Antisemitism in the United Kingdom
Significant Jewish migration from Eastern Europe in the years prior to World War I saw some antisemitic opposition, which would result in increasingly restrictive immigration laws.
An emerging fascist movement in the 1930s, which launched antisemitic campaigns, was accompanied by a government policy of restricting the inflow of Jewish refugees from Nazi controlled territories.
In the second half of the 20th century, while the Jewish community became generally accepted, antisemitic sentiment persisted within British fascist and other far-right groups.
[3] It is thought that the blood libel which accused Jews of ritual murder originated in England in the 12th century: examples include Harold of Gloucester, Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln, Robert of Bury and William of Norwich.
[5] In 1253, Henry III enacted the Statute of Jewry, placing a range of restrictions on Jews, including segregation and the wearing of a yellow badge.
[11] After being expelled from a number of towns during previous decades, this early Jewish presence in England ended with King Edward I's Edict of Expulsion in 1290.
[18] The Independent Labour Party, Robert Blatchford's newspaper The Clarion, and the Trade Union Congress all blamed "Jewish capitalists" as "being behind the war and imperialism in general".
[19] John Burns, a Liberal Party socialist, speaking in the House of Commons in 1900, asserted that the British Army itself had become "a janissary of the Jews".
[22][23][24] According to one historian, "The Jew baiting at the time of the Boer War and the Marconi scandal was linked to a broader protest, mounted in the main by the Radical wing of the Liberal Party, against the growing visibility of successful businessmen in national life and the challenges.
"[25] From 1882 to 1919, Jewish numbers in Britain increased fivefold, from 46,000 to 250,000, due to the exodus from Russian pogroms and discrimination, many of whom settled in the East End of London.
[27] In 1905, an editorial in the Manchester Evening Chronicle[27] wrote "that the dirty, destitute, diseased, verminous and criminal foreigner who dumps himself on our soil and rates simultaneously, shall be forbidden to land".
[29] In addition to anti-immigration campaigners, there were antisemitic groups, notably The Britons, launched in 1919,[30] which called for British Jews to be deported en masse to Palestine.
In 1920, the Morning Post published over 17 or 18 articles a translation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which subsequently formed the basis of a book, The Cause of World Unrest, to which half the paper's staff contributed.
Later exposed as a forgery, they were initially accepted, with a leader in The Times blaming Jews for World War I and the Bolshevik regime and calling them the greatest threat to the British Empire.
While Britain eventually accepted 70,000 up to the outbreak of World War II, in addition to the 10,000 children on the Kindertransport, there were, according to British Jewish associations, more than 500,000 case files of Jews who were not admitted.
[39] Immediately following the war, a large number of refugees entered the UK, but few were Jewish Holocaust survivors as immigration policy barred Jews because it did not consider them easily assimilable.
[53] In 2016, research by the World Jewish Congress found that 90% of antisemitic posts on social media in the UK were made by white males under the age of 40 with affiliations to extreme right-wing groups.
[52] According to a European Union Fundamental Rights Agency survey in 2018, victims in the UK, in instances where they ascribed a political viewpoint, perceived 38% of the perpetrators of the most serious attack or threat they had experienced to be "someone with a Muslim extremist view".
The Community Security Trust in 2018 found that references to Israel accounted for nearly two-thirds of the 16% of antisemitic incidents with an identifiable political or ideological motivation.
"[51] According to a European Union Fundamental Rights Agency survey in 2018, victims in the UK in instances where they ascribed a political viewpoint, perceived 43% of the perpetrators of the most serious attack or threat they had experienced to be "someone with a left-wing view".
In other cases, the motivation is unclear because the perpetrator either did not communicate a clear rationale or used a combination of some or all of classic anti-semitic canards, Nazi references and anti-Israel expressions.
Its report stated that "until recently, the prevailing opinion both within the Jewish community and beyond [had been] that antisemitism had receded to the point that it existed only on the margins of society."
The report made a series of recommendations, including the formal adoption by the UK government, with additional caveats (for example, on free speech),[96] of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)'s Working Definition of Antisemitism.
[98][99] The 2016 Select Committee enquiry found that, although the threat that the far right posed to Jews had fallen, "Holocaust denial and Jewish conspiracy theories remain core elements of far-right ideology" and the British National Party (BNP) continues to stir up trouble and damages societal cohesion.
It also found that Jeremy Corbyn had shown a "lack of consistent leadership", which "has created what some have referred to as a 'safe space' for those with vile attitudes towards Jewish people" and that "The failure of the Labour Party to deal consistently and effectively with anti-Semitic incidents in recent years risks lending force to allegations that elements of the Labour movement are institutionally anti-Semitic.
For example, since the start in July 2019 of Boris Johnson's leadership of the Conservative party, senior Conservative politicians have been accused of antisemitism – including Jacob Rees-Mogg,[107] Priti Patel,[108] Crispin Blunt,[109] Michael Gove,[110] James Cleverly,[111] Theresa May,[112] and Johnson's advisor Dominic Cummings,[113] as have Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidates.
"[115] In April 2024, Mick Greenhough, who was set to stand as a parliamentary candidate for Reform UK in the constituency of Orpington, was sacked by the party when it emerged that he had tweeted in 2019, "Most Jews are reasonable people.
[116] A spokesman for Reform said that, while the party defended its "candidates' right to freedom of speech", they "act fast when we find that individuals' statements' fall beneath our standards.
It was introduced in 2015 and Home Secretary, Sajid Javid pledged to increase funding, bringing the total amount allocated from 2015 to 2019 to £65.2 million.
[134] A survey conducted by the Campaign Against Antisemitism in June 2024 found that only a third of British Jews believe they have a long-term future in the country, and just 48% feel welcome in the UK.
