Open borders
Ian Hislop on Immigration (title TBC)
Thursday 22 June BBC Two
When French surgeon and revolutionary Simon François Bernard went on trial in London for his part in an 1858 plot to assassinate Napoleon III, few doubted his involvement. Despite this, sensationally, Bernard was acquitted. Why? As Ian Hislop explores in a new documentary on attitudes to immigration in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, we need to see the verdict in the context of an open borders policy few people today realise ever even existed.
“Until 1905, anyone, anyone could come to this country with no passport, no visa, no letter of introduction and an absolute right to become British, with the protection of the crown and parliament and everything that goes with it,” Archie Baron, the show’s executive producer, tells WDYTYA? Magazine.
At a time when the idea of the country “as a welcoming haven for all” was “a cardinal virtue for Victorian self-image”, the notion of someone being punished for action abroad against a foreign power was anathema to the jurists. Archie says: “[ They] were effectively saying, ‘How dare anyone question our immigration policy? No crime was committed here, we’re not going to pander to a foreign government. We’d rather protect a terrorist than lock him up because that’s an infringement on the right of the people of Britain to do what they like.’”
Yet this attitude would change through the late Victorian and Edwardian eras so that, in 1905, the Aliens Act introduced immigration controls for the first time. It’s legislation that was in part rooted in a reaction to Jewish immigration from eastern Europe. ( Jews at this time were being driven from their homes by pogroms.) This led to fears over immigrants taking jobs, higher rents and, in places such as London’s East End, the character of communities changing.
These fears were articulated by Major Sir William Evans- Gordon, MP for Stepney between 1900 and 1907, a figure who’s comparable in some respects with Nigel Farage for the way he “effected political change” through campaigning. “He was someone who was hugely successful in taking an issue that was marginal, about which few people cared, and brought it into the mainstream,” says Archie.
Where, for better or worse, it’s largely remained ever since. Jonathan Wright