The urgent need for self-reflection: the UK’s treatment of refugees and migrants

In 1517, on what became known as Evil May Day, an anti-immigration riot flared up in London. Resentment towards immigrants had been building for some time. Then, a fortnight prior to the riot, a broker named John Lincoln persuaded a preacher named Dr Bell (or Beal) to deliver a sermon in which he blamed immigrants for the abject poverty suffered by the local Englishmen, accusing the former of taking the latter’s jobs and depriving them of their livelihoods.