LOUGHBOROUGH UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY LIBRARY AUTHOR/FILING TITLE ---------- ----~~-~-~:.<='?~-.>--~- ------------ -------------------------------- -).- ---------·------ ' ACCESSION/COPY NO. '1 . I _!?_~-':\:~-~:1_\':?~---------- ------ VOL. NO. CLASS MARK ~~ .-1 Ovls91J ~·- / ------- -- -~------------------------------ - --- -~--~-~----------- ----, ANTI-SEMITIC JOURNALISM AND AUTHORSHIP IN BRITAIN 1914-21 by David Beeston A Doctoral Thesis Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy of the Loughborough University of Technology (December 1988) - --------------------- ~ DECLARATION This thesis is a record of research work carried out by the author in the Department of Economics of Loughborough University of Technology and represents the independent work of the author; the work of others has been referenced where appropriate. The author also certifies that neither this thesis nor the original work contained herein has been submitted to any other institutions for a degree. DAVID BEESTON ----------------------------------------------------------~ ABSTRACT ANTI-SEMITIC JOURNALISM AND AUTHORSHIP IN BRITAIN. 1914-21 by DAVID BEESTON This thesis illustrates how anti-semitism has found favour, comparatively recently, among influential sectors of the journalistic and literary establishment, and also how periods of intense national and international crisis can create the conditions in which conspiratorial explanations of major events will surface with relative ease. During the seven years following the outbreak of the First World War (August, 1914), anti-semitism was fuelled by the recurring crises created by a total war and its immediate aftermath. These included, the call for national unity, with its attendant criticisms of enemy aliens, sympathisers, and collaborators; the need to introduce and enforce conscription; the fear of defeat; the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the spectre of Bolshevism as an international force; the effects of the Versailles Settlement and the League of Nations on Britain's national interests; and the beginning of Britain's decline as an imperial power. The rapid development of anti-semitic literature during those years, reached its high-water mark with the publication of two pernicious books - The Jewish Peril (an English translation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion) and The Cause of World Unrest - both of which transmitted a similar message of World Jewish domination. In the immediate aftermath, even the Spectator called for a Royal Commission to investigate Jewish involvement in revolutionary activity. The following year an expose in The Times (August 1921) proved that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was closely-modelled on a book written by a French author, Maurice Joly, published in Brussels in 1864. This disclosure dealt a devastating blow to the intellectual armoury of anti-semites, prevented the British establishment from becoming seriously entangled in the ideological upsurge of Fascism, and helped ---------------------------------------, foster a spirit of reason and enlightenment in which conspiracy theories had far greater difficulties in being re-established. - ~ CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter One. Press Campaigns Against German-Jewish Aliens, 5 1914-15 Chapter Two. The Loyalty Letters episode of 1915 26 Chapter Three. The Anti-Jewish Conscription Riots of 1917 44 Chapter Four. The Formation of the National Party, 1917 65 Chapter Five. The Jews and Bolshevism 83 Chapter Six. Criticism of Jewish Influence at the Paris 107 Peace Conference, 1919-20 Chapter Seven. Explanations of Post-War Unrest 124 Chapter Eight. The Emergence of The Britons, 1918-21 142 Chapter Nine. Anti-Semitism in Popular Fiction 157 Chapter Ten. The Expose of The Protocols, 1921 176 Sources 198 1 INTRODUCTION This area of research has two basic aims. First, it intends to illustrate how anti-semitism of an overt and academic nature has not merely existed in Britain comparatively recently, but has also found favour among influential sections of the journalistic and literary establishment. Secondly, it attempts to explain how periods of intense national and international crisis, create the conditions in which conspiratorial explanations of major events will surface with relative ease. The period under review begins with the outbreak of the First Yorld Yar in August, 1914. During the following seven years, anti­ semitism was fuelled by the recurring crises produced by a total war and its immediate aftermath. These included the call for national unity, with its attendant criticisms of enemy aliens, sympathisers, and collaborators; the need to introduce and enforce conscription, against a background of heavy casualties and war-weariness; the fear of