The Haslingden Gazette. — 1911-01-28 (Haslingden, Lancashire, England)

THE ALIENS QUESTION.  At the weekly meeting of the Accrington Junior Conservative Association, on Monday evening, Mr. S. Mitten gave an address on "The Aliens Question." Mr. G. E. Sprake presided. Mr. Mitton said we had lately had forced under our notice this grave soot al question of alien emigration. In Glasgow some time ago armed aliens went into a bank dud demanded money with men-aces Following upon that was the Tottenham outrage, a clerk in charge of a large bum of money being waylaid by armed aliens and attacked. As the outcome one policeman leis his life and a boy was also killed. Then there was the recent Houndsditch affair, resulting in the military having to be called out. England had lung been an asylum for political and religious refugee., fleeing from the laws prevailing in their own country. The question now arose, could we continue to allow thS to go on? he had a large alien population in our chief cities. There were 161,000 .aliens in London, and 30,000 in Manchotter, whilst in Liverpool they had a "Cionese quarter of the city. Altogether tilers, must no -about half it million aliens in this country. No doubt some • of these were industrious working people, but a great many were simply the scum of other coon- ' tries. It was with these we must deal. If they brought something into the country we should not . be inclined to deal with them so eeverely, but they brought. no wealth and could teach us nothing • at all. Interpreters had to be employed for them in the Courts. They had zio concept iii, of British ideals, and their method of living often approximated so that of a pig. They flocked into certain answ and drove the Englishipopulasion away, with the result that in London and Manchester churches which formerly served the needs of the English population had to be closed, she localities being now wholly peopled by foreigners. In London there were anarchist clubs, a thing which were allowed in no country only England. In 1908 the number of aliens who got poor relief in London is aS 85.000, and in the same year there were 3,000 -aliens ini British prisons. Many aliens went about armed, and if provoked did not hesitate to use their deadly weapons At the present time we had many thousands of our hest workmed leaving our shores, and .t the same time wo had these aliens coining in and 'taking the place of British workmen, which must have a detrimental effect on the country at large. The problem of our own , poor was serious enough without these aliens coming in to augment it. Every other country but ours tried to restrict the entrance of aliens. In Australia no Chinaman could enter without paying £lOO, a figure that was pradtically sufficient to exclude all Chinamen. In this country not only did the aliens come in, but in time they became naturalised and exercised the franchise on terms of equality with English people. In 1905 an Act was passed appointing an Immigration Board, with officers to inspect immigrants at certain ports. These officers could refuse admission .tai destitute, criminal, lunatic, or undesirable aliens according to certain provisions in the Act, but the Adt seriously modest remedying in a drastic manner. If they came in a boat carrying lest than 20 they were not inspersted. That needed altering, and the Act was altogether too lax. If she Act allowed such m-en as the Houndsditch murderers to come in, arch men as "Fritz" and Peter the Painter." it obviously was practically a dead letter. There should be closer co-operation between our police and those of foreign countries in regard to those aliens. Every alien who came here should require to be registered, giving his name, where hot came from, his occupation, his antecedents, etc. All known runarchiete should be excluded. We should do with Miens as Tariff Reformers proposed to do with foreign goods, freely admit times that we needed and which would be of use to them, but put a heavy tax on those that did us harm by conning in. It might be that there would be POMP reference to the Aliens question in the King's Speech, and it was to be hoped the Government would deal with the question in an effective manner. (floor, hoard A very interesting disousion followed Mr. Mitton's address, and a vote of thanks was passed to , him on the motion of Mr. F. Harris secondiel by Mr. Thomas.