“British Brothers League”的意思、由来-开放百科全书

The group was formed in 1902 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.^[6] 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.^[7] 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.^[8] The League promoted their cause with large meetings, which were stewarded by guards whose role was to eject opponents who entered and raised objections.^[9]

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.^[8] As a result of this, attempts to militarise the group were largely a failure, although the movement continued to organise demonstrations against immigrants.^[8] 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.^[7] It officially carried on until 1923, albeit on a tiny scale, and was associated with G. K. Chesterton and the distributist movement.^[10] 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.^[11]

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.^[12]

External links

References

1. ^Albert Lindemann, Esau's Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews (CUP, 1997)
2. ^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)
3. ^J. A. Cloake and M. R. Tudor, Multicultural Britain (OUP, 2001)
4. ^D. Glover, Literature, Immigration, and Diaspora in Fin-de-Siècle England: A Cultural History of the 1905 Aliens Act (CUP, 2012)
5. ^Robert Benewick, The Fascist Movement in Britain (Allen Lane, 1972)
6. ^Robert Benewick, Political Violence and Public Order, Allan Lane, 1969, p. 25
7. ^¹Peter Barberis, John McHugh, Mike Tyldesley, Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organizations: Parties, Groups and Movements of the 20th Century, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2000, p. 175
8. ^¹²Benewick, Political Violence and Public Order, p. 26
9. ^Robert Winder, Bloody Foreigners: The Story of Immigration to Britain, Abacus, 2013, p. 258
10. ^Stephen Dorril, Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley & British Fascism, Penguin Books, 2007, p. 350
11. ^Winder, Bloody Foreigners, p. 264
12. ^Richard Thurlow, Fascism in Britain: A History, 1918-1985, Basil Blackwell, 1987, p. 108