Book Description

Following the economic depression of the early 1930s, antisemitism, whipped up by anti-alienist and fascist agitators, became a serious threat for British Jews. However, the British Jewish establishment - the Board of Deputies, the staff of "The Jewish Chronicle", etc. - refused to believe in the viability of British antisemitism and regarded it as an export from Central Europe, alien to Britain. After 1934, the British Union of Fascists, led by Oswald Mosley, became the main promoter of aggressive antisemitism. It was the Jewish population of London's East End who led the struggle against the fascist and antisemitic danger and formed defense organizations of their own, unsupported by the Jewish communal leadership. While in 1936, and later, it was impossible to ignore the rise of antisemitism in Britain, the leaders and spokesmen of the Jewish community resorted to a propaganda campaign and to self-criticism of "the Jews who rushed to the professions", they voiced anxiety about Jewish youth joining "extreme anti-fascists", and they opposed violent forms of struggle. In October 1936 it was the rank-and-file Jews, supported by non-Jewish workers and communists, who succeeded in thwarting a demonstration of the BUF in the East End.