27 December 1753 In the summer of 1753, the Whig government passed a bill enabling Jews, who were already resident in Britain, to be naturalised without having to receive the sacrament at Holy Communion. With a general election scheduled for the following year, opposition politicians and newspapers promptly whipped up public fears that their ‘Christian…
25 July 1946 On 25 July 1946, General Sir Evelyn Barker, commanding British forces in Palestine, issued an order to all ranks instructing them that ‘all Jewish places of entertainment, cafes, restaurants, shops and dwellings’ were out of bounds and calling on his men to punish Jews ‘by showing our contempt for them.’ The order…
3 June 1940 On 3 June 1940, Winston Churchill wrote a minute to the Cabinet Secretary asking anxiously: ‘Has anything been done about shipping 20,000 internees to Newfoundland or St. Helena ?’ Churchill added, ‘I should like to get them on the high seas as soon as possible.’1 Within weeks of the start of the…
31 May 1933 On 31 May 1933, Cosmo Gordon Lang, the Archbishop of Canterbury, speaking in the House of Lords, agreed that it was right to be concerned at the ‘the oppression of members of the Jewish race’ in Germany. However, he reminded peers that Britain also had to understand the situation from the anti-Semitic…
24 March 1933 On 24 March 1933, the Daily Express reinforced anti-Semitic prejudice with a front page splash portraying Jews as an all powerful bourgeois plutocracy. Under the headline ‘Judea Declares War on Germany,’ it reported on the decision of some Jews to boycott German products in reaction to the murderous Nazi persecution. Both the headline and…
8 February 1920 On 8 February 1920, writing in the Illustrated Sunday Herald, Secretary of State for War Winston Churchill alleged that Jews could neatly be divided into ‘good and bad Jews.’ On the one hand, the ‘honourable’ Zionist and also ‘national Jews,’ who were loyal to their home countries, and on the other, the far…
21 January 1920 On 21 January 1920, Winston Churchill, then Secretary of State for War, wrote to fellow minister Herbert A.L. Fisher. He was determined to defend himself against accusations that one of his recent speeches on the Jewish role in the Bolshevik movement may have contributed to the lynching of thousands of Jews in…
THE OBSERVER WARNS AGAINST ACCEPTING JEWISH REFUGEES [ 31 July 1938 ] On 31 July 1938, the Observer newspaper warned that if a large number of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany and Austria were accepted in Britain it was almost certain to lead to a rise in antisemitism.1 Following Hitler’s annexation of Austria in March, the…
BRITISH SLAUGHTER ZULU WOUNDED AND BURN DOWN THE CITY OF ULUNDI [ 4 July 1879 ] Today in 1879, British infantry used their overwhelming fire power to decisively defeat the Zulu nation at the battle of Ulundi. BRITISH OFFICIALS SHOULD NOT CRITICIZE THE NAZI PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS [ 4 July 1938 ] On 4…
ARTICLE IN THE DAILY EXPRESS BACKS NAZI EXPULSION OF ‘BOLSHEVIK JEWS‘ [ 9 May 1933 ] On 9 May 1933, a near full page article in the Daily Express, written by the pro-Empire Eton educated Gilbert Frankau, carried the headline ‘As a Jew I’m Not against Hitler.’ It attempted to categorize the German Jewish community…
