In 1938, Neville Laski, a prominent Anglo-Jewish figure, pleaded with the British Government to admit German and Austrian Jewish refugees fleeing Nazism. Fearing an uphill battle to persuade the Home Office, he emphasised the particular qualities these refugees possessed and attempted to bolster his case by making a stark and revealing contrast with Jewish refugees to Britain who had fled persecution earlier. He wrote:

“The greater part of these people are not as were so many of the refugees of the [eighteen] eighties and nineties, ignorant and uncultured, many without a trade and speaking no language save Yiddish. The vast majority of the sufferers today are of a class which would be an asset to any country into which they were admitted. They are cultured, they speak more than one language, many of them are big industrialists and businessmen… men of high professional attainments.”(My emphasis)

Those earlier refugees and migrants from the Russian Empire, whom Laski described in such disdainful, hostile language, actually constituted the forebears of the vast majority of Jews in Britain in the period in which Laski was writing. Many of those migrants and refugees were still alive at that time, despite enduring poverty, hunger, overcrowding, poor working conditions and sanitation, and exposure to the illnesses associated with these conditions, such as TB and heart disease. His statement was very telling, and very ugly, on so many levels.

When I described Laski as a “prominent Anglo-Jewish figure”, I should have been less coy. From 1933-39, he was the President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which defined itself as the sole legitimate representative of Jewish interests in Britain. We now know exactly what he thought of many of the people he claimed to speak for.

That quote has been ringing in my ears this last week after I heard the Board’s current President, Marie Van der Zyl (who probably does qualify for the description “ignorant”), express her opinion on whether “Jewish” should be an option on the Census question that asks about identification as an ethnic minority. She thinks it should. I happen to agree with her; I have thought so for decades, but not at all for the same reasons that she does. And I have long argued for this to appear on ethnic monitoring forms, as well as the Census.

The description of Jews in Britain merely as a religious minority makes no sense, especially as many Jews are secular not religious. Besides, a significant proportion of Jews who formally qualify as religious on the basis of synagogue membership, rarely attend their synagogue, but are paying in abstentia for their burial rights in a Jewish cemetery.

In contrast with Neville Laski KC, an Oxford-educated judge born in Manchester into a wealthy family of cotton merchants, my late socialist friend, Charlie Pottins, grew up in a working class Manchester Jewish family. Charlie reckoned that the congregation of the United Synagogue, the mainstream synagogue movement that still provides the largest number of Deputies, had more than its share of attenders who “prayed to a God they don’t believe in, in a language they don’t understand, for the security of a state they don’t want to live in.” In which case, “religious  minority” was, and still is, a very narrow and inaccurate description of their Jewish lives.

Recognising Jews as an ethnic minority would certainly be more inclusive. But to do so with conviction would mean acknowledging and valuing the distinct cultures, languages, experiences, needs and desires of Jews as a minority of immigrant heritage, something that Laski could not do. For non-white Jews it would mean acknowledging their whole selves, not just part of themselves.

When the Board of Deputies’ current President suddenly announced this position, she may not have even realised how out of step it was with the Board’s very longstanding practice. It seems that she made this stand as a misplaced attempt to jump on the bandwagon created by David Baddiel’s shallow and self-serving “documentary”, Jews Don’t Count, with its overwhelming and erroneous grievance that, as a minority, Jews don’t seem to get as much attention as other minorities. She and Baddiel should probably be grateful that most Jews don’t get the attention from the police, the immigration authorities, and the racist press that several other minorities do. In Marie Van der Zyl’s eagerness to cash in on that sentiment that Baddiel expressed, from his narrow and very privileged position, she appears to endorse his negative, competitive approach towards other minorities.

But there is an alternative. And that is to re-engage the Jewish community in thinking about what understanding itself as an “ethnic minority” might mean in positive terms. What could it mean in terms of valuing and developing our own cultural and historical identity/identities? What does it imply about how Jews who are more conscious of being an ethnic minority, might relate towards issues affecting other minorities in terms of commonality, empathy and solidarity?

Significant numbers of Jewish people support refugee projects. They bring to that an understanding of how their own families, or those of friends, was impacted by their historical experiences. If Jews in Britain more widely were encouraged to delve more deeply into how first- and second-generation Jewish immigrants were treated in the first half of the 20^th century, with regard to both state and institutional racism, they might show greater support to minorities facing such problems today. And if they were simultaneously encouraged to be more familiar with the actual diversity of Jewish life, whether we are thinking class, or colour, or both, they may realise that minority communities facing institutional racism today may include some Jews.

There were reasons, though, why the Board, as a body comprised overwhelmingly of representatives of (mainly orthodox) synagogues, held on so long, and so comfortably, to the notion of being simply a religious minority. It meant they could politically control Jewish communal policy, while discounting and effectively excluding from decision-making the growing secular Jewish population (as well as the ultra-orthodox Haredi population who have never recognised the authority of the Board of Deputies, in any case.)

Some of this territory concerning Jewish politics, ethnicity and representation, was fought over quite dramatically for a short period in the 1980s when a radical Labour group took control of the Greater London Council, and a new leadership was consolidated around Ken Livingstone, John McDonnell, Herman Ouseley, Valerie Wise, Tony Banks, Paul Boateng and others, just at the time when the Board of Deputies was ingratiating itself with the Thatcher Government in which some Jewish MPs were given very prominent Cabinet positions. From the 1940s until Thatcher’s election in 1979, the bulk of Jewish MPs were in the Labour Party. Thatcher’s elevation of Jewish MPs prompted the more Old School Tories like Harold MacMillan, to complain that the reduced cabinet contained fewer “old Etonians” and more “old Estonians”.

As Livingstone and his close allies democratised and revolutionised the GLC’s grants procedures, a range of creative, politically independent ethnic minority groups and projects, including both secular and religious Jewish ones, received public funding for their plans to make an innovative cultural contribution to London or to meet a perceived community need.

“Jewish Women in London” carried out a fascinating oral history project researching and presenting a range of Jewish women’s lives through a publication. A “Jewish Employment Action Group” began taking up casework with Jews experiencing antisemitism in the workplace. Haredi groups won support for a range of educational and welfare projects. And the Jewish Socialists’ Group won two years of funding for its “Jewish Cultural and Anti-Racist Project”, enabling it to hold conferences and public events (often with Black and Jewish platforms) produce publications, make an exhibition on the history of immigration laws from 1905 to 1985, and set up Yiddish classes and a weekly Yiddish folksong workshop – celebrating and sharing the very culture and language that the 1930s Board of Deputies President, Neville Laski, so horribly dismissed. Jewish groups from these different projects were regularly invited, alongside representatives from other minorities, to meetings of the GLC’s Ethnic Minority Unit to share news and plans.

Instead of welcoming the flowering of Jewish initiatives, the Board of Deputies was horrified by this autonomous Jewish activity and demanded the right to vet any funding applications the GLC received from Jewish groups. Livingstone rightly refused their demand on democratic grounds (the first shots in a longstanding war between the Board of Deputies and Livingstone – and nothing to do with Palestine). These were, after all, self-organised grassroots projects, who did not seek nor need the Board of Deputies’ hekhsher (stamp of approval).

Debates within the Board got very heated. One of its far-right elected members, Harold Soref, in his youth a recruit to Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, in later life a Tory MP (1970-74), comfortably ensconced within the Tory Monday Club and chair of its Rhodesia sub-committee(!), railed against any mooted definition of Jews beyond “religious minority” that linked them with the term “ethnic minority”, or implied solidarity with ethnic minorities.

The Board struggled to hold the line against Soref’s extreme right-wing views, without conceding anything to the GLC initiatives or to more liberal elements within, who argued the case for Jews to reassess their definition of their community. The Board’s relationship with the GLC worsened, and ultimately they broke off all contact with the GLC’s Ethnic Minority Unit. Confidential minutes of the Board’s Defence and Group Relations Committee, that fell into the wrong hands (mine), listed five reasons (some of which mentioned the IRA and “terrorists”) but the minutes made clear that it was specifically the GLC’s grant to the Jewish Socialists’ Group that was decisive! The Board’s Defence Director, the late Jacob Gewirtz, had already commented publicly on the Jewish Socialists’ Group’s grant application: “I can think of no other group describing itself as Jewish which is as unrepresentative of the Jewish community and so undeserving of public funding.” (My emphasis). Charming.

Laski, for all his condescending and negative feelings about eastern European Jews, was at least on the ball about Zionism and its likely impact on Jewish communities. He and several other leading figures in the Jewish establishment described themselves as non-Zionists or anti-Zionists. They believed that if Jews strongly embraced another nationalism, it would inevitably clash with their British patriotism and open them to accusations of conflicting loyalties. Laski and his ilk never saw their personal futures in a Jewish state, and were worried that it would undermine the position of Jews in Britain and strengthen those who wanted to see the Jews go elsewhere.

Ordinary Jews in 1930s Britain, especially in working class communities, were indifferent to Zionism for other reasons. Their priorities in very stressful economic times were paying the rent, avoiding starvation, keeping their families looked after, and countering the threat from fascists. Nationalism – including Jewish nationalism – did not appeal to them then.

But the Jewish community in post-Holocaust, post-war Britain was far more receptive to Jewish nationalism than it had been before the war. Jewish identity as a religious minority was boosted in those post-war decades by a growing sense of attachment to the new State of Israel, with Israel’s creation seen as a blow struck against antisemitism globally, and a Jewish state even seen by some as a ghoulish consolation for Jews after their decimation in Europe.

Jewish identity as a religious minority with a vicarious Israeli nationalism worked for the leaders of the Jewish community in the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s, and they pursued Zionism enthusiastically in a Britain still reluctant and late to acknowledge itself as a multicultural society. Vestiges of Yiddish culture or Sephardi and Mizrahi cultures were marginalised, as an imported Hebrew culture was elevated, especially in the expanding number of Jewish schools, and Zionist youth movements

The Lebanon War of 1982 was a watershed. Israeli Hasbara (propagandist explanations) had presented the wars of ’67 and ‘73 as defensive wars despite the acquisition of much more territory. It was harder to portray Lebanon as anything other than an aggressive war. In the late 1970s a Peace Now movement had emerged in Israel and began to take rather timid steps. In 1982, a large-scale refusenik movement started among army reservists. Whatever efforts have been made to present Israel as always under undue attack, from enemies often accused of antisemitism, since 1982 layers of the community have become more ambivalent and quietly questioning.

Post-millennium, groups such as Jews for Justice for Palestinians, jewdas, Yachad, Na’amod, Jewish Solidarity Action, Jewish Voice for Labour, have emerged, and those that have looked for alternative cultural resources have revived and refashioned interest in Yiddish and also celebrate Jewish diversity. Young Jews have become active in anti-racist, anti-fascist, anti-borders solidarity work with other ethnic minorities. Those minorities have welcomed that solidarity, while at the same time articulating their anti-racist solidarity with Palestinians.  

As 2022 heads to a close, the picture is increasingly stark. A narrow group of individuals and institutions who see themselves as community leaders continue singing from the same Zionist hymn sheet, and they are still treated as legitimate spokespersons for the whole Jewish community by the mainstream right wing press. But there is little evidence of the community rallying behind them.

The Israeli election in November has returned the political right to power, led by the ultra-nationalist Netanyahu, but with a very large increase in the vote of those commonly described by Israeli oppositionists as openly racist and fascist. The Board of Deputies, who have staked so much in tying the Jewish community to “Israel-first” politics, at the expense of the real needs of Jews in Britain, must now contend with the fact that the new government in Israel will be the equivalent of a Tory-BNP coalition here.

Making a move to shift the definition of the Jewish community from the narrow “religious community” to ethnic minority on a Census question, seems a trivial though long overdue step. What it symbolises though is a glimmer of recognition of the crisis of identity and representation in which those who see themselves as Jewish community leaders are doomed to become less and less relevant. We can help that process along. The sooner the better.

Marie Van der Zyl and Benjamin Netanyahu