By Mike Howard
Hastings & Rye CLP, Unite Community, Unison (retired life member) and Jewish Voice for Labour and PSC (all in personal capacity)
The Board of Deputies of British Jews has been prominent in the debate about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, in putting forward its infamous 10 pledges, in Jeremy Corbyn’s suspension and in calling for an ‘independent’ disciplinary process in the party. But we have to ask to what extent is there a single homogenous “Jewish Community” in Britain and what exactly is the Board of Deputies?
Since Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader of the Labour Party in 2015 there has been a sustained attack on him, and on the left in general. These come from the right wing of the party, ably supported by the mass media and certain Jewish organisations including the Board of Deputies of British Jews (BoD).
The history of the UK Jewish population
To answer the questions about the British “Jewish community” and the BoD, it is important to know the context and the history of the Jewish population in the UK and how they have been treated over the years.
It is thought that Jews first came to Britain with the Romans 2000 years ago, and there is written confirmation of Jews coming to England following the Norman Conquest in 1066, mainly due to William the Conqueror seeking to use their international commercial and financial resources and networks. However, Jewish people were barred from trades, and were obliged to ‘specialise’ in finance and moneylending (which was considered sinful by Christians) and by selling goods, variously as traders and peddlers, in which roles they were constantly abused.
There were frequent pogroms against Jewish people over the centuries, often with large-scale massacres and burnings by mobs, with many Jews being burnt alive and sometimes driven to suicide.
Pogroms in the Middle Ages
In 1189, for example, in London, the homes of Jews were set on fire; in 1190, the Jewish population of York was massacred in the run up to the Third Crusade. Subsequently, there were further brutal pogroms in Stamford, Bury St Edmunds and Lincoln and the first recorded ‘blood libel’ in Norwich, in which Jews were falsely accused of murdering Christian or other non-Jewish children, in order to use their blood for religious rituals.
These racist, evidence-free accusations have been periodically and violently used against Jews through the centuries, right up to March this year we might add, when an Italian painter, Giovanni Gasparro, produced a work called The Martyrdom of Simon of Trent in accordance with Jewish ritual murder, a painting that has, not surprisingly, been condemned.
Jews expelled from England and Wales
There is a view that while the king and the ruling barons were happy to use Jews to get access to finance and trade to fund their costly living, as well as adventures and wars, including the Crusades, they were also just as happy to exploit the nascent hostility of the largely Christian population towards the Jewish financiers in order to ‘lose’ the debts they owed.
When, in 1290 Jews were expelled from England and Wales, most of them left for countries such as Germany and Poland, although some remained in hiding or lived in Scotland which was then an independent kingdom.
In 1656, after being petitioned, Oliver Cromwell relaxed the ban on Jewish settlement in England and Wales and although the majority of the Parliament were still hostile, Jews came back, first visiting for trade, then staying for longer periods, and finally bringing their families. The oldest organised Jewish community in Britain is reputed to be the Sephardic (Mediterranean) Spanish and Portuguese, who can be traced back to the 1630s, and were unofficially legitimised with Cromwell’s relaxation.
East European Jews
It was this Orthodox Jewish, very ‘establishment’ grouping who created ‘The Board of Deputies of British Jews’ in 1760. Subsequently, migrants of Ashkenazi (North and East European) Jewish refugees came primarily from German countries, and this continued from the late 17th century to the early 19th.
During the 19th century, there were further changes. In 1841, Lyon Goldsmit was the first Jewish hereditary peer; in 1858 Lionel de Rothschild became the first Jewish MP when the Parliamentary oath was changed from a purely Christion one and in 1874 Benjamin Disraeli became the first Prime Minister of Jewish origin. All of these were from the wealthy, largely Sephardic, establishment.
The largest wave of the working-class families (including my own), arriving between 1880 and the First World War, were those fleeing persecution from the Czar, the Cossacks and the murderous pogroms of the Black Hundreds in Imperial Russia.
Parliament had passed Britain’s first racist immigration Alien Act in 1905, which aimed at restricting numbers, but, as it is with refugees today, who are desperate to escape terror and certain death, the migration continued. Many Jewish migrants settled in London’s East End, in Greater Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, Merseyside and Tyneside/Wearside.
Inter-war fascist movement
Amongst these working-class immigrants were very active socialists and trade unionists. They had previously experienced poverty, oppression and discrimination, and they were affected by radical writings and the political actions and revolutions that swept through their original countries. Many of them, therefore, continued their activities in the British labour movement.
During the inter-war period, with fascism on the rise, the Jewish establishment played what can only be considered a cowardly role. This was exemplified when the Board of Deputies, the Jewish Chronicle, the synagogues and the national Labour leadership told East End Jewish families like mine NOT to take on Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists at their regular stalls and meetings. The Jewish Chronicle even carried an advert on October 2nd 1936, saying,
“Urgent Warning
It is understood that a large Blackshirt demonstration will be held in East London on Sunday afternoon. Jews are urgently warned to keep away from the route of the Blackshirts march and from their meetings. Jews who, however, innocently become involved in any possible disorders will be actively helping anti-semitism and Jew-baiting. Unless you want to help the Jew-baiters
Keep Away”
Fortunately, as we know today, the Jewish population (including my mother, who was an active socialist trade unionist doing anti-fascist work in the preceding years and active on the day and in the years that followed), ignored the establishment, formed the Jewish People’s Council Against Fascism and Antisemitism and, together with their Irish working class neighbours, the trades unions (especially the Dockers), the Independent Labour Party, the Communist Party and others, prepared the defence of the area..
On the day, what has become known as the Battle of Cable Street took place. Barricades had been erected to stop the fascists pre-arranged march through our area and there was a pitched battle between an estimated quarter of a million anti-fascists and the fascists and their (frequently sympathetic) police protectors. The fascists were stopped and had to retreat with their tail between their legs, away from our mainly Jewish and Irish neighbours’ streets.
In the remaining pre-war years, many more German and Polish Jews arrived in Britain, seeking to escape the Nazi Holocaust and after the end of the Second World War, the many displaced and homeless from Europe added to their numbers.
Not one homogenous Jewish Community
In the period before to the Second World War, therefore, the Jewish population was made up of the following:
* a relatively small but increasingly influential, anglicised, well-heeled establishment which was active in banking, insurance and stockbroking. These were the people who had created the ‘Board of Deputies’, the (Orthodox) ‘United Synagogue’ and the position of ‘Chief Rabbi’. (‘Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth’, to give him his full title)
* a small but growing middle class, and
* a large, impoverished working class, a mainly Labour or Communist voting population, who were (like my grandparents and parents) often members of the ‘Federation of Synagogues (also Orthodox), based in the East End of London.
Later, ‘Liberal Judaism’ and Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) Judaism also developed, and during the Second World War, ‘Reform Judaism’ was also founded, reflecting the growing socially-liberalising movement of sections of the Jewish population. With the immediate post war period bringing better educational opportunities, greater career progression, and better standards of living, a gradual change in the class structure and religious and political affiliations occurred within the Jewish population.
Many moved, initially to the suburbs of their original towns, then on to many other locations including Essex, Brighton, Hertfordshire, Birmingham and then to just about everywhere in the UK. Increasingly, their voting patterns spread from what had been mostly Labour to Liberal, Tory or other. Among many Jewish working class families, however, as it was with non-Jews, there remained a lingering support for Labour.
Ed Miliband first Jewish Labour leader
Coming to more recent times, it certainly did not help the Labour Party that people like the actor Maureen Lipman took fright at the first ever Jewish Labour Leader, Ed Miliband, expressing support for the Palestinian people and subsequently told everyone not to vote Labour. As is well known, she, the ‘Chief Rabbi’ and other prominent Jewish people began to ramp up the scare tactics to new heights after Corbyn’s election as leader in 2015 saying that the Jewish population would not be safe in Britain if a Corbyn led Labour government was elected.
But contrary to what was suggested by this propaganda, in fact there is evidence from well-respected sources showing that many more Jewish voters had already been voting Tory by the Thatcher years and by 2015the authoritative ‘ Institute of Jewish Policy Research’ estimated that 69 to 70 per cent were voting Tory.
Demographically, with the exception of the Ultra-Orthodox Haredi, with every new generation, more and more families changed from being largely observant and marrying other Jewish people, to being a mixture of practicing, non-practicing and secular, the latter increasingly in mixed relationships.
Conservative-minded members
The BoD also reflected the change taking place in the Jewish community, gradually replacing the old establishment with newer, but still conservative-minded members of the affiliated synagogues and organisations, that often still send their same, continually nominated representatives year after year to represent them.
However, it has always been the paid BoD officers and executive who make the decisions affecting the Board. And that has included continuing their historic ongoing failure to combat real racism; just as they did in 1936, they told Jewish people NOT to join the Anti-Nazi League to combat the National Front in the 1970s.
To put today’s situation in perspective, therefore, whilst these organisations still exist, together with others such as the self-appointed Jewish Leadership Council and Community Security Trust, since the War there has also been a greater atomisation, growing non-observance and secularisation of the Jewish population, in common with similar trends in the general British population.
Chief Rabbi represents a minority
In addition, the Chief Rabbi who always comes just from the most establishment United Synagogue only represents the affiliated Orthodox Synagogues. He does not represent the estimated 80% who comprise Reform Judaism, Liberal Judaism and the faster-growing Ultra-Orthodox Haredi congregations. And he obviously does not represent the many thousands of secular Jews like me. To present him as even representing all observant Jews would be the equivalent to saying that the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury represents all Christian denominations!
We can show this this by looking at the basic data. In the most recent 2011 UK census, 263,346 Jewish people ticked the appropriate religious box. It is almost certain that there are thousands more secular Jews like myself, and those of mixed heritage, who did not tick that box, and therefore are not counted in the official statistics of the British Jewish population. We may only get a truer picture of the real UK Jewish population if future census forms were to include a question asking if they are of ‘Jewish heritage’, as opposed to religious belief. Regarding the Board of Deputies, their own website even states that they represent less than 80,000 families, with at least one affiliated family member – a fraction of the census statistic, even excluding the thousands of Jewish heritage not included in the data.
Labour Friends of Israel and Jewish Labour Movement
And yet the Board and the rest of the relatively small Jewish establishment, including Labour Friends of Israel (whose members don’t have to be Jewish) and the Jewish Labour Movement (whose members don’t have to be Jewish or Party supporters or members, but are expected “To promote the centrality of Israel in Jewish life…” – JLM website) make demands of the Party that they be the only arbiters on issues such as anti-Semitism and Palestine/Israel. They consider alternative groups, like ‘Jewish Voice for Labour’, the ‘Jewish Socialists Group’ and ‘Jewdas’ as the ‘wrong sort of Jews’ to be ignored.
The Board of Deputies, the Chief Rabbi, the Jewish press and other organisations of the Jewish establishment are not the only representatives of our increasingly fragmented Jewish population and I would encourage fellow Jewish socialists and trade unionists to continue the work as they have done over the years in the labour movement and to continue to challenge them and put the record straight.
November 23, 2020
