David Rosenberg talk for Tower Hamlets Stand Up To Racism meeting on 3 March 2024

Many thanks for inviting me. Greetings from the Jewish Socialists Group. We are five minutes walk from Approach Road where my mum grew up with her Jewish immigrant parents in the 1930s. She was born nearer to the main Jewish area of Brick Lane but when she was young her parents rented part of a house near here. They lived there through the 1930s, when Oswald Mosley’s Fascists were stirring up virulent and violent antisemitism in the area. They used to have a weekly march in Blackshirt uniforms to their local Bethnal Green HQ .

My mum went to Bonner Street school where there were other Jews in the school but she was the only Jew in her class. Other children let her know that every day. She grew up grew up fearing and experiencing  antisemitic bullying.

Mosley’s 1930s fascists won some support in every class of British society. Here they tried to build a working class base, but you could also find political antisemitism elsewhere, for example in the mainstream press, especially in the Daily Mail. You could hear poisonous antisemitic statements made by Conservative politicians in parliament. They would have looked down at the working class fascists in Bethnal Green as uncouth, but they mouthed the same antisemitic lies and slanders, painting Jews as an alien undesirable element, who didn’t belong here.

For most of the last 60 years, though, there was a clear distance between conventional Conservative, right wing views and those of ultra nationalist Far-Right groups like the NF and the British Movement founded in the 1960s and ‘70s, but, in the last five years, there seems to be deliberate attempts to blur the lines between the Tory Right and the Fascist Far-Right. Their sharpest arrows today are aimed at Muslims and refugees, and especially those who are both.

But they don’t forget their older enemies – this Government presided over the continuing Windrush Scandal that devastated the lives of many Caribbean families. And the Tories closest allies in Europe show us the murky waters in which they swim. Britain left the EU but the Tories still lead a bloc of hard right and far-right parties in the Council of Europe, where it is allied with some of the most Islamophobic, antisemitic, anti-Roma, anti-refugee and anti-LGBT political parties, such as Le Pen’s National Rally in France, AfD in Germany, Meloni’s Brothers of Italy and the Freedom Party in Austria both of whom have explicitly fascist roots, and of course Orban’s Party in Hungary which in 2018 won the election there with an openly antisemitic campaign using classic conspiracy theories targeting Hungarian Jew George Soros.

Victor Orban believes in the Great Replacement Theory that says Muslim migrants and refugees are replacing White Christians in the West. He paints Hungary as the last line of defence of White Christian Europe. He blames Jews like Soros for enabling Muslim infiltration. 

Back in Britain there is a lot of explicit racist hate around. It is vital that there is maximum solidarity between minorities who are suffering from abuse and hate and we don’t allow anyone to divide us. Recent detailed reports show us that both Islamophobia and antisemitism are on the rise in terms of threats and violence, abuse, stereotyping and blame for problems in society. But it is complicated – a number of those threats and acts of antisemitic violence, have come not just from the usual far-right suspects but from people who themselves face racism.

The government, far-right and right wing media condemn legitimate protests for justice for Palestine to stir up racist divisions. They describe them as “hate marches” by an “extremist mob”, motivated by religious fanaticism that turn central London into a no-go area for Jewish people, when in reality they are people, across all religions and none, across London’s ethnicities, uniting to stand up for justice for Palestine.

In truth, the protests do not break down on religious lines. They regularly include large numbers of Jewish groups who have formed a Jewish bloc. We are greeted on those marches with absolute warmth and friendship. 

The terrible destruction in Palestine is being done by an Israeli government armed to the teeth by America, Britain, Germany and Modi’s India. That is where anger should be directed. It is not the responsibility of Jewish people here, who have as much right as anyone to live lives free from racist harassment. And we should also support those in Israel who are protesting against the war and their government every week.

Many random attacks, though, on Jews here, are happening far from the marches, carried out by people who blur the distinctions between Jews and the Israeli government. They are being fed by antisemites who spread lies, hate and antisemitic conspiracy theories on social media.

I have been shocked to see in recent days and weeks materials/videos from hard-line Nazis being shared on social media by some supporters of the Palestinian cause. We all have a responsibility as anti-racists and anti-fascists to expose this and persuade people not to fall for conspiracy theories. The only  people who benefit from this situation are the fascists.

We also need to remind ourselves of all the forms of antisemitism and Islamophobia that have flourished before October 7. 

I want to close with what is for me a very significant act of solidarity that took place in the East End In 1970,  and the lessons we can all draw form that. The most well known racist murder locally that decade was of course Altab Ali, a young Bengali clothing worker in 1978 attacked and stabbed as he was walking home form work. But there was an earlier murder in April 1970, when 50 year old Tosir  Ali a kitchen porter at a west End Wimpy Bar, returned late at night, to his flat near Bromley-by-Bow station.

A few minutes after midnight he was attacked by two 18-year-olds, they slashed him with a knife they ran off. The motive was not robbery. His wallet containing £10 was found with his dead body.

An Irish neighbour raised the alarm after she heard a horrific scream. Ali was rushed to Hospital but died soon afterwards.

At one of several Asian community meetings, a veteran local political figure spoke up. Solly Kaye, a Jew, was a Communist Party councillor in Stepney. He had already experienced this situation as a young activist in the 1930s East End where the East European Jewish immigrant community he was born into faced ideological and violent physical attacks from fascists and other antisemites. He joined the Communist Party in 1934, took part in the Battle of Cable Street, and spoke on many indoor and outdoor platforms against fascists.

Solly Kaye

In this community meeting in 1970s he gave his condolences and solidarity and said this: “the purveyors of racialism can be defeated by united action… it would be the greatest error and worse, if the struggle were left to the immigrant organisations to bear the brunt of the fight… the fight against racial discrimination and violence is part of the fight for a new and better society.”

Those few lines contains important principles that we need right now.

• The responses to outbursts of hate must always be wider than the community directly attacked. We all need to react to expressions of hate against  any minority by saying “their fight is our fight”, and support each other unconditionally against racist attacks.

Minorities often do support each other, but for Solly Kaye the onus was also on majority communities. Solidarity was the responsibility of all who want a better society. The fight against racism could not be delayed. It is always the right time to combat racism.

Kaye’s intervention implored people to be not bystanders but upstanders when others were attacked. But his statement also coupled the violence the Asian community endured with the everyday discrimination they suffered. They were intimately linked.

And in that spirit I want to emphasise that the fight against racism is not a pic ‘n’ choose activity. If you fight antisemitism but ignore Islamophobia – that is not antiracism. And if you fight Islamophobia but ignore antisemitism that is not anti-racism

We must fight ALL racism with the same determination. Solidarity!