Our political memory fails us. We treat government policies as if we\u2019re seeing them for the very first time. But much of what appears to be novel has deep historical roots. If we fail to understand those roots and the soil in which they grow, we will fail to resist the assaults on our humanity.<\/p>\n
The home secretary\u2019s new attack on the rights of immigrants and refugees is shocking and disorienting. Shabana Mahmood wants to raise the qualification period for immigrants<\/a> to achieve indefinite leave to remain in the UK from five years to 10 (and up to 20 for refugees). It looks outlandish. So does her wider assault<\/a> on asylum seekers, denying them permanent refugee status even if their claims are successful. But both are eerily familiar.<\/p>\n Just over a century ago, in 1924, the prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, sought to appease rightwingers by appointing Sir William Joynson-Hicks as home secretary. As Martin Pugh notes in his 2005 book, Hurrah for the Blackshirts!<\/a>, Joynson-Hicks had \u201cestablished himself as an unapologetic antisemite\u201d. As home secretary, he \u201craised the hurdle\u201d for immigrants to achieve \u201cnaturalisation\u201d (equivalent to indefinite leave to remain) \u201cfrom five to 10 years, and to 15 years for Russians\u201d. \u201cRussians\u201d tended to mean Jewish refugees, fleeing pogroms and other oppressions.<\/p>\n Joynson-Hicks made it as hard as possible for refugees to settle in the UK. As the historian David Cesarini has noted<\/a>, the home secretary \u201cissued instructions to immigration officers to increase their vigilance and never to give the benefit of the doubt to an alien attempting to enter the country\u201d. He visited the ports \u201cto examine the tighter procedures and encourage officials to greater zeal\u201d. In other words, while there is no suggestion that Mahmood is an antisemite like Joynson-Hicks, his policies uncannily prefigured Mahmood\u2019s.<\/p>\n The same goes for the context. The rightwing press, led by the Times, the Daily Mail, the Express, the National Review and the Morning Post, had spent the preceding 20 years whipping up paranoia about a \u201cflood\u201d of \u201caliens\u201d and \u201cundesirables\u201d entering the country. \u201cAliens\u201d and \u201cundesirables\u201d tended to be code for Jews. Jews in Britain were widely accused of \u201ctribalism\u201d<\/a>, of refusing to \u201cassimilate\u201d, of being \u201cun-English\u201d<\/a> and unpatriotic and of \u201cleeching\u201d off the state. The Imperial Fascist League issued stickers with the slogan: \u201cBritons! Do not allow Jews to tamper with white girls.\u201d Jewish immigrants were blamed for the housing shortage and unemployment.<\/p>\n Joynson-Hicks spoke disparagingly of Jews, who, he claimed, \u201cput their Jewish or foreign nationality before their English nationality\u201d and believed that leftwingers \u201cwould like to see England flooded with the whole of the alien refuse from every country in the world\u201d. Many rightwingers believed there was a conspiracy to create a Jewish world order.<\/p>\n In other words, the stories being told about Muslims and immigrants today are the same stories that were being told about Jews a century ago. Both Muslims and immigrants are now accused of tribalism and a failure to assimilate, of hostility to \u201cBritish values\u201d and of \u201ctampering with white girls\u201d. They are blamed for the housing shortage and unemployment and for \u201cleeching\u201d off the state. Rightwing conspiracy fictions claim that Muslims in Britain are seeking to create an Islamic world order in the form of a \u201cglobal caliphate\u201d. Figures such as Suella Braverman<\/a> and Matthew Goodwin<\/a> suggest that people from ethnic minorities cannot be truly English or truly British. Braverman proposes a literal blood-and-soil definition of Englishness, \u201crooted in ancestry, heritage, and, yes, ethnicity\u201d with \u201cgenerational ties to English soil\u201d.<\/p>\n Lord Rothermere\u2019s Hurrah for the Blackshirts! article in the Daily Mail, 15 January 1934. Photograph: Alamy<\/p>\n Just like the age-old generalisations about Jews, these characterisations are entirely false. To give one example, a poll last month found<\/a> that Muslims in both the UK and the US are more likely than non-Muslims to believe that \u201cdemocracy is the best system of government\u201d and to express loyalty to the country.<\/p>\n So why all the hatred? Well, the primary source is the same as it was a century ago: the media. Still the Daily Mail (now owned by the 4th Lord Rothermere), the Express and other newspapers pour division and bile into our lives. Today they are supplemented by outlets such as GB News and the social media site X. But just as they did 100 years ago, governments will blame anyone and anything else for polarisation and hate. Last week both Keir Starmer<\/a> and Nigel Farage<\/a>, apparently reading from the same script, took this blame-shifting in a remarkable new direction by accusing the Green party of \u201csectarianism\u201d, which appears to mean that it attracted Muslim votes. Is \u201csectarian\u201d now code for Muslim?<\/p>\n If you want to stop hatred, polarisation and division, stand up to the rightwing media. This, too, is a lesson from the past. The alliance between the first Lord Rothermere\u2019s Daily Mail and Sir Oswald Mosley\u2019s British Union of Fascists could have led to disaster. But in 1934, soon after Rothermere published his notorious Hurrah for the Blackshirts! article and Mosley held his monster rally in London\u2019s Olympia<\/a>, one of the Daily Mail\u2019s biggest advertisers, J Lyons & Co, owned by a Jewish family, threatened a boycott<\/a> unless the newspaper dropped its support for fascism. When the Mail caved and withdrew its blessing from Mosley, his movement began to wither. I write this with pride as the family were my ancestors, and the Lyons chairman at the time my great-great uncle Sir Isidore Salmon.<\/p>\n Of course, it shouldn\u2019t have been left to advertisers. Then and now, it\u2019s the government that needs to confront the lies in the media. Instead, it endorses them and grovels to the oligarchs.<\/p>\n One result is that governments are constantly behind the curve. Net migration might turn negative<\/a> this year, with dire consequences for crucial public services, especially hospitals, care homes<\/a> and universities as well as many private employers. In political terms, the government\u2019s rightwing policies are equally destructive<\/a>. Not only does the latest polling<\/a> put the Greens ahead of Labour for the first time in history, it also shows that of those who voted Labour in 2024, only 37% intend to do so now: an astonishing collapse. To appease the billionaire press, Starmer\u2019s government has burnt its house down.<\/p>\n \u201cScheming aliens undermining our values\u201d is a narrative built across a century and more, originally by antisemites. It has been drilled into our heads as if it were an incontrovertible truth. It creates an environment in which every minority becomes less safe \u2013 not just Muslims, recent immigrants, refugees, Black and Brown people, but also Jews and everyone else who has suffered at the hands of the far right. Learn it or repeat it: that is, and has always been, our choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Our political memory fails us. 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