The term “refugee” entered the English language in 1685 after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV. The persecution of the French Protestants caused a mass exodus of Huguenots, particularly to Britain and the Netherlands. On 3rd November 1685, John Evelyn wrote in his diary:
“...Innumerable persons of the greatest birth and riches leaving all their earthly substance, and hardly escaping with their lives, dispersed through all the countries of Europe. The French tyrant abrogated the Edict of Nantes which had been made in favour of them, and without any cause; on a sudden demolishing all their churches; banishing, imprisoning, and sending to the galleys all the ministers; plundering the common people... There had now been numbered to pass through Geneva only (and that by stealth, for all the usual passages were strictly guarded by sea and land) 40,000 toward Switzerland. In Holland, Denmark, and all about Germany, were dispersed some hundred thousands; besides those in England, where, though multitudes of all degree sought for shelter and welcome as distressed Christians and confessors, they found least encouragement, by a fatality of the times we were fallen into, and the uncharitable indifference of such as should have embraced them; and I pray it be not laid to our charge.”
Assistance was given to the Huguenots from public subscriptions. Shortly before his death in 1685, Charles II made a declaration “for the further relief and encouragement of the necessitous Protestants,” which organised a brief for collecting the charity of all well-disposed persons. On 25th April 1686, Evelyn wrote:
“This day was read in our church the Brief for a collection for relief of the Protestant French so cruelly barbarously, and inhumanly oppressed without any thing being laid to their charge. It had been long expected, and at last with difficulty procured to be published, the interest of the French Ambassador obstructing it.”
In 1701 Daniel Defoe published his poem, “The True-Born Englishman,” in praise of the melting-pot of English nationality from the Romans onwards:
“We blame the King that he relies too much, On strangers, Germans, Huguenots, and Dutch. A True-Born Englishman’s a contradiction, In speech an irony, in fact a fiction, A metaphor invented to express, A Man akin to all the Universe.”
Robert Roberts grew up in Edwardian Salford and recalled his childhood in The Classic Slum:
“The Jews, 20,000 strong, dwelt in an area adjacent to ours, on the north side, some in a poverty so appalling that it shocked even us. Our own poor grew hostile. They sensed the menace of a horde of hungry foreigners seeking to share in charities which, they felt, as true-born Britons, belonged to them alone. Odd Jews who strayed into the village were driven out at once. Very early in the century one did venture to set up a small secondhand clothing store. Ignored by the police, thugs arrived, carried his stock into the road and set fire to it. From then on we were saved from further contamination. In 1905 a new Aliens Immigration Act barred the entry of the destitute altogether. No more ‘Sheenies’ came our way, save one. Our elders tolerated a tall, bearded glazier who padded along the pavements clutching glass in a wooden frame and calling diffidently ‘Vinders!’ The young trailed behind, jeering and mocking him with that same awful question howled down the centuries by anti-semites. Once, when he carried it on his back, the boys threw stones and broke his glass. Grown-ups lolled, amused, in the doorways...
“‘You don’t shout after the glazier, do you?’ my mother asked us sternly. ‘Never!’ we lied. Once a winter, on sight of him, she would break a small scullery window with the end of a scrubbing brush (it was ninepence to repair) because she hated to ‘offer charity.’ ‘Go and tell the gentleman,’ she would say, ‘there’s a job for him.’”
Michael Collins remembers his south London school in the 1970s in The Likes of Us: A Biography of the White Working Class:
“In 1974, the first of two general elections ignited the imagination of a teacher at my secondary school. Pupils were selected to represent political parties and deliver a mainfesto to the class... From the mouths of babes came the clichés and platitudes they had picked up from their parents.
“The critical moment in the brief campaign arrived when the final speaker was given a platform representing the National Front. The selection for the candidate stirred up some laughter when the tallest black girl in the class, with the highest afro in the year, possibly the school, jokingly raised her hand. Her best friend was the tiniest, skinniest white girl in the class. The job of representing the National Front fell to her. Like her fellow candidates, Tiny addressed the class with slogans that had been relayed ad infinitum back at home. Essential to her address, inbetween giggles, was the slogan “Enoch was right.” She declared: “Well, we are gonna send back the blacks, right. ‘Cos, like they come over here, and they take our council flats—.” At which point she cut off, looked across to her best mate, and said with a giggle, “Not you, Sye.”
“...Innumerable persons of the greatest birth and riches leaving all their earthly substance, and hardly escaping with their lives, dispersed through all the countries of Europe. The French tyrant abrogated the Edict of Nantes which had been made in favour of them, and without any cause; on a sudden demolishing all their churches; banishing, imprisoning, and sending to the galleys all the ministers; plundering the common people... There had now been numbered to pass through Geneva only (and that by stealth, for all the usual passages were strictly guarded by sea and land) 40,000 toward Switzerland. In Holland, Denmark, and all about Germany, were dispersed some hundred thousands; besides those in England, where, though multitudes of all degree sought for shelter and welcome as distressed Christians and confessors, they found least encouragement, by a fatality of the times we were fallen into, and the uncharitable indifference of such as should have embraced them; and I pray it be not laid to our charge.”
Assistance was given to the Huguenots from public subscriptions. Shortly before his death in 1685, Charles II made a declaration “for the further relief and encouragement of the necessitous Protestants,” which organised a brief for collecting the charity of all well-disposed persons. On 25th April 1686, Evelyn wrote:
“This day was read in our church the Brief for a collection for relief of the Protestant French so cruelly barbarously, and inhumanly oppressed without any thing being laid to their charge. It had been long expected, and at last with difficulty procured to be published, the interest of the French Ambassador obstructing it.”
In 1701 Daniel Defoe published his poem, “The True-Born Englishman,” in praise of the melting-pot of English nationality from the Romans onwards:
“We blame the King that he relies too much, On strangers, Germans, Huguenots, and Dutch. A True-Born Englishman’s a contradiction, In speech an irony, in fact a fiction, A metaphor invented to express, A Man akin to all the Universe.”
Robert Roberts grew up in Edwardian Salford and recalled his childhood in The Classic Slum:
“The Jews, 20,000 strong, dwelt in an area adjacent to ours, on the north side, some in a poverty so appalling that it shocked even us. Our own poor grew hostile. They sensed the menace of a horde of hungry foreigners seeking to share in charities which, they felt, as true-born Britons, belonged to them alone. Odd Jews who strayed into the village were driven out at once. Very early in the century one did venture to set up a small secondhand clothing store. Ignored by the police, thugs arrived, carried his stock into the road and set fire to it. From then on we were saved from further contamination. In 1905 a new Aliens Immigration Act barred the entry of the destitute altogether. No more ‘Sheenies’ came our way, save one. Our elders tolerated a tall, bearded glazier who padded along the pavements clutching glass in a wooden frame and calling diffidently ‘Vinders!’ The young trailed behind, jeering and mocking him with that same awful question howled down the centuries by anti-semites. Once, when he carried it on his back, the boys threw stones and broke his glass. Grown-ups lolled, amused, in the doorways...
“‘You don’t shout after the glazier, do you?’ my mother asked us sternly. ‘Never!’ we lied. Once a winter, on sight of him, she would break a small scullery window with the end of a scrubbing brush (it was ninepence to repair) because she hated to ‘offer charity.’ ‘Go and tell the gentleman,’ she would say, ‘there’s a job for him.’”
Michael Collins remembers his south London school in the 1970s in The Likes of Us: A Biography of the White Working Class:
“In 1974, the first of two general elections ignited the imagination of a teacher at my secondary school. Pupils were selected to represent political parties and deliver a mainfesto to the class... From the mouths of babes came the clichés and platitudes they had picked up from their parents.
“The critical moment in the brief campaign arrived when the final speaker was given a platform representing the National Front. The selection for the candidate stirred up some laughter when the tallest black girl in the class, with the highest afro in the year, possibly the school, jokingly raised her hand. Her best friend was the tiniest, skinniest white girl in the class. The job of representing the National Front fell to her. Like her fellow candidates, Tiny addressed the class with slogans that had been relayed ad infinitum back at home. Essential to her address, inbetween giggles, was the slogan “Enoch was right.” She declared: “Well, we are gonna send back the blacks, right. ‘Cos, like they come over here, and they take our council flats—.” At which point she cut off, looked across to her best mate, and said with a giggle, “Not you, Sye.”
