Antisemitism in the United Kingdom

• 1. Medieval Persecution And Expulsion

  ›

  Jews arrived in the Kingdom of England following the Norman Conquest in 1066. The earliest Jewish settlement was documented in about 1070. Jews living in England from around King Stephen's reign experienced religious discrimination while their moneylending activity was strictly controlled and heavily taxed. 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. In 1181, the Assize of Arms forbade Jews from owning a hauberk or chain mail. The York Massacre of 1190 resulted in an estimated 150 Jews taking their own lives or being immolated. The earliest recorded images of antisemitism are found in the Royal tax records from 1233. 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. Its practical application is not recorded. In 1264, 7, the Second Barons' War included a further series of massacres of Jews with the objective of destroying the records of debts held by moneylenders. In 1275, Edward I enacted the similar Statute of the Jewry which included the outlawing of usury. The first dated portrait of an English Jew is the 1277 antisemitic caricature Aaron, Son of the Devil in which he wears the English yellow badge on his upper garments. 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.

• 2. Readmission And Legal Emancipation

  ›

  Jews were readmitted to the United Kingdom by Oliver Cromwell in 1655 though it is believed that crypto-Jews lived in England prior to then. Jews were subjected to discrimination and humiliation which waxed and waned over the centuries gradually decreasing as Jews made commercial philanthropic and sporting contributions to the country. However Jews were restricted by laws aimed primarily at Catholics and nonconformists such as the Corporation Act 1661 and other Test Acts which restricted public offices in England to members of the Church of England. The Jewish Naturalisation Act which allowed Jews to become naturalised by application to Parliament received royal assent on the 7th of July 1753 but was repealed in 1754 due to widespread opposition to its provisions. For the purpose of Catholic emancipation the test acts were repealed in 1828 but replaced by George IV with the Oath of Abjuration Act which declared an oath of abjuration containing the words upon the faith of a Christian to be necessary for all officers civil or military under the crown or in the universities and for all lawyers voters and members of Parliament. Despite these restrictions it has been suggested by William D. Rubinstein that antisemitism was lower in the United Kingdom than in a number of other European countries and that this was so for a number of reasons. Protestants shared with Jews an emphasis on the Old Testament a self-perception as a chosen people with a direct covenant with God and a distrust of Catholicism. With fewer Jews in the UK Jews had a lesser commercial and financial role than in some other countries reducing both real and perceived conflicts and Britain's early adoption of constitutional government with liberal principles acted to promote individual and civil liberties. In 1846 at the insistence of Irish leader Daniel O'Connell the obsolete 1275 law De Judaismo was repealed. There continued to be opposition to emancipation from figures such as Thomas Carlyle who believed that all Jews should be expelled to Palestine disliking what he perceived as Jews' materialism and archaic forms of religion. In 1858 the Jews Relief Act 1858 removed the restriction of the oath of office for the Parliament to Christians allowing Jews to become MPs. In 1871 the Universities Tests Act abolished the requirement for university staff and students to be adherents of the Church of England. In 1890 under the Religious Disabilities Removal Bill all restrictions for every position in the British Empire were removed being thrown open to every British subject without distinction of creed except for that of monarch and the offices of Lord High Chancellor and of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

