1920 Aliens Order

Date: 
01 Jan 1920
Precise date unknown: 
Y
About: 

The Aliens Order 1920 was an amendment to the Aliens Restriction Act of the previous year. Brought out in the context of widespread unemployment after the First World War, it required all aliens seeking employment or residence to register with the police. Failure to do so would result in deportation. Further, under the Order, the Home Secretary retained the power to deport any alien whose presence was considered detrimental to the public good. Constitutionally, South Asians were not ‘aliens’ but rather citizens of the British empire. In spite of this, however, many lascars were caught up in this legislation. They were not generally issued with passports so could not prove their status as British citizens and their exemption from the Order. Hence, many were subject to harassment and denied employment.

Secondary works: 

Sherwood, Marika, ‘Race, Nationality and Employment among Lascar Seamen, 1660–1945’, New Community 17.2 (January 1991), pp 234-5.

Tabili, Laura, ‘We Ask for British Justice’: Workers and Racial Difference in Late Imperial Britain (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994)

Visram, Rozina, Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History (London: Pluto, 2002)

Archive source: 

HO 45, National Archives, Kew

HO 213, National Archives, Kew

L/E/7/1390, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

L/E/9/953, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

L/PJ/12/234, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras