The Politics of Marginality

Race, the Radical Right and Minorities in Twentieth Century Britain

Tony Kushner, Kenneth Lunn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781138979024
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136290824
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Fascisme et totalitarisme

Immigration to Britain has rarely achieved the levels experienced by the US, but it is nevertheless true of all periods that immigrants, refugees and soujourners have been continually present'. While we may have the beginnings of a history of immigration, ethnicity and race in Britain, there is a lack of historiographical awareness in the subject. The essays in this collection, ranging from specific case studies to broad themes, are an attempt to provide a basis for future discussion.

II WAR AND MINORITIES

An Embattled Minority: The Jews in Britain During the First World War

Previous research on the impact of the First World War on Jews in Britain has concentrated on its effects on German or Russian immigrants. This article examines how English Jews were affected, analysing the dilemmas and complexities deriving from Jewish identity at a time of extreme nationalism. On policy regarding the oppression of Jews in Russia, the creation of all-Jewish units, special facilities for orthodox Jews and the conscription of foreign Jews, the Anglo-Jewish minority found itself at odds with the ethnic majority. The resulting tension contributed to outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence in 1917 and eroded the position of Jews in British society.

It is now widely accepted that the First World War engendered a serious deterioration in the position of the Jews in British society and a number of recent studies have contributed to the delineation of this decline.¹ However, existing research has concentrated almost exclusively on the impact of the war on immigrant Jews, whether enemy aliens or friendly aliens. Hostility to German Jews, the confusion of Germans with other Jewish immigrants and the resentment towards Russian-born Jews — who, although subjects of an allied power, were nevertheless able to avoid military service — has been well charted.² On several occasions this antipathy was expressed in major incidents of street violence; these, too, have been extensively chronicled and ascribed chiefly to the presence of Russian-born Jews of military age who were not yet in uniform.³ While all of these studies have broadened our awareness of anti-Jewish currents specific to the war years, they have concentrated upon the immigrant Jews and neglected the impact of the war on the Jewish population of Britain in general.

The Great War reached so deeply into the social entrails of the participant countries that no minority or marginal group escaped its influence; yet, as Jay Winter has shown, it affected different sections of the British people in substantially different ways: the likelihood of death or degree of discomfort could be regionally, generationally or socially specific.⁴ Jews in Britain experienced the War in ways that were significantly divergent from the majority of the population, ways that were determined by the very fact that they were a minority, and one which had highly individual characteristics.

The Jewish population was part of a supra-national group and this unavoidably provoked questions of identity and allegiance. Jews born in other countries faced the most obvious and immediate conflict of loyalties, but British-born Jews were not immune from such quandaries. Before 1914, the persecution of Jews in Russia had been a central preoccupation of Jewish international aid and lobbying organisations. As a result of the pattern of wartime alliances it ceased to be feasible to criticise the Tsarist regime, yet the ill-treatment of Russian Jews did not cease. For over two years, British Jews were compelled to walk a tightrope between transgressing their loyalty to the allied cause and abnegating responsibility for their fellow Jews.

British Jews were also ineluctably embroiled in the perplexities of foreign-born Jews in Britain. The representative, social and welfare organisations of Anglo-Jewry were obliged to formulate policy with respect to alien Jews, forcing British Jews to make painful choices between a straight British identity and a more complex one, embracing Jews who were not British and might even be enemies. The question of military service was crucial for Russian-born Jews, but it also played tortuously upon the identity of Jews born in Britain. When the creation of an all-Jewish unit was suggested as a device to encourage the recruitment of foreign-born Jews, British Jews split bitterly over the merits of the idea. Argument raged over whether Jews should fight as Jews or as citizens — a conundrum which exposed awkward questions about the nature of Jewish identity and the relations of Jews to the wider society.

Social and economic strains, which increased as the war dragged on, highlighted still further the differences between Jews and the majority population. Rationing had a particularly harsh effect on the Jews, whose patterns of food consumption were constrained by religious dietary laws. Yet attempts to modify government regulations exposed them to accusations of special pleading. Air-raids, too, had a differential impact since the bombing was concentrated on areas of dense Jewish settlement and gave salience to the response of Jews in particular.

The war thus threw up acute dilemmas for Britain’s Jewish minority. British Jews were under enormous presure to show that they were loyal citizens. At the same time, they were expected to police their minority group and were held responsible for the misdemeanours of any of its members, no matter how tenuous their identification with Britain or with other Jews happened to be. If sections of the Jewish population behaved badly in the eyes of the majority, British Jews could either disassociate themselves from the erring element or intervene to discipline them. If they disclaimed responsibility, the majority population — the British — still held them accountable (and viewed them with added contempt for deserting their own people). If British Jews chose to align with other Jews, they could do so either through expressions and gestures of solidarity or the enforcement of unpopular measures, depending on their view of what technique would succeed best in ameliorating the pressure of the majority. In either case, it was a ‘no-win’ situation.⁵