defeat; the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and the spectre of Bolshevism as an international force; the effects of both the Versailles Settlement and the League of Nations on British national interest; and the fear of social disintegration in post-war Britain, accompanied by the beginning of Britain's demise as an imperial power. Conditions favouring the escalation of anti-semitism had developed steadily during the three decades prior to the First Yorld Yar. The assassination of Tsar Alexander II on 1 March 1881, impelled a threatened and reactionary Tsarist regime to organise waves of pogroms (particularly in 1881-84 and 1903-06), followed by discriminatory legislation, which provoked an exodus of Jewish emigrants, fleeing from the territories of the Russian Empire. 1 Other Eastern European states, notably Rumania (1899), imitated these repressive measures, with similar results. 2 Britain was the immediate destination for many of these refugees, and although a large proportion of them moved on ~o other parts of the world, nevertheless Britain's Jewish population roughly quadrupled (from 60,000 to 250,000) in just over twenty years, until Eastern European immigration was emphatically ended by the 1905 Aliens Act. 3 2 The social and economic tensions produced by large-scale Jewish immigration had already shown themselves capable of arousing local hostility, and even· in South Wales during August 1911 • of instigating widespread riots. 4 Assessing the predicament facing the recent arrivals, a contemporary historian has observed: 'Initially the immigrant was defenceless, readily identifiable, always available as the easy target. He was soon jolted into awareness of his alienation, as press, politician, and local anti· Semite sporadically embarked on the anti-alien rampage.' 5 The approach of the First World War, therefore, saw British Jewry divided into two fundamentally different groups. One was a well­ established, politically conservative and increasingly accepted minority of westernised Jews whose numbers included senior politicians, privy councillors, bankers, and businessmen, including Felix Schuster, Edgar Speyer, Ernest Cassel, Herbert Samuel, Felix Semon, Samuel and Edwin Montagu, and Rufus Isaacs. In stark contrast, was the large majority of recent arrivals · orthodox, often socialists, and heavily-represented in the sweated industries (particularly the rag trade) in East London, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, and eight or nine other towns. This diversity would en~ble anti-semitic propagandists after 1914 to find a wide range of scapegoats on whom to blame a multitude of grievances. There was a lengthy and substantial background of anti-semitism in Britain, which was readily rekindled by the outbreak of war. This unsavoury tradition went back centuries and had, of course, re-appeared in British politics at regular intervals. 6 More recently, it had been a recurring theme in Edwardian literature, especially in the works of Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton, 7 and had increasingly preoccupied several important newspapers and journals, including the National Review, the New Witness, and the East London Observer. These publications had already attached great significance to the involvement of Isaacs, Samuel, the Montagus, and Schuster in both the Marconi and the Indian Silver scandals of 1912-13. 8 During the early months of the war, therefore, anti-semitic references in the press increased rapidly. The danger of appointing aliens, specifically naturalised Jews of German origin, to high office, -- 3 was re.peatedly publicised by the National Review, whilst the New Witness warned its readers about aliens in finance, industry and politics 'whose allegiance, if they possess any allegiance, belongs to hostile states•. 9 From this starting point, a number of major developments - such as Britain's enormous sacrifices during the Great War, her domestic and imperial problems during its immediate aftermath, and a succession of important international events - all helped to maintain the conditions in which anti-semitism survived and flourished. This phenomenon could take the extreme form of serious outbursts of physical violence, such as the riots in Leeds and the East End of London in 1917. It also became a persistent feature in a wide variety of journalism and authorship. This thesis examines each of these phases in the development of anti­ semitic literature, a process which reached its climax in 1920 with the publication of The Jewish Peril (an English translation of the infamous Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion), and a related work, The Cause of World Unrest (written and published by several senior staff from the Morning Post). Both of these pernicious books were debated and, temporarily, accepted as serious works