Antisemitism in the British Conservative Party

Antisemitism in the British Conservative Party refers to allegations and incidents of antisemitism involving members and affiliates of the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom. These incidents have spanned various periods and have involved diverse forms of antisemitic expression, including stereotypes, conspiracy theories, and offensive language. The party has faced scrutiny over its handling of such incidents, with criticisms focusing on the perceived inadequacy of disciplinary measures and the prevalence of certain antisemitic tropes within its ranks. The Conservative Party has publicly condemned antisemitism and taken steps to address concerns, but the issue remains a subject of ongoing debate and controversy.

Nineteenth century Robert Peel (1834–1846) In 1830, Robert Peel spoke in Parliament in opposition to the Bill to remove civil disabilities from Jews. During this time, a Jew could not open a shop within the city of London, become a barrister, graduate from university, or be a member of Parliament.Harold Bloom, Charles Dickens (New York: Chelsea House, 2013) Peel opposed 'Dechristianising the Legislature', and commented:

Edward Smith-Stanley (1846–1868) Prior to 1858, Jews were not allowed to become Members of Parliament (MPs) unless they embraced Christianity, such as Benjamin Disraeli who was born Jewish but became an Anglican at the age of 12.T. Buenos, '' (19/05/15) on The Jerusalem Post This changed with the Jews Relief Act 1858, which removed legislative barriers to Jews entering Parliament.R. Philpot, ' (22/02/18) on The Times of Israel Conservative opposition to the Act included: Conservative MP Robert Gascoyne-Cecil (Lord Salisbury) opposed Jewish inclusion in Parliament because, he said, a Jew, due to his religious convictions, would be opposed to "all ... [present MPs] were there to uphold", and would take a "hostile" position towards Parliament. George Bankes "expressed his horror at the possibility of seeing a Jew Premier [prime minister] in Parliament". John Pemberton Plumptre "intended no insult to the Jews in asserting that they were unfit to legislate or interfere in the affairs of a Christian nation". Thomas Dyke Acland and Charles Law warned that every Jew in Parliament would "displace a Christian" and accused the Jews of the City of London of conspiring to get John Russell elected and, therefore, having John Russell under their control. Alexander Beresford Hope opposed the bill "on the ground that there was no pre-eminence or super-excellence in the Jewish race which would justify the house in relaxing" the rules about admittance. Charles Newdigate Newdegate claimed that "the wealth of one distinguished Jew had been liberally lavished to obtain petitions in favour of the Bill" and that behind the calls for Jewish emancipation was a "Talmudic conspiracy... to destroy the free constitution and religion of Protestant Englishmen".K. Theodore Hoppen, The Mid-Victorian Generation: 1846-1886. (OUP, 1998) Alexander Baillie-Cochrane saw the "apathy with which this Bill had been received in the country as no source of congratulation, but as a very terrible sign of the corruption of the times". Philip Stanhope was of the opinion that "Jewish emancipation would lower the tone of religious opinion in England". Spencer Horatio Walpole said that the Jews were of a "separate creed and interest" and were "not a citizen of this country, but of the world". Archibald Douglas said that Jews "were unfortunately actuated by a love of money, which was highly discreditable". Robert Inglis argued that Jews were "a separate nation with a separate creed". Henry Ker Seymer, Richard Spooner, Frederic Thesiger, Alexander Raphael, Francis Scott, Henry Goulburn, Joseph Napier,Charles Egan, The status of the Jews in England (London: 1848) Cropley Ashley-Cooper (Lord Ashley), and Henry Home-Drummond, also opposed the bill and the inclusion of Jews.

Benjamin Disraeli (1868–1881) Benjamin Disraeli endured prejudice from some Conservatives throughout his political career. Disraeli was described by one backbench Conservative, Sir Rainald Knightley, as "that hellish Jew", and by some others simply as "the Jew". Edward Smith-Stanley (Earl of Derby) criticised Disraeli for holding beliefs he considered un-English.David Cesarani, Disraeli: The Novel Politician (Yale University Press, 2016). Another Conservative politician said of him, "he bears the mark of the Jew strongly about him... He is evidently clever but superlatively vulgar". Writing to his sister, Austen Chamberlain said Disraeli was an "English patriot [but] not an Englishman".Harry Defries, Conservative Party Attitudes to Jews 1900-1950 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013)

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1885–1902) Organized antisemitism in the United Kingdom can be traced to the proto-fascistSam 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) paramilitaryRobert Benewick, The Fascist Movement in Britain (Allen Lane, 1972) group, the British Brothers' League (BBL),David Osler, '' on Left Foot Forward which was founded in 1901 by members of the Conservative Party,D. Renton, Fascism, Anti-Fascism and Britain in the 1940s (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000)D. Glover, Literature, Immigration, and Diaspora in Fin-de-Siècle England: A Cultural History of the 1905 Aliens Act (CUP, 2012) including MPs Howard Vincent and William Evans-Gordon, and drew its membership from sections of the Conservative Party. The BBL, the "largest and best organised of all the anti-alien groups" of its time was "Conservative-led and... Conservative-dominated". It sought to pressure the government into stopping the arrival of poor Jews into Britain.William I. Brustein, Roots of Hate: Anti-Semitism in Europe Before the Holocaust (CUP, 2003) It was successful in that its pressure was instrumental in persuading parliament to pass the 1905 Aliens Act.

William Evans-Gordon was elected to parliament in 1900 on an anti-alien platformGeoffrey Alderman, Modern British Jewry (OUP, 1998) and began campaigning for changes to the government's immigration policies in his first year of office.Lara Trubowitz, Civil Antisemitism, Modernism, and British Culture, 1902–1939 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) Within their parliamentary work, Evans-Gordon and other Conservative MPs obscured their antisemitism within advocacy for what might have been considered a reasonable immigration policy. Within their discourse, "immigrant" and "alien" often meant "Jew".D. J. Packer, Britain and Rescue: Government Policy and Jewish Refugees 1942-1943 (2017). Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University With four Conservative MPs in support at its inaugural meeting, the BBL was founded on 9 May 1901. The next month, Walter Murry Guthrie called a meeting of East London Conservative Associations and out of this initiative another group was formed with the aim of pressuring the government to restrict immigration: the Londoners' League. The Londoners' League worked with the BBL at a lower tierJohn Solomos, Race and Racism in Britain 2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1993) and had a number of Conservative MPs and councillors as speakers, including Evans-Gordon, Samuel Ridley, Harry Samuel, Thomas Herbert Robertson, David John Morgan and Arnold White. The BBL stirred up widespread racism against Jewish immigrants who had moved to the city to find refuge because they had been displaced by pogroms in their home countries.G. Craig and K. Atkin, Understanding 'race' and Ethnicity: Theory, History, Policy, Practice (Bristol: Polity Press, 2012)

On the tier above the BBL was the Parliamentary Alien Immigration Committee. The committee was founded in August 1901 and comprised all the East End MPs (except the Liberal Party MP for Whitechapel, Stuart M. Samuel). Based on the same ideas as those of the BBL, Evans-Gordon formed the committee to work within Parliament.J. A. Cloake and M. R. Tudor, Multicultural Britain (OUP, 2001) As a parliamentary pressure group, it urged the government to pass restrictive immigration controls.

Arthur Balfour (1902–1911) Progress towards the Aliens Act 1905 In 1902, Evans-Gordon was instrumental in setting up a Royal Commission on Alien Immigration, of which he was the chairNick Toczek, Haters, Baiters and Would-Be Dictators: Anti-Semitism and the UK Far Right (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016) and a "key member", submitting reports to the commission. The Royal Commission was a "Parliamentary platform against Jewish migrants"D. Glover, 'Imperial Zion: Israel Zangwill and the English Origins of Territorialism' in E. Bar-Yosef and N. Valman (eds), 'The Jew' in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Culture: Between the East End and East Africa (Houndsmill: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and concerned itself almost entirely with Jews.Harold Pollins, '' on History Today (originally published in History Today Volume 35 Issue 7 July 1985) Sympathies for the BBL "stretched into the secretaryship of the Royal Commission on Alien Immigration". In February 1903, the antisemiticRichard Thurlow, Fascism in Britain: A History, 1918-1985 (Basil Blackwell, 1987) p. 108Tom Villis, Reaction and the Avant-Garde: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy in Early Twentieth-Century Britain (London: Taurus Academic Studies, 2006)David Baker, 'The Extreme Right in the 1920s: Fascism in a cold Climate, or 'Conservatism with Knobs on'?' in Mike Cronin (ed.), The Failure of British Fascism: The Far Right and the Fight for Political Recognition (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996) Immigration Reform Association (IRA) was established with Richard Hely-Hutchinson (Earl of Donoughmore) as president – a group considered respectable within the anti-alien network; and MPs who had been involved with the BBL continued their work through the Association, which played a prominent role in putting pressure on the government to pass restrictive immigration controls. Working with Harry F. Smith, a Conservative Party agent, the IRA organised a major demonstration in November 1903, with the BBL providing a procession.

In 1903, Evans-Gordon wrote The Alien ImmigrantColin Holmes, Anti-Semitism in British Society, 1876-1939 (London: Routledge, 2016) (which was an expansion of the reports he had made to the Royal Commission) with the aim of influencing public opinion on immigration. In this, he addressed the so-called "Jewish question", asserting that "the settlement of large aggregations of Hebrews in a Christian land has never been successful",D. Feldman, 'The Importance of Being English: Jewish immigration and the decay of liberal England' in D. Feldman and G. Stedman Jones, Metropolis: London: Histories and Representations since 1800 (London: Routledge, 2016) and that the "Hebrew colony ... unlike any other alien colony in [Great Britain], forms a solid and permanently distinct block – a race apart, as it were, in an enduring island of extraneous thought and custom", to the extent that "east of Aldgate one walks into a foreign town".B. Korte, 'Facing the East of Europe in Its Wester Isles: Charting Backgrounds, Questions and Perspectives' in B. Korte, E. Ulrike Pirker, S. Helff (eds), Facing the East in the West: Images of Eastern Europe in British Literature, Film and Culture (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010)