The House of Commons by a vote of 176 to 37 rejected the resolution of the labor group to omit the Alien Restriction Act of 1919 from the bill providing for the renewal of the expiring laws.
Sir Joynson Hicks, Home Secretary, in speaking against the resolution of the Labor group declared that while Great Britain has one million unemployed persons, he will not, under any circumstances, allow aliens to come and seek work in the country. “Eighty-nine thousand out of a total of two hundred and seventy-two thousand aliens in the country are Russians. Ninety percent of them settled in England twenty or thirty years ago. We will not be so cruel as to deport them, unless they are convicted of crime. The entire question, however, must be considered solely from the interests of the British population”, the Home Secretary declared.
John Scurr, Labor Member of Mile End, declared that a special anti-alien agitation in England is being engineered. “It is untrue”, he declared, “to say that the aliens have taken the bread from the mouths of Britishers.”
Davies, under-secretary in the Home Office in MacDonald’s cabinet, argued for the acceptance of the Labor group’s resolution, declaring that unless “England is fair to aliens in England, we cannot expect fair play with regard to Britishers in other countries.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
