MP for Stepney
Evans-Gordon was elected as MP for Stepney on an anti-alien platform in the 1900 general election and held the seat until 1907. Along with the somewhat older Howard Vincent, he was among the first MPs to arouse public opposition to immigration. Although the growing sense of anti-alien feeling found expression in certain localised quarters of the franchised electorate, the primary issues in the 1900 poll were a desire to end the Second Boer War (hence the nickname (khaki election) and the vexed question of home rule for Ireland.
After his election, Evans-Gordon became the brains and driving force behind the British Brothers' League (BBL), an anti-alien pressure group formed in Stepney in May 1901, but he took care to front the League with one William Stanley Shaw, an unimportant City clerk who was its first president. Howard Vincent (MP for Sheffield Central since 1885) and several East End Conservative MPs (Murray Guthrie, Spencer Charrington and Thomas Dewar) became members of the League.
Evans-Gordon became known as one of the most vocal critics of aliens at the time and commented that "a storm is brewing which, if it is allowed to burst, will have deplorable results". Once elected he continued his theme of anti-immigrant rhetoric. He claimed in 1902 that "not a day passes but English families are ruthlessly turned out to make room for foreign invaders. The rates are burdened with the education of thousands of foreign children".
Evans-Gordon and the BBL were instrumental in setting up a Royal Commission on immigration of which he was a member.
Over a two-month period, Evans-Gordon travelled extensively in Eastern Europe, found out at first hand about the highly-restrictive conditions imposed on Jews in the Pale of Settlement and in Rumania His book (with map) about his fact-finding mission, The Alien Immigrant, (Evans-Gordon 1903) is an even-handed account of his research. In the first chapter, it highlights the apparent concern of the British Board of Deputies for and sometimes its antipathy toward the refugees from foreign shores. Although it contains some gratuitous low-level antisemitism, the book in general disinterestedly records the situation of the Jews and at one point favourably compares conditions of the poor of Libau to the "horrors of the East End." On the other hand, the conditions of hand-loom workers in Łódź moved him to this description: The industry is carried on under appalling conditions. I shall never forget the places in which I saw this work being done. It would need the pen of a Zola to describe them. Three or four looms were crammed into one room with as many families. I have never, even in Vilna or the East of London, seen human beings condemned to live in such surroundings. They had the appearance of half-starved consumptives.
The last chapter contains examples of other unwelcome aliens such as organised gangs of German robbers. The book was dedicated "To my friend Edward Steinkopff", who bought the deep blue St. James's Gazette in 1886. The St. James Gazette under its new owner may have been connected with the start of a new anti-alienism movement in the press in 1886.
The book was used in the evidence that he presented to the Aliens Commission in its inquiries and eventually resulted in the Aliens Act 1905, which placed restrictions on Eastern European immigration, but discussion of the Bill in Parliament provoked considerable opposition. Winston Churchill was MP for Manchester North West, where one third of his constituents were Jewish. Like his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, Churchill bucked the trend of widespread antisemitism in the British upper classes and actively opposed the Aliens Bill. In an open letter to Nathan Laski (a prominent member of the Jewish community in his constituency and father of Harold Laski), Churchill quoted a speech by Lord Rothschild, a Liberal supporter and member of the Aliens Commission:"The Bill introduced into the House of Commons proposes to establish in this country a loathsome system of police interference and espionage, of passports and arbitrary power exercised by police officers who in all probability will not understand the language of those upon whom they are called to sit in judgement. This is all contrary to the recommendations proposed by the Royal Commission. [...] The whole bill looks like an attempt on the part of the Government to gratify a small but noisy section of their own supporters and to purchase a little popularity in the constituencies by dealing harshly with a number of unfortunate aliens who have no votes."
A committed Zionist, Churchill crossed the floor of the House of Commons on the day the letter appeared.
Despite the repeated denials of Arnold White and Evans-Gordon, anti-Semitism was a central element of the campaign for the Aliens Bill 1900–1905. The indigent refugees from Russia, Rumania and Poland had further defenders in Parliament, such as Sir Charles Trevelyan, 3rd Baronet, Liberal MP for Elland who, speaking against the Aliens Bill in 1904, said: "Among many people already—not many in this House, but many people outside of it – there is a frankly anti-Semitic movement, and I deplore it. I believe this is an evil step in the same direction as the Governments of Russia and Rumania have been going. It may be that it is not intended, but the action of many Members of this House has been calculated to excite the feeling which we know to exist in part of our population, and with the case of the persecution of Dreyfus reverberating through the West of Europe there is no use saying that there is no danger of this kind in our own country. I think it is a fortunate thing that we have been peculiarly free from any anti-Semitic movement in England, and we have not lost by it. We have had statesmen, manufacturers, merchants, and the like who themselves, or their predecessors, came to this country as aliens exactly as do those people you now wish to exclude. It seems to me a useless and short-sighted, and at this moment very largely an inhuman policy, to keep out those who may, after all, be like those of whom I have just spoken".
In his 1905 election address, Evans-Gordon laid stress on the recently passed Aliens Act, which he had been greatly instrumental in carrying. He proceeds to explain his position with regard to the Jews. "It has been falsely asserted that the Aliens Act is aimed against the Jewish people, and that I have been actuated by anti-Semitism. I will not stoop to repudiate such charges. No man views with greater horror and indignation than I the recent barbarous and indescribable massacres of Jews in Russia. But in expressing my deep sympathy with the victims of this most terrible persecution I am bound to repeat my conviction that the solution of the Jewish problem in Eastern Europe will not and cannot be found in the transference of thousands of poverty-stricken and helpless aliens to the most crowded quarters and overstocked markets of our greatest cities. It will be found in the statesmanlike scheme of the Jewish Territorialist Organization for the inauguration of which we are indebted to the genius and patriotism of Mr. Israel Zangwill."
Vincent and Evans-Gordon successfully "stampeded their party into introducing laws to keep the foreigner out". Although a section of the Conservative Party had managed to persuade the Commons to pass anti-Jewish legislation, the Liberals only six months later had a landslide election victory in 1906. Although the Aliens Act was not repealed by the incoming Liberal government, the law was not strictly enforced. Evans-Gordon held on to his seat during the general Conservative defeat and continued to campaign for further anti-immigration legislation. In his successful bid for re-election in 1906, he spoke against the Sinti (German Gypsies) who were trying to settle in England, and, borrowing the slogan of the BBL, he campaigned with the slogan "England for the English and Major Gordon for Stepney".
However, Evans-Gordon's anti-Semitism has been questioned, as he was a supporter of Zionism and kept up regular correspondence with Chaim Weizmann, who would later write of him:I think our people were rather hard on him. The Aliens Bill in England and the movement which grew around it were natural phenomenon which might have been foreseen.... Sir William Evans-Gordon had no particular anti-Jewish prejudices... he was sincerely ready to encourage any settlement of Jews almost anywhere in the British Empire but he failed to see why the ghettoes of London or Leeds should be made into a branch of the ghettoes of Warsaw and Pinsk.... Sir William Evans-Gordon gave me some insight into the psychology of the settled citizen.
Evans-Gordon received a knighthood in 1905.
