- 'Just over a century ago, in 1924, the prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, sought to appease right wingers by appointing Sir William Joynson-Hicks as home secretary. ....Joynson-Hicks had “established himself as an unapologetic antisemite”. As home secretary, he “raised the hurdle” for immigrants to achieve “naturalisation” (equivalent to indefinite leave to remain) “from five to 10 years, and to 15 years for Russians”. “Russians” tended to mean Jewish refugees, fleeing pogroms and other oppressions. Joynson-Hicks made it as hard as possible for refugees to settle in the UK.
....The home secretary “issued instructions to immigration officers to increase their vigilance and never to give the benefit of the doubt to an alien attempting to enter the country”. He visited the ports “to examine the tighter procedures and encourage officials to greater zeal”. In other words, while there is no suggestion that Mahmood is an antisemite like Joynson-Hicks, his policies uncannily prefigured Mahmood’s.
The same goes for the context. The rightwing press, led by the Times, the Daily Mail, the Express, the National Review and the Morning Post, had spent the preceding 20 years whipping up paranoia about a “flood” of “aliens” and “undesirables” entering the country. “Aliens” and “undesirables” tended to be code for Jews. Jews in Britain were widely accused of “tribalism”, of refusing to “assimilate”, of being “un-English” and unpatriotic and of “leeching” off the state. The Imperial Fascist League issued stickers with the slogan: “Britons! Do not allow Jews to tamper with white girls.” Jewish immigrants were blamed for the housing shortage and unemployment.
Joynson-Hicks spoke disparagingly of Jews, who, he claimed, “put their Jewish or foreign nationality before their English nationality” and believed that left wingers “would like to see England flooded with the whole of the alien refuse from every country in the world”. Many right wingers believed there was a conspiracy to create a Jewish world order.
In other words, the stories being told about Muslims and immigrants today are the same stories that were being told about Jews a century ago. Both Muslims and immigrants are now accused of tribalism and a failure to assimilate, of hostility to “British values” and of “tampering with white girls”. They are blamed for the housing shortage and unemployment and for “leeching” off the state. Rightwing conspiracy fictions claim that Muslims in Britain are seeking to create an Islamic world order in the form of a “global caliphate”. Figures such as Suella Braverman and Matthew Goodwin suggest that people from ethnic minorities cannot be truly English or truly British. Braverman proposes a literal blood-and-soil definition of Englishness, “rooted in ancestry, heritage, and, yes, ethnicity” with “generational ties to English soil”.
Just like the age-old generalisations about Jews, these characterisations are entirely false. To give one example, a poll last month found that Muslims in both the UK and the US are more likely than non-Muslims to believe that “democracy is the best system of government” and to express loyalty to the country. So why all the hatred?
Well, the primary source is the same as it was a century ago: the media. Still the Daily Mail (now owned by the 4th Lord Rothermere), the Express and other newspapers pour division and bile into our lives. Today they are supplemented by outlets such as GB News and the social media site X. But just as they did 100 years ago, governments will blame anyone and anything else for polarisation and hate. Last week both Keir Starmer and Nigel Farage, apparently reading from the same script, took this blame-shifting in a remarkable new direction by accusing the Green party of “sectarianism”, which appears to mean that it attracted Muslim votes. Is “sectarian” now code for Muslim?
Etc.
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