RIDLEY ROAD

Maybe the anti-Israel protests in the UK didn’t warrant a mention in your local news media, just the same, I want to write about them.

'Zionists, go home!' chanted protestors at one anti-Israel demonstration in London. Others carried signs with slogans bearing a similar message. “Stop the Judaization of Jerusalem, Britain, Europe, Ukraine, and the USA," one of them read.

The demonstration publicised as a "Rally for Palestine," was organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in response to the IDF’s three-day Operation Breaking Dawn. 

In regard to the chants, one Twitter user wrote that "they're telling Zionists to go home, doesn't that kind of make them Zionists, too?" 

Jerusalem Post columnist Emily Schrader said, "that's the point… we did."

Last year saw a sharp rise in antisemitism in the UK – especially during Operation Guardian of the Walls in Gaza.

While watching a telecast of the demonstrations I sensed a certain déjà vu recalling a traumatic experience I had in 1947 when I stumbled on a violent confrontation between a British fascist group led by Oswald Mosley and the Jewish defence 43 group in Ridley Road market, Hackney. At that time the market was a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood in East London.  I was running an errand for my father when I came across the violent face-off between the two groups.  The police tried to separate them, but the bobbies appeared to be more inclined to favour Mosley and his thugs.  

Within months of the war’s end, fourteen fascist groups and at least three fascist bookshops operated openly across London.

After the end of the Second World war, many fascist groups surfaced again, coalescing around British fascist leader, Oswald Mosley. They held rallies across London and England, agitating against so-called Jewish influence. In response, a group called the 43 Group (after the 43 people who founded it), mostly Jewish ex-servicemen, decided to oppose the fascists by all means necessary, breaking up their meetings continuously. Things came to a head in a series of confrontations in the summer of 1947 in Ridley Road market where the main fascist group regularly held demonstrations. Faced with persistent opposition by Jewish activists the fascist demonstrations gradually petered out. There was a brief resurgence in 1962, but that too was countered by younger Jewish anti-fascist activists.

However, antisemitism can be traced to way back before the appearance of Oswald Mosley’s fascist movement.

During the Second Boer War (1899–1902), some British leaders who were opposed to the war asserted that Jewish gold mining operators and financiers with their large stakes in South Africa were a driving force behind it. Labour leader Keir Hardie asserted that Jews were part of a secretive "imperialist" cabal that promoted war. The Clarion, a paper aligned with the Independent Labour Party  and the Trade Union Congress blamed "Jewish capitalists" as "being behind the war and imperialism in general". John Burns, a Liberal Party socialist, speaking in the House of Commons in 1900, asserted that the British Army itself had become "a janissary of the Jews". Writer and politician Henry Hyndman also argued that "Jewish bankers" and "imperialist Judaism" were the cause of the conflict. 

A possible cause of the groundswell of anti-Jewish sentiments was the considerable growth of the Jewish population in Britain.

From 1882 to 1919, the Jewish population in Britain increased fivefold, from 46,000 to 250,000, due to the exodus from Russian pogroms and discrimination, many of whom settled in the East End of London. My paternal grandparents were among them.

 By the turn of the century, a popular and media backlash had begun. “The British Brothers' League” was formed, with the support of prominent politicians, organising marches and petitions. At rallies, its speakers said that Britain should not become "the dumping ground for the scum of Europe". In 1905, an editorial in the Manchester Evening Chronicle wrote: "that the dirty, destitute, diseased, verminous and criminal foreigner who dumps himself on our soil should be denied permission to land".

One of the main objectives of the Aliens Act in 1905 wa
s to control such immigration. Restrictions were increased in the Aliens Restriction Act 1914 and the immigration laws of 1919.

In addition to anti-immigration campaigners, there were antisemitic groups, notably The Britons, launched in 1919, which called for British Jews to be deported en masse to Palestine. I’ll resist the temptation to comment.

In 1920, the Morning Post published a translation of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, which subsequently formed the basis of a book, “The Cause of World Unrest”, to which half the paper's staff contributed. Later exposed as a forgery, they were initially accepted, with a leader in The Times blaming Jews for World War I and the Bolshevik regime and calling them the greatest threat to the British Empire.

 My earliest recollection of antisemitism was in our neighbourhood in East London when my brother and I were jeered at by other children who called us “Jew boys.” I doubt if they really understood why they were taunting us and we hardly knew why we were different. Even later when the jibes were followed by blows, we understood the need to defend ourselves. So, with our father’s encouragement, we took up boxing as our preferred sport.

Later on, when our family moved to New Zealand I met people who knew very little about Jews and Judaism, especially in remote rural communities.

I’ll conclude by recycling an anecdote that occurred shortly before I left New Zealand on the first stage of my aliya.  

My friend Colin Meltzer persuaded me to join him on a tour of the South Island. He reasoned that there were many places we had never seen and we might not have another opportunity to visit them. His logic was sound and so equipped  with backpacks and good walking shoes we set out heading south. Most of the way we hitchhiked and the particular anecdote I want to relate occurred when we managed to “hitch” a ride on a goods train that crossed one of the passes in the Southern Alps. The stationmaster told us to board the mail wagon at the rear of the train. Colin and I had barely seated ourselves down when we were joined by another free passenger, a clergyman replete with dog collar. Apparently, his parish included hamlets along the line. Anyway, he was delighted to see us believing he had a two-man congregation to preach to. Leaning forward in a friendly gesture he declared “We are all good Christians!”  Colin and I exchanged amused glances and then I leaned forward imitating the clergyman’s gesture and said. “Reverend you are in the minority!” There was a long pause before he realised that he was sitting opposite two descendants of the Messiah’s alleged crucifiers. The expression on his face was unforgettable. As I recall he spent the rest of the journey engrossed in his prayer book.

 

Have a good weekend.

 

Beni,                                                                           18^th of August, 2022.

 

 

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