed; there was seldom a quick return home.⁸ In a neat reversal of the poet’s strain it has been remarked that ‘Many corners of English graveyards are for ever Poland, Italy or Spain’.⁹ The graves contained in such spots are the cold, sombre reminders of a continual complex historical movement with its special mixture of human hopes, aspirations and disappointments.

2.

WHAT evidence is there of the presence of immigrants and refugees before 1871? Which groups were involved in the process of immigration? The movement of population into what is now called Britain stretched back towards the beginnings of recorded history, after the area became physically separated from the rest of Europe. In the ancient world, after this separation had occurred, the Roman invasion resulted in an army of occupation, visible signs of whose presence continue to attract interest in remote Northumbria around Hadrian’s Wall, in Bath and elsewhere. But the invasion also brought in other Roman citizens even if numbers were not large. These ‘heterogeneous outsiders’ included traders and other colonists ‘and, probably most numerous, soldiers from anywhere in the empire who settled after their years of service, with citizen status’.¹⁰ As the wheel of history continued to turn, the later Saxon and Viking invasions introduced other cultural influences and, later still, the population which survived the Norman invasion in 1066 was soon to encounter a motley band of military and trading groups who came in the wake of the Conqueror.

Invasion was evidently a major influence in bringing about a mixture of peoples. After the Conquest in 1066, however, invaders became essentially a fea ure of the past. ‘Immigration from now on was a matter of peaceful entry’ by individuals or groups who had to find ways of fitting into a more or less orderly society under unified control.¹¹ In the medieval epoch newcomers arrived in the shape of Flemish clerks, Jewish financiers and traders and Lombards from Northern Italy, who also engaged in finance. Hanseatic merchants from north Germany, whose activities centred on their London depot, the so-called Steelyard near Blackfriars, constituted another powerful group of newcomers. In addition, craftsmen came from Flanders to work in the woollen industry, particularly in East Anglia; Germans, who had a reputation for mining expertise, could be found working in the silver and lead mines in the Lake District; Frenchmen worked in the early iron industry; Hollanders came to make salt, brew beer and develop the linen industry.¹²

The success of some of these groups, or individuals within their ranks, at times generated forms of xenophobia and resentment within the settled population. In 1290, for example, at a time when he was short of funds, Edward I exploited resentment against the Jewish community and proceeded to order the expulsion of Jews from his kingdom, once he had confiscated their bonds and personal possessions.¹³ Much later, the Hanseatic merchants also came under attack. The association lost its special advantages in 1576 and 1579, and finally in 1589 the Steelyard came to an end.¹⁴ The likes of George Gisze, from Danzig, captured for posterity by Hans Holbein in ‘The Merchant of the Steelyard’, were to be no more. Such hostility, directed against Jews and the Hanseatic merchants, constituted the tip of a more persistent friction.¹⁵

From the sixteenth century to the demonic changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution newcomers with diverse origins continued to arrive. Gypsies, who told enquirers that they had originated in Egypt, appeared in increasing numbers throughout the land, and although they did not pose an economic threat to the settled population they were persistently regarded with great suspicion if they showed signs of transcending their function as entertainers.¹⁶ In addition, in the following century, there were increasing references to the presence of Africans, whose history in Britain can be traced back at least as far as the Roman occupation.¹⁷ Although in the sixteenth century the Black population – the term is used throughout to denote only those of African or Afro-Caribbean origin – was numbered only in the hundreds, it did give rise to some official concern, which was reflected in 1596 when the government wrote to the local officials in London and other towns indicating that there were too many ‘blackamoores’ being introduced into the kingdom.¹⁸ Following this, in 1601 a proclamation ordered their expulsion, although like the earlier attempt to expel the Jews in 1290, it could not be enforced absolutely.¹⁹

Apart from the arrival of gypsies and Africans, other groups of newcomers arrived in the early modern epoch. Italians ‘first came to prominence (in Scotland) in the wake of the Renaissance in the sixteenth century’ and were employed by James IV and VI to entertain the court at Holyrood House.²⁰ Among other groups to arrive were the Huguenots, Protestants from France, who were driven abroad after the death of Henry II in 1559 plunged France into more than 30 years of disruption and civil war. Protestants in the Spanish Netherlands also suffered at the hands of Catholic oppression and the repressive rule introduced by the Duke of Alva in 1567 produced its own flow of refugees. But the event most commonly associated with the tribulations of the Protestant minority, was the massacre in Paris on St Bartholomew’s Day, on 24 August 1572, which caused a large number of refugees to scurry for shelter, some of whom fled to the eastern counties of England where their impact became particularly marked in towns such as Colchester.²¹

Many newcomers in the early modern epoch settled in the urban centres. But not all were to be found there. Germans engaged in the mining industry could still be spotted in remote parts of England. Furthermore, the influence of newcomers from the Netherlands was especially evident in the English countryside in the early years of the seventeenth century. On account of the experience they had gained in their native environment they were particularly adept in the management of water and one of their most distinctive contributions to the countryside was made by Cornelius Vermuyden who drained the Isle of Axholme in the 1620s.²²

The seventeenth century witnessed other important developments. In 1656, after many years in exile, it was proposed that Jews should be readmitted for settlement in England and they were officially recognised as a community in 1664.²³ Shortly afterwards, Louis XIV’s ‘atavistic proscription of the Huguenots’, through the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, resulted in an addition to the French Protestant families who had arrived in the previous century.²⁴ Many of these later arrivals came from northern France, from Normandy and Brittany, and a fair proportion of the gentry among them settled down in Ireland after taking their revenge on the Catholics at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. But others stayed in England and for them London was the great attraction, as it was for a large number of other newcomers. Once they were settled, the Huguenots developed the silk industry in Spitalfields, where names such as Fournier Street and houses on Princelet Street still bear testimony to a French presence. Apart from their skill in the silk trade they displayed a particular expertise in a number of crafts such as the making of clocks and instruments. On the whole, in fact, they were an important influence on the increasing commercialisation of society. ‘Numbers of Huguenots from the middling ranks’, we have been told, ‘worked their way to solid professional or commercial positions and founded middle class families of good standing; in addition, not a few of them shone as merchants or financiers among the luminaries of the City’.²⁵ But their contribution to society went beyond the fundamental level of getting and spending. They also set up their own schools and made a distinctive impact on the world of scholarship. Within a Protestant country, in the course of building new lives, they were also able to pursue their religion without fear of reprisal.²⁶ A striking reminder that they did, can be found in the quiet of Winchester Cathedral in the memorial to Jean Serres, formerly of Montauban, a man ‘mourned by English friends in whose country he had taken refuge and who admired his indomitable spirit and faith in the Protestant religion’.²⁷

For two centuries after the arrival of the Huguenots in the seventeenth century no major influx of immigrants or refugees took place although the flow of individuals and groups into Britain continued unabated. It was a German, George Frideric Handel, who composed the music for the Royal Fireworks in 1749 to celebrate the victory of Britain, a country ruled by German-born kings since 1714, over its major rival, France, in the War of the Austrian Succession. Handel’s work was merely one reflection of the cultural talent that was imported from Europe.²⁸ On a less resounding note, the Palatinate refugees who arrived early in the eighteenth century were a source of public disquiet.²⁹

But there were important developments during these years which involved the world beyond Europe. The so-called triangular slave trade, centred on ports such as Liverpool and Bristol, was at its peak in the eighteenth century and it guaranteed a continuing Black presence. Planters returning from the Caribbean, for example, were known to bring their Black slaves with them. Similarly, nabobs from the East sometimes imported slaves or attendants which in itself resulted in the development of a small Asian population.³⁰

By the Georgian years an uncertain number of Blacks were scattered throughout British society, often in a service capacity as stable boys, grooms, valets or butlers. George I brought over two Black favourites, Mustapha and Mahomet, when he came from Hanover. Samuel Johnson had his servant Francis Barber, whose portrait was committed to c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Part Four
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Index