In spite of their limited numbers and unproven participation in terrorist plots, Britain's international anarchist groups came to play a significant role in the redefinition of the country's immigration and asylum policy. The early 1890s witnessed the emergence of a broad ‘restrictionist’ party advocating stricter policing and limitations on immigration and asylum, based on fears of economic and racial decline which would follow the uncontrolled immigration of radical foreigners. The terrorist scandals involving foreign anarchists, the threat posed by anarchism in general and, crucially, mass immigration from Eastern Europe, formed the core of the restrictionists’ arguments. The risk of becoming ‘the dumping ground’ of the rest of the world was stressed, at a time of faltering imperial power. International tensions over the presence of foreign spies in Britain, notably from France and Italy, fuelled the exasperation articulated by those who called for a revision of Britain's open-door policy, which had prevailed since 1826. This is how a handful of French anarchists became instrumental in redefining the country's century-old liberal policy.

The turning point came in 1905, with the passing of the Aliens Act, which restricted entry into the country for the first time in decades. The Act had very little impact initially, but was later reinforced, following yet another anarchist-related scandal – the 1911 Sidney Street siege, an attempted robbery resulting in the death of a policeman and the spectacular siege of an anarchist club. These events, distantly involving Latvian Left Social Revolutionaries, stigmatised all anarchist groups for good. After 1914, the figure of the German spy replaced that of the anarchist as the chief public enemy, but, in the meantime, the impact of the anarchist threat – both real and imagined – had been decisive.

The liberal legacy

In the early 1880s, as most Western countries closed their borders to anarchists, Britain developed a unique model of control, which can be defined as ‘circumscribed tolerance’. It soon remained the only country which still allowed anarchists into its territory or tolerated them even once foreign powers had deported them without authorisation. A draconian anti-socialist law was passed in Germany in 1878 after two assassination attempts against Kaiser Wilhelm I.