Ghetto radical - Jewish leftists

New York:

Judith Maas in the Boston Globe reviews Tony Michels’ A Fire in Their Hearts, on New York’s Yiddish socialists via Norm. Here’s an excerpt from the book, and more from Michels: "Socialism and the Writing of American Jewish History: World of Our Fathers Revisited" (restricted access). [Blog link: Brooklyn Jews.]

Manchester:

[This is from the press release]

Dave Chapple, a Bridgwater postman and strike leader, well known in the town's socialist and trade union circles, has published his first book.

The book, entitled "Henry Suss and the Jewish Working-Class of Manchester and Salford", is Dave's 90th birthday tribute to a remarkable Mancunian, now living at a home for the blind at Burnham on Sea.

Henry Suss, born the son of a Galician Jewish pedlar in 1915, was a life-long clothing worker in Manchester, who became an active socialist against Mosley's Blackshirts in the Cheetham Hill district during the 1930's, when no less than 34 relatives in Europe were being rounded into
concentration camps. Henry in his teens joined the local socialist Theatre of Action, and campaigned for "Aid to Spain" during that country's tragic civil war. Five years in the Army in World War 2 were followed by Henry re-joining the clothing trade, and eventually becoming a militant and well-respected trades unionist for the Tailor and Garment Workers right up
to the 1980's.

Henry joined the Cheetham Hill Branch of the Communist Party in 1936, and remained a member for 50 years. In Pendlebury, near Salford, Henrycampaigned on the issue of rents and slum housing so effectively that in 1964, at the height of the Cold War, he was elected a Communist Party Councillor, and re-elected in 1967.

Paul Robeson, Ewen Macoll, Harry Pollitt, Tommy Jackson, Mick Mcgahey, Abe Moffatt,the Rev Ettienne Watts, Dame Anne Loughlin, Frank Allaun are just a few of the radical personalities Henry encountered during his long active service for his fellow workers.

Henry is still politically active in spite of advanced years and failing sight, in the Sedgemoor Peace Group, which campaigns against the war in Iraq, the International Brigade Association, the Working Class Movement Library in Salford, and, a few years ago, led a fight to save his local Post Office at Burnham.

Because Dave's book on Henry is written in dialogue form, the text is also the record of a friendship between two different generations of socialist activists. Dave Chapple is as well-known in the South West and Henry is in Lancashire, and the book should arouse considerable interest in those localities, and further afield.

The book is a large-format A4 softback, 216 pages, with over 100 historic photographs, maps and illustrations. It can be obtained at the socialist price of £10 waged and £5 unwaged/part-time, plus £2 postage and packing, only from: E-mail: dave@davechapple3.wanadoo.co.uk.


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Comments

Anonymous said…
Hey: someone should consider a similar study of Jewish radicals in the UK.
In the spirit of hands across the waters, let me share a draft of a bibliography I prepared for JEWS, LABOUR AND THE LEFT 1918-1948, edited by Stephen Bird and Christine Collette [Ashgae-2000]. I apologize for the question marks; the chapter in the bok has the correct citations but I don't have it or them handy.

>> Arieh Lebowitz / New York
>> ariehnyc@prodigy.net


General Works/Background, Including Material Covering both the UK and the US

Abramsky, Chimen (1971), “The Jewish Labour Movement: Some Historiographical Problems,” in Soviet Jewish Affairs, Vol. 1, no. 1, June

Alderman, Geoffrey (1983), The Jewish Community in British Politics, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Alderman, Geoffrey (1992), Modern British Jewry, Oxford: Clarendon Press

Antonovsky, Aaron (1961), The Early Jewish Labor Movement in the United States [chapter on London as the cradle of the U.S. Jewish labour movement], New York: YIVO Institute

Barou, Noah K. (1948), The Jews in Work and Trade: A World Survey, London: Trades Advisory Council [CHECK YEAR?]

Beloff, Max (1991), “Anglo-Jewry Revisited,” in Jewish Journal of Sociology, Vol. 33