British Policy and the Refugees, 1933-1941

by Kapp,Yvonne

• ISBN13: 9780714643526
• ISBN10: 0714643521
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 1977-09-30
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

In the summer of 1940, when much of Europe had fallen under German domination, the British authorities instigated a harsh programme of internment or deportation of large numbers of people who had fled from Nazi oppression. This volume, written the same year - at a time when the role and the fate of the refugees was a burning issue - is a devastating critique of government policies of the day. As committed Communists the two women authors, like the refugees they were championing, had been badly affected by the hardening in British official policy; they were dismissed from the leading positions they held in the government-sponsored Czech Refugee Trust Fund in an 'apparently isolated instance of victimisation' which 'was subsequently seen to be merely a prelude to the wholesale arrest of the refugees themselves'. This work contrasts the official attitudes to foreigners and Jews with the generosity of the general public, and makes a distinct contribution, firstly, to the literature of internment and deportationand, secondly to the study of German-speaking refugees in Britain in the years leading up to mass alien internment.

Table of Contents

1996 Foreword	p. ix
1968 Foreword	p. xxvii
Introduction	p. xxxi
The Refugee Era
Exodus	p. 3
Who and what the refugees are
Why and how they fled
Regulations governing entry and sojourn
The Refugees and the British Public	p. 35
The right of asylum
Significance of the nationwide network of refugee relief committees
Public responsibility as a substitute for government action
The Refugees in Exile	p. 47
The principle of refugee representation
French and British pre-Munich attitudes to refugees compared
Types of refugees
The Doors Close	p. 67
The Refugee Problem in Wartime
The Early Months	p. 75
New regulations
The Army and employment
Tribunals
Worsening of conditions
The Right of Asylum Lost	p. 99
Significance of anti-refugee campaign
Internment
Deportations
Releases
What Use Are the Refugees?	p. 145
Index	p. 151
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