page_title: William Evans-Gordon
section_title: MP for Stepney
hierarchical_section_title: William Evans-Gordon / Political career in Britain / MP for Stepney
caption_attribution_description: English: Charles Trevelyan, statesman
context_page_description: Major Sir William Eden Evans Gordon was a British MP who previously served as a military diplomat in India.
  As a political officer on secondment from the British Indian Army from 1876 to 1897 during the British Raj, he was attached to the Foreign Department of the Indian Government. His career in India was a mixture of military administrative business on the volatile North-West Frontier, and diplomacy and foreign politics advising Maharajas or accompanying the Viceroy in the Princely States.
  After leaving the Army, Evans Gordon returned to Britain and in 1900 was elected as Conservative Party MP for Stepney on an anti-alien platform. As a result of the pogroms in Eastern Europe, Jews were arriving in increasing numbers in Britain either to stay, or en route for America. 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. He held Stepney from 1900 to 1907.
context_section_description: Evans-Gordon was elected as MP for Stepney on an anti-alien platform in the 1900 general election and held the seat until 1907. Along with the somewhat older Howard Vincent, he was among the first MPs to arouse public opposition to immigration. Although the growing sense of anti-alien feeling found expression in certain localised quarters of the franchised electorate, the primary issues in the 1900 poll were a desire to end the Second Boer War (hence the nickname), and the vexed question of Home rule for Ireland.
  After his election Evans-Gordon became the brains and driving force behind the British Brothers League (BBL) – an anti-alien pressure group formed in Stepney in May 1901 – although he took care to front the League with one William Stanley Shaw, an unimportant City clerk who was its first president. 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.
  Evans-Gordon became known as one of the most vocal critics of aliens at the time, commenting that 'a storm is brewing which, if it is allowed to burst, will have deplorable results'. Once elected he continued his theme of anti-immigrant rhetoric, claiming in 1902 that 'not a day passes but English families are ruthlessly turned out to make room for foreign invaders. The rates are burdened with the education of thousands of foreign children.'
  Evans-Gordon and the BBL were instrumental in setting up a Royal Commission on immigration of which he was a member.
  
  Over a two-month period Evans-Gordon travelled extensively in Eastern Europe, finding out at first hand about the highly restrictive conditions imposed on Jews in the Pale of Settlement and in Rumania His book (with map) about his fact-finding mission, The Alien Immigrant (Evans-Gordon 1903) is an even-handed account of his research. In the first chapter, it highlights the apparent concern of the British Board of Deputies for (and sometimes antipathy towards) the refugees from foreign shores.  Although it contains some gratuitous low-level antisemitism, the book in general disinterestedly records the situation of the Jews, at one point favourably comparing conditions of the poor of Libau to the "horrors of the East End." On the other hand, the conditions of hand-loom workers in Łódź moved him to this description: 
  The industry is carried on under appalling conditions. I shall never forget the places in which I saw this work being done. It would need the pen of a Zola to describe them. Three or four looms were crammed into one room with as many families. I have never, even in Vilna or the East of London, seen human beings condemned to live in such surroundings. They had the appearance of half-starved consumptives.
  The last chapter contains examples of other unwelcome aliens, such as organised gangs of German robbers. The book was dedicated "To my friend Edward Steinkopff", who bought the deep blue St. James's Gazette in 1886. The St. James Gazette under its new owner may have been connected with the start of a new Anti-Alienism movement in the press in 1886.
  
  The book was used in the evidence that he presented to the Aliens Commission in its inquiries. This eventually resulted in the Aliens Act 1905 which placed restrictions on Eastern European immigration, although discussion of the Bill in Parliament provoked considerable opposition. Winston Churchill was MP for Manchester North West, where one third of his constituents were Jewish. Like his father Lord Randolph Churchill, Churchill bucked the trend of widespread antisemitism in the British upper classes, and actively opposed the Aliens Bill. In an open letter to Nathan Laski (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
caption: Sir Charles Trevelyan, Liberal MP for Elland
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