William Evans-Gordon
Major Sir William Eden Evans Gordon (8 August 1857 – 31 October 1913)[1] was a British politician, military officer, and diplomat.
His career in India was a mixture of military administrative business on the volatile North-West Frontier, and of diplomacy and foreign policy in advising maharajas or accompanying the viceroy in the princely states.
Evans Gordon, as a "restrictionist", was heavily and actively involved in the passing of the Aliens Act 1905, which sought to limit the number of people allowed to enter Britain even temporarily.
As an Attaché of the Indian Foreign Department, he worked on translating documents into French and German, apparently for the uniformed but "unofficial" military observers from those countries.
[9] In 1885, Evans-Gordon was back with the 8th Madras Regiment in Saugor as Officiating 3rd Class Political Assistant,[14] and the following year, he was attached to the Foreign Department of the Indian Government.
[15] In September 1886, he accompanied the Foreign Secretary of the Indian Government (Sir Mortimer Durand) up the military road being built through the Khyber Pass by Colonel Robert Warburton to the new fort at Landi Kotal.
[9][17] As political officer in 1888, he was prominently connected with negotiations for the surrender of Ghazi Ayub Khan, who eight years earlier had defeated a British army at the Battle of Maiwand during the Second Anglo-Afghan War and had laid siege to Khandahar.
[9] He was appointed Joint-Commissioner in Ladakh in 1889 (where he was described as "an energetic and able officer"),[18] and Assistant Resident in the recently annexed Jammu and Kashmir in November 1890, ruled by Maharaja Pratap Singh.
[20] In March 1895, he was appointed Officiating Political Resident in Jhalawar State (a subdivision of the Rajputana Agency during the British Raj) Evans-Gordon was promoted Major on 15 July 1896.
In 1896, he was also connected with the deposition of the Maharaja of Jhalawar, Rana Zalim Singh, for which he was criticised in Parliament, but the Secretary of State asserted that the Political Agent had acted with "discretion and tolerance".
[9] The Times of India Illustrated Weekly of 5 September 1906 reported that in Kashmir, at Ladakh and in attendance on the Gaekwar in Europe, he "won the trust and esteem of all the chiefs and magistrates with whom he was brought into relation".
[25] The Stepney constituency, one of the poorest districts of London, saw in a rise in immigration during the late 19th century and early 20th century, partially as a result of the anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire[26] As far back as 1889, a House of Commons Committee had concluded that there had been an increase in pauperism in the East End of London by the crowding out of English labour from foreign immigrants.
[27] Restrictionism came to be a notable canvassing topic in the 1892 and 1895 general elections,[28] and the recently-succeeded Earl of Hardwicke proposed a similar Aliens Bill in 1898.
[31] Although the growing sense of anti-alien feeling found expression in certain localised quarters of the franchised electorate,[32] the primary issues in the 1900 poll were a desire to end the Second Boer War (hence the nickname (khaki election) and the vexed question of home rule for Ireland.
[35][36][37] Howard Vincent (MP for Sheffield Central since 1885) and several East End Conservative MPs (Murray Guthrie, Spencer Charrington and Thomas Dewar) became members of the League.
[43] Although it contains some gratuitous low-level antisemitism,[44] the book in general disinterestedly records the situation of the Jews and at one point favourably compares conditions of the poor of Libau to the "horrors of the East End.
[50] In an open letter to Nathan Laski[51] (a prominent member of the Jewish community in his constituency and father of Harold Laski), Churchill quoted a speech by Lord Rothschild, a Liberal supporter and member of the Aliens Commission:"The Bill introduced into the House of Commons proposes to establish in this country a loathsome system of police interference and espionage, of passports and arbitrary power exercised by police officers who in all probability will not understand the language of those upon whom they are called to sit in judgement.
[...] The whole bill looks like an attempt on the part of the Government to gratify a small but noisy section of their own supporters and to purchase a little popularity in the constituencies by dealing harshly with a number of unfortunate aliens who have no votes.
It may be that it is not intended, but the action of many Members of this House has been calculated to excite the feeling which we know to exist in part of our population, and with the case of the persecution of Dreyfus reverberating through the West of Europe there is no use saying that there is no danger of this kind in our own country.
But in expressing my deep sympathy with the victims of this most terrible persecution I am bound to repeat my conviction that the solution of the Jewish problem in Eastern Europe will not and cannot be found in the transference of thousands of poverty-stricken and helpless aliens to the most crowded quarters and overstocked markets of our greatest cities.
[57] Although a section of the Conservative Party had managed to persuade the Commons to pass anti-Jewish legislation, the Liberals only six months later had a landslide election victory in 1906.
The Aliens Bill in England and the movement which grew around it were natural phenomenon which might have been foreseen.... Sir William Evans-Gordon had no particular anti-Jewish prejudices... he was sincerely ready to encourage any settlement of Jews almost anywhere in the British Empire but he failed to see why the ghettoes of London or Leeds should be made into a branch of the ghettoes of Warsaw and Pinsk.... Sir William Evans-Gordon gave me some insight into the psychology of the settled citizen.
[62] During the Anglo-French Festival 1904 to celebrate the Entente Cordiale, Evans-Gordon apparently proposed an unprecedented multiple joint gathering in Westminster Hall, London, in August.
[70] Julia was the sister of James Stewart-Mackenzie, 1st Baron Seaforth, who fought with the 9th Lancers during the Second Anglo-Afghan War of 1878–1880 (later Colonel of the regiment), and was later military secretary to M. E. Grant Duff.
