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

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.