• 3. Immigration Waves And Civil Antisemitism

  ›

  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. By the turn of the century a popular and media backlash had begun. The British Brothers' League was formed with the support of prominent politicians organising marches and petitions. At rallies its speakers said that Britain should not become the dumping ground for the scum of Europe. In 1905 an editorial in the Manchester Evening Chronicle wrote that the dirty destitute diseased verminous and criminal foreigner who dumps himself on our soil and rates simultaneously shall be forbidden to land. Antisemitism broke out into violence in South Wales in 1902 and 1903 where Jews were assaulted. One of the main objectives of the Aliens Act in 1905 was to control such immigration. Restrictions were increased in the Aliens Restriction Act 1914 and the immigration laws of 1919. In addition to anti-immigration campaigners there were antisemitic groups notably The Britons launched in 1919 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. During the first decades of the twentieth century antisemitic discourse in Britain shifted to the mode of what scholars refer to as civil antisemitism. Civil antisemitism refers to the social and political pressures of the public sphere in which overt bigotry is seen as objectionable. British concerns with civility led to the development of techniques for disguising antisemitic rhetoric. Antisemitic discourse was masked by rhetorical strategies. Antisemitic hatred was expressed through polite conversation; British sensibilities disdained more vulgar expressions of antisemitic attitudes but not the attitudes themselves. Parliamentary debates regarding the Aliens Acts of 1904 and 1905 for instance displayed antisemitic rhetoric under the guise of concerns regarding immigration. The image of the immigrant alien stood in for that of the Jew. The practice of civil antisemitism incorporated antisemitic attitudes into mainstream discourse masked by euphemisms and rhetorical strategies. This form of antisemitism is exemplified by British modernist writers such as Virginia Woolf. The Jew became a figure used by modernist writers as a stylistic tool and technique. Woolf and her peers experimented with their writing through the lens of civil antisemitism. The shift to more subtle antisemitic expression thus impacted modernist British literature.

• 4. Fascist Campaigns And The War Years

  ›

  Popular sentiment against immigration was used by the Imperial Fascist League and the British Union of Fascists to incite hatred against Jews in the 1930s. However a planned fascist march through the east end of London with its large Jewish population had to be abandoned due to the Battle of Cable Street in 1936 where police trying to ensure the march could proceed failed to clear barricades erected and defended by unionised dock workers socialists anarchists communists Jews and other anti-fascists. Other antisemitic organisations in the 1930s included the Militant Christian Patriots and the Right Club. The Évian Conference in 1938 attended by 32 countries failed to reach agreement on accepting Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. 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. Louise London author of Whitehall and the Jews 1933, 1948 stated that The British immigration process was designed to keep out large numbers of European Jews perhaps 10 times as many as it let in. It was difficult for the refugees to find work regardless of their education except as domestics. This also meant that Jewish refugees who were physicians could not practise medicine even though there was a shortage of health care providers. Some of the concern was economic. During a period of high unemployment the British were concerned about losing job opportunities due to the influx of refugees. German Jewish refugees were discouraged from speaking German and encouraged to assimilate into the culture which was often accomplished at the expense of their personal history and identity. A law was enacted in the 1930s to ensure that no more than 5% of the total students in a school were Jewish limiting the rate at which Jewish children could be admitted to state schools. The press which was generally not supportive of refugees incorrectly reported that there were more Jews in Britain than had been in Germany in the summer of 1938. Kushner and Katharine Knox state in their book Refugees in an Age of Genocide Of all the groups in the 20th century refugees from Nazism are now widely and popularly perceived as genuine but at the time German Austrian and Czechoslovak Jews were treated with ambivalence and outright hostility as well as sympathy. When war was declared Britain no longer allowed immigration from Nazi-controlled countries. The Bermuda Conference of the Allies held in April 1943 held to consider the issue of European Jews whether liberated or under Nazi rule by which time it was known that the Nazi regime intended to exterminate them where it could did not result in agreement on practical steps with the overriding focus remaining on winning the war.

• 5. Post-War Far Right And Community Defense

  ›

  Anti-Jewish sentiments became widespread around 1947 in response to fighting between the British Army and Zionist groups in the British Mandate for Palestine. In August 1947 after the hanging of two abducted British sergeants by the Irgun there was widespread anti-Jewish rioting across the United Kingdom. Antisemitic activity from fascist groups Jeffrey Hamm's British League of Ex-Servicemen and later Oswald Mosley's new fascist party the Union Movement included antisemitic speeches in public places and from the rank-and-file fascists attacks on Jews and Jewish property. This resulted in the formation of the 43 Group led by Jewish ex-servicemen which from 1945 to 1950 broke up far right meetings infiltrated fascist groups and attacked the fascists in street fighting. In the 1960s groups such as the British National Party founded in 1960 and the National Socialist Movement founded in 1962 maintained a far right tradition. After lobbying by the Board of Deputies of British Jews Jews along with other groups received formal legal protection from the Race Relations Act 1965 which outlawed discrimination on the grounds of colour race or ethnic or national origins in public places in Great Britain and from successor legislation. However far right groups such as the National Front founded in 1967 and a new British National Party founded in 1982 continued to express antisemitic views.

• 6. Contemporary Incidents And Political Dynamics

  ›

  In 2022 17% of hate crimes were against Jews which account for 0.5% of the British population. As well as hate crimes reported to the police the Community Security Trust monitors incidents reported by members of the public. The majority of reports of antisemitic incidents are from areas where most Jews live: Metropolitan London Greater Manchester and Hertfordshire. Over 2014, 18 around one fifth of the reported incidents occurred on social media. The level typically rises following events related to Israel or the wider Middle East. The CST reported a large rise in incidents after the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict 2021 Israel-Palestine crisis and the ongoing Gaza war 2023-ongoing. For example in 2021 a convoy of cars with Palestinian flags driving through East Finchley an area of London with a sizeable Jewish community and the driver of one of the cars being recorded yelling fuck their mothers rape their daughters. The sharp rise in the number of reported incidents from 2016 onwards followed increased media coverage of antisemitism and may be an increase in actual incidents or in reporting or both. Around a quarter of reported incidents in 2018 took place on social media. The largest increases are in threats and abusive behaviour. The Trust believes that the total number of incidents is significantly higher than that reported. In 2017, 18 the police in England and Wales recorded 1191 antisemitic hate crimes which excludes some behaviours recorded by the CST. Taking the Metropolitan Police data alone the number rose by 15% in the following year from 519 to 597. Comparisons with the Crime Survey for England and Wales suggest that less than half of hate crime is reported to the police. A 2018 survey by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights found that about a quarter of Jews in the UK had felt offended or threatened over the last year increasing to one third over the last five years. In the same survey 24% of British Jews had witnessed other Jews being verbally insulted or harassed and/or physically attacked in the past 12 months of whom 18% were family members. Only about one fifth of incidents were reported. Between the 2023 Gaza War's outbreak and March 2024 the police in England and Wales recorded 140,561 hate crimes 70% of which were racially motivated while the spike in hate crimes was caused by a bump in antisemitic offences. In England and Wale alone 3,282 antisemitic offences have been recorded more than doubled vis-à-vis the previous year while allegedly anti-Muslim offences rose by 13%. The CST recorded 4,103 antisemitic incidents in 2023 compared to 1,510 in 2022. The CST tallied 272 antisemitic incidents during the 2023-2024 school year over five times the number in the previous year. In one example the University of Leeds Jewish chaplain received threats to rape and kill his wife and murder his children. The surge mirrored the previous peak which was during the 2021 Israel-Hamas conflict. According to the CST nearly 2,000 antisemitic incidents were recorded in the first half of 2024 marking the highest number ever documented in a six-month period. CST incident figures remained elevated in the second half of 2024 with 3,528 incidents reported that year. In October 2024 a Swastika and antisemitic slogans were graffitied at a golf club in a Jewish area of London. London police are investigating the incident and a hate crime. In the first half of 2025 according to a report by CST 1,521 antisemitic incidents were recorded across the United Kingdom amounting to more than 200 cases per month. On the 2nd of October 2025 a terrorist attack took place outside the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester during Yom Kippur. The attacker Jihad al-Shamie a 35-year-old British citizen who had immigrated from Syria rammed a car into pedestrians and stabbed worshippers before being shot dead by police. Two people were killed and three were seriously injured. Investigators later reported that one fatality and another victim may have been struck by police gunfire as officers ended the assault.