26 December 1940 Today in 1940, a memo drafted by Richard Latham, an official in the refugee section at the Foreign Office, suggested that Britain should revive an earlier proposal to create a ‘second Jewish National Home’ in the interior of British Guiana,’ as a refuge for Jews fleeing Nazi persecution. It would, he reasoned,…
17 December 1940 On 12 December 1940, the Uruguayan registered freighter Salvador struck reefs off the Turkish coast, drowning 230 Jewish refugees, including over seventy children. Five days later, T.M. Snow, the head of the Foreign Office Refugee Section, who was anxious to halt the flow of persecuted refugees from Nazi occupied Europe, commented in…
1 September 1939 Before dawn on the 1 September 1939, Hitler’s Wehrmacht commenced the invasion of Poland, triggering Number 10’s declaration of war two days later. During those same early hours, a British police launch, patrolling the coast off Palestine to prevent the unwelcome arrival of fugitives fleeing Nazi persecution, opened fire with a Lewis…
31 July 2018 On 31 July 2018, the Court of Appeal ruled that the British government had ‘materially misled’ the high court over how it had denied refugee children refused entrance into the UK their legal rights to know and challenge the reasons for their visa applications being turned down. The Judges added that the…
1 July 1962 Immediately the minute hand passed midnight, the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 came into force. Described by Hugh Gaitskell, leader of the opposition, as a ‘cruel and brutal anti-colour legislation,’ the new law required all Commonwealth citizens arriving in the United Kingdom to hold a valid visa, effectively revoking the right of settlement…
21 June 1847 On this day in 1847, the Poor Law Removal Act became law, allowing municipal authorities in England and Scotland to send any paupers claiming poor relief back to their place of origin with the minimum of legal formalities. It was specifically designed to stem what Lord Brougham in the House of Lords…
2 March 1968 Immediately after midnight, the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 became law. Its official aspiration was to introduce new restrictions on all Commonwealth immigrants, although it was openly acknowledged that its real raison d’etre was to prevent the arrival of thousands of Kenyan Asians with British passports who faced the prospect of forcible repatriation…
24 February 1942 On 24 February 1942, the S.S. Struma, a small 240 ton vessel crammed with 786 Jewish refugees, including over one hundred children, was sunk by a torpedo in the Black Sea. All but one of the passengers drowned.1 The sinking occurred after the British government pressured Turkey not to allow the refugees to…
ADMIRAL ORDERED TO INTERCEPT SHIP CARRYING JEWISH REFUGEES [ 30 December 1939 ] On 30 December 1939, at the request of the Colonial Office, the Admiralty directed the Commander in Chief of the British navy in the Mediterranean to intercept a Bulgarian river steamer carrying desperate refugees from Nazi occupied Europe, who were hoping to…
BRITAIN REFUSES TAKING HOLOCAUST REFUGEES ‘ON MERELY HUMANITARIAN GROUNDS’ [ 24 December 1940 ] On Christmas Eve 1940, Thomas Latham, a clerk at the Foreign Office, minuted an official response to an urgent request from the government of Luxembourg. It had appealed to Britain to take in 300 Jewish refugees, who had been sent back…
