‘You Have Lost All That Is German of You in the Dock’: Immigrant Communities and the Wartime State in London, 1914–18

Sascha Auerbach

doi:10.1093/tcbh/hwz046

Abstract

Abstract This article presents the wartime state in the local context and looks at how the daily activity of local courts and police changed dramatically during the wartime period. It also assesses the complex role that police and local courtrooms played with regards to ethnicity and nationalism. The increasing authority of local courtrooms and the enhanced powers of policing, I argue, amplified the role of the state in certain aspects of London life, but reduced it in others. New demands on local courtrooms and policing could only be accommodated by the redirection of their efforts from pre-war priorities. The traditional roles of the police in addressing ‘moral’ crimes such as public drunkenness and gambling declined dramatically as policy redirected police resources towards the enforcement of wartime regulations, the support of military conscription and discipline, and the policing of immigrant communities and ethnic minorities, and of ‘enemy aliens’ in particular. Although the balance of power in the latter case was highly asymmetrical, those brought before the courtroom on accusations of being ‘outsiders’ or ‘enemies’ in the national community were not entirely without recourse. The public nature of courtrooms meant that, in some circumstances, they could become sites for the affirmation of rights and national belonging in wartime Britain, rather vehicles for their abrogation.

Highlights

The study of the state’s interventionist role on the home front, and the increased regulation of minority groups in particular, have become an important component to our historical understanding of how modern British society changed during the First World War.[1]
The focus of investigation has been on conscription, the internment of German civilians, censorship and propaganda, economic policy, the passage of wartime emergency measures and how the latter demonstrated the shifting norms of class and gender in British society.[2]
Little, has been said about the daily enforcement and adjudication of law, and what this can tell us about the historical significance of policing and local courtrooms in shaping public discourses of immigration, minority status and national identity during wartime

Summary

Introduction

The study of the state’s interventionist role on the home front, and the increased regulation of minority groups in particular, have become an important component to our historical understanding of how modern British society changed during the First World War.[1].

Results

Conclusion