 | What were the rules? There were no rules for the policy, but if you were a non-British person, you wouldn’t be able to get into the country even if you could speak a lot of European languages because the officers would give the test in several different European languages until you failed the test. One example is Egon Erwin Kisch, a Jewish activist, spoke so many different European languages and all very fluent; the officers tested him in the Scottish Gaelic language and he failed. There was controversy because he protested that it wasn’t a proper language, he was so desperate that he jumped off a ship 5 metres from the dock and as he landed on the dock, he broke his leg and was taken to custody and sentenced to prison in Britain. |
