Anti‐alienism in England after the first world war

Abstract

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.