This paper will show how the war turned the spotlight relentlessly onto all the points of difference between Jews and non-Jews. It will argue that, although the years 1914–18 created new solidarities and common experiences,⁶ their cumulative effect was to drive a wedge into relations between Jews and the majority population. Less obvious were the effects on Jewish society. Jewish existence as a minority in Britain rested on a carefully worked out set of agreed criteria covering citizenship, culture and religion. The war called this compact into question, ruptured the shared values and agreed meanings which constituted the ascribed character of the Anglo-Jew and shattered the precarious bonding which held together Jewish society in Britain. It tested the relations between the Jews and British society and, in the process, exposed the delicate fabric of the Anglo-Jewish identity which had been constructed over the preceeding 75 years.⁷ It is only by examining the War’s impact in its entirety that it becomes possible to discern the true scale of the crisis which it provoked.

I

The peculiar and uncomfortable position of the Jews in British society became evident in the opening days of the War in terms of British Jewry’s attitude towards Russia. After the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and Austria–Hungary’s ultimatum to Serbia, the Jewish Chronicle, the semi-official voice of Anglo-Jewry edited by Leopold Greenberg, declared ‘a feeling of sympathy with both sides’. Greenberg noted that the Jews had fared well in both countries and was dismayed at the prospect of a conflagration that would pitch Jew against Jew. Above all, he asserted that it was desirable to avoid any British entanglement on the same side as Russia, Serbia’s ally: ‘For England to fight alongside of Russia would be as wicked as for her to fight against Germany, with whom she has no quarrel.’⁸ In the following week, Greenberg was thrown into full reverse, arguing that the German violation of Belgian neutrality was an adequate justification for an alliance with Russia and war on Germany.

Despite reports of the continuing persecution of Jews in Russia, publication of the newsheet In Darkest Russia, edited by Lucien Wolf, was suspended.⁹ In its report on the year 1914, the Anglo-Jewish Association (AJA), which had formerly campaigned hard for Russian Jewish rights, refused to pass any comment on the matter.¹⁰ Although it began to print statements from impeccable sources testifying to the continued suffering of Russian Jews, the AJA remained extremely guarded on the subject.¹¹ Behind the scenes Wolf, who acted as the full-time lobbyist on international affairs for the AJA and the Board of Deputies of British Jews, persisted in reminding the Foreign Office of the misery of Russian Jewry. Wolf, in memoranda to the Foreign Office, and Greenberg, in his paper, argued that, by virtue of their loyal war service, the Jews of Russia showed that they deserved emancipation. They also pointed to the effect of Jewish suffering in Russia on the opinion of American Jews, whom the Foreign Office were eager to win over to the cause of the allies as part of its effort to bring America into the war.¹²

This was a delicate balancing act and often entailed ungainly compromises. In his leader and comment columns, Greenberg devised an explanation for Russian ill-treatment of the Jews that verged on the apologetic. He argued that ‘From the Russian people Jews have never experienced anything but the deepest sympathy, and with the Russian people they have ever felt on mutually agreeable terms’. It was the threat of German expansionism that had produced internal repression. Russian Jews understood this: ‘They see that it has been the militarism of Russia’s next-door neighbour that has in the main been responsible for the reactionary spirit.’¹³ Greenberg did not entirely suspend criticism of the Tsarist authorities. He seized upon reports from neutral and, especially, Russian sources that were critical of the brutal handling of Jews in the war zone: ‘What men in the front rank of the Russian nation say cannot be treasonable in the mouths of Englishmen.’¹⁴ Yet he simultaneously maintained the fiction that the Germans were responsible for anti-Jewish policy in Russia.

Greenberg’s ratiocinations did not escape criticism. He was chided by less timerous English Jews and lashed by the American Jewish press for his ‘perverse theory’ which they ascribed to fear of offending British opinion by attacking an allied power. In reply, Greenberg went so far as to say that the persecution and suf...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Editors' Introduction
• Women and Fascism
• Women and the British Union of Fascists, 1932–1940
• Rescued from the Shadows of Exile Nellie Driver, Autobiography and the British Union of Fascists
• ‘Colonel' Barker A Case Study in the Contradictions of Fascism
• Politics and Race, Gender and Class Refugees, Fascists and Domestic Service in Britain, 1933–19401
• War and Minorities
• An Embattled Minority The Jews in Britain During the First World War
• The British Communist Party's National Jewish Committee and the Fight Against Anti-Semitism During The Second World War.
• The Impact of Hostility on Germans in Britain, 1914–1918
• The British Empire Union in the First World War
• Racism and Revision
• Hilaire Belloc and the ‘Marconi Scandal' 1900–1914 A Reassessment of the Interactionist Model of Racial Hatred
• Beyond the Pale? British Reactions to Nazi Anti-Semitism, 1933–39
• The British State and Immigration, 1945–51 New Light on the Empire Windrush
• Race, the New Right and State Policy in Britain
• Index