Despite the repeated denials of Arnold White and Evans-Gordon, anti-semitism was a central element of the campaign for the Aliens Bill 1900–1905. The indigent refugees from Russia, Rumania and Poland had further defenders in Parliament, such as Sir Charles Trevelyan, 3rd Baronet, Liberal MP for Elland who – speaking against the Aliens Bill in 1904 – said: "Among many people already – not many in this House, but many people outside of it – there is a frankly anti-Semitic movement, and I deplore it. I believe this is an evil step in the same direction as the Governments of Russia and Rumania have been going. It may be that it is not intended, but the action of many Members of this House has been calculated to excite the feeling which we know to exist in part of our population, and with the case of the persecution of Dreyfus reverberating through the West of Europe there is no use saying that there is no danger of this kind in our own country. I think it is a fortunate thing that we have been peculiarly free from any anti-Semitic movement in England, and we have not lost by it. We have had statesmen, manufacturers, merchants, and the like who themselves, or their predecessors, came to this country as aliens exactly as do those people you now wish to exclude. It seems to me a useless and short-sighted, and at this moment very largely an inhuman policy, to keep out those who may, after all, be like those of whom I have just spoken."