TRADITION OF ASYLUM RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL REFUGEES IN BRITAIN

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27040, 15 May 1953, Page 8

TRADITION OF ASYLUM RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL REFUGEES IN BRITAIN

[By Sir SRNXST BARKtR, tha Cambridge political philosopharj [From the United Kingdom Information Service}

Asylum, in the original Greek, means “inviolability from seizure.” It is an ancient Idea and practice, and it goes back for more than 25 centuries. The Greeks thought of an asylum as a sanctuary—or the whole city to which it was placed—where afugitive found an inviolable refuge. The Jtomans had a tradition that the founder of their city, Romulus, made it from the first an time, the idea of the right of asylum is also widespread in space. We in Britain think of our island as an asylum of refuge: but the Dutch, too, have a fine tradition of and the right of asylum, which goes back to the 17th century;, and the French, at any rate since their Revolution of 1789. nave given a ready welcome to political and other refugees. No country has a monopoly of this generous and hospitable tradition; and more than one can Justly celebrate the service which it has rendered to the general cause of humanity .of giving a home and a welcome to the fugitive from oppression Two causes, however, have combined to make Britain a special land of asylum. One of them Is geography. An island, and yet close to the Continent, Britain is the natural home of the European refugee, and the surrounding seas enable her to give him sure inviolability. The other cause which has made her a special land of asylum is her law and her legal system. She guarantees within her borders the liberty of the subject: she guarantees it by fixed and certain remedies, such as the writ of habeas corpus; and she extends that liberty, and the benefit of those remedies, to aliens as well as her own citizens. There is a comfort in the protection of Britain’s system of law. When that is added to the comfort of the protection of the sea, the refugee has a double comfort.

The Huguenots It was in the 16th century, the century of the Reformation, that Britain first in the course of modern history received refugees, and became an asylum, on any large scale. The French Huguenots, who were Calyinistic Protestants engaged in struggling against the Catholic rulers of France, began to cross over to England early in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Their entry became greater and quicker in the 17th century, after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (hitherto the charter Of their privileges) by Louis XIV in 1685. The Huguenot immigrants developed some of Britain’s industries (they established. for instance, the manufacture of silk in East London); but they did even more. They added a new strain nf ability to the population; and the names of Huguenots cluster thick, in proportion to their numbers, among those who have won distinction in the arts and liberal. professions. One of the most tragic losses of France was the loss of her Huguenot citizens. But the loss of France was the gain of Britain, as it was also the gain of the Netherlandi, the gain of the Protestant states of Germany, the gain of North America, and the gain of the Dutch settlements in South Africa. Wherever it has gone, this Huguenot strain of ability (which is also a strain of industry and character) has been an influence for good. That, indeed, is the benefit of granting and maintaining a right of asylum. It was religious causes that brought to Britain’s shores the first flow of French refugees. It was political causes that brought the next. The French Revolution led to a large emigration, mainly of members of the French sristocracy; and many of them, like the Huguenots before them, casting away all pride, set to work in teaching or watch-repairing or any honourable occupation which would serve to earn them a living. The later political perturbations of France, down to the fall of the Second Empire in 1870; brought new refugees in their train. Charles X, found refuge in England in 1830; Louis Philippe in 1848; and Napoleon HI, and his wife, the Empress Eugenie, and his son, the Prince Imperial, after 1870. Help Fer Garibaldi But the 19th century was ftill of stirrings and perturbations no only in France, but.also on the Continent at large. It ajhs a period of nationalist aspirations and risings (not least in

Italy, but also elsewhere). It wu jU a period of social stirrings and socteSn doctrines; and both nationalism socialism were in turn the causes exile. The Italian Mazzini was i nationalism refugee in London, wtan he met and talked with Carlyle; one m the earliest Professors of King’s Cel. lege, London, from 1831 onwards, the refugee Gabriele Rossetti, father or Dante Gabriel Po-nMr (painter and poet) and his sister,’£2 poetess, Christina Rossetti. Garibaldi, too, knew England, bm indeed as a refugee (it was in ft. United States of America that £ found refuge in 1850 and onwards) ■ as a friend and honoured guest. Unital Kingdom sympathy helped him In S Sicilian expedition of 1860; LimgZ welcomed nirn enthusiastically aM gave him the freedom of the city u 1864; the generosity of English friana. enabled him to become owner of ft. island of Cuprera with which so much of his life was associated. x Nor must one forget another nationalist refugee, the Hungarian Louis Kossuth, who, after the failuro m the Hungarian rising of 1848. settledfc. some time in England and was givu a very warm welcome. Nor was it only from Europe ttai nationalists and other political rehijeH went to Britain for an asylum. sAft American liberators and leaders, som of them at an even earlier date, found a home and refuge in Britain Francisco Miranda, one of the ftrj leaders in the movement for indspn, dence in Spanish America, viaSt Britain as early as 1784; he w« ft touch with Pitt and Wellesley, ft later years receiving a small pension from the United Kingdom Govemaawst, And it was from Britain that he sailed for Caracas in 1810 to join in tbt movement, unhappily at the momsnt abortive, for Venezuelan independrijte, Jose de San Martin, soldier and statesman, “the liberator or the south," went eventually to Britain in 1823 after serving the cause of independenca it Argentina and Chile, and liberetlne Peru in 1820 with the aid of Lara Cochrane. Juan Manuel de Reaai, at a later date, was a dictator ratbw ttaa a liberator in his native country of Argentina (1835-1852); but at any rate he found a refuge in Britain after hie ail and lived quietly near Southampton for a quarter of a century until 1£ death In 1877. The Case of Kari Marx But today it is the socialist mfugecs of the 19th and 20th century whom we remember most readily. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels went to Britain in 1848. and Marx lint thore for most of the rest of his Ml down to his death in 1833. He gate Britain the gift of “Das Kapital" Britain, in turn, gave him the blue books and other material from which, working steadily in the Britt* Museum, he built his thnwy et socialism- She also gave him his grm in Highgate Cemetery. Perhaps Man is the greatest example of Britalnli tradition of asylum. But even in Ns own particular sphere he is not ft» only example. Lenin as well as Man knew London; it was there, and aln in Munich, that he edited a MrihM paper over 30 years ago; and it wsj in London, just 50 years ago, that M set on foot a Russian Soetal-Bwho. cratic Labour Party which became to time the Bolsheviks, Stalin, too, ttadtf his impulse, also visited London. The 20th century, with its two grad wars and all its tumults, has MM Britain an asylum for many refuge* Some have gone from not least the Jews proscribed by the racial policy of the Nazis—taking m them a rich store of ability both to business and in scholarship. MbW have gone from Poland, a gufflad company, and have found a homajttd occupation in Britain. It is curious, and comforting, to N* fleet, how steadily, through the afe Britain has received refugees andw migrants. Archaeologists tell ui Mt they were already coming in tIM Neolithic Age, nearly 4000 yeam>||iK before men knew the use of brom I and long before they knew the use « I iron. They have helped to make | mixed stock what it is—all the bettor I for being mixed, and all tin* ttchi i in new initiatives and new forms M I skill because it has always W hospitable to newcomers in distress.