Foreign News: Dark Tide

In Britain, for centuries a bastion of tolerance and hospitable haven for Jews, * anti-Semitism had bloated to disturbing dimensions. Partly it was caused by events in Palestine. But, as before in Europe and in history, Jews were also being made the scapegoats for economic hardships. With increasing frequency, ordinary Britons coupled “spivs” with Jews.

Outbreaks of anti-Semitism were in the news. A Northampton magistrate heard it said that Henry James Cumberpatch, a cinema doorman, “affected by the news from Palestine, took a revolver and went out into the street—quite wrongheadedly —to wreak vengeance upon some innocent Jew.” Cumberpatch was charged with using the weapon as a club to beat one Dan Cipin, tailor and Jew.

Ugliest Aspect. At Eccles, in Lancashire, one Jack Piggott drew six months’ imprisonment for smashing a Jewish-owned shop window and leading a crowd of 700, some of whom shouted what few Britons had ever been expected to shout: “Hitler was right.” At Holyhead, a laborer was fined for smashing the windows of two Jewish shops. In London, two women arrested for pitching bricks through Oxford Street windows said: “We did it because the owner is a Jew.” In Wales, signs appeared on a school wall reading: “Jewish murderers” and “Hitler was right.” At Kingstanding, near Birmingham, hooligans stole into a Jewish cemetery, uprooted gravestones, defaced them with signs: “Hang the Jews,” “Dirty Jews,” “Pig,” “Swine.” There were other outbreaks in Cardiff, Devonport, Liverpool.

The old observation that racialism follows race concentrations did not aplly. London, with two-thirds of all Britain’s 385,000 Jews, had a relatively mild anti-Semitic seizure. Leeds, with the highest proportionate concentration of Jews among British cities, heard some muttering but saw no violence. Liverpool, with a small, old, well-integrated Jewish group, had four nights of window smashing, synagogue burning and looting to a refrain of anti-Jewish slogans. There, at least 100 shop windows were broken, mostly by adolescents; sometimes crowds as large as 2,000 looked on, did nothing except to give an occasional cheer. This passive approval, to the horrified Manchester Guardian, “was the ugliest aspect.”

Responsibility. Most newspapers reacted with disapproval that ranged from tepid to thunderous. But the weekly Morecambe (Lancashire) Visitor (circ. 17,500) summoned its readers to “rejoice greatly [over] the pleasant fact that only a handful of Jews bespoil the population of our borough! . . . Violence may be the only way to bring [Jews] to a sense of their responsibility to the country in which they live.”

Three days before, a quiet group of men had quietly laid a wreath at Whitehall’s Cenotaph, Britain’s monument to valorous Britons. It was inscribed:’ “In memory of Sergeant Martin and Sergeant Paice, who died doing their duty in Palestine, July 30, 1947. From their Jewish ex-service comrades of the British forces.” And it was signed with many names. Among them: Major Sir Jack Benn Brunei Cohen, who lost both legs in World War I; Wing Commander Lionel Cohen, who won the D.F.C. at the age of 68 in 1944, after 45 R.A.F. operational flights in World War II; Colonel Louis Gluckstein; Lieut. Leonard Veyzor, V.C.; Lieut. Colonel J. H. Levey; Major Edmund de Rothschild.

* But not always. In 1290 Edward I, in another economic crisis, expelled England’s Jews. In 1644, Roger Williams, himself a conscientious refugee, wrote in favor of their official return. Over the years, beginning about 1650, Jews began re-establishing themselves in Britain. By 1871 Britain’s Jews, after many gains, had received complete civil equality.