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Features

Freedom of movement isn’t an EU invention. Victorian London thrived on it

25 August 2018

9:00 AM

25 August 2018

9:00 AM

Here’s a bracing lesson from Victorian history that might possibly help to slice some impossible Brexit knots. In the 19th century, there was complete freedom of movement of people from Europe to Britain. And that was all anyone needed. Europhiles might find it difficult to conceive of a time when the folk of continental Europe ached to get to Britain because it was only here that they could find stability, peace, and freedom from oppression.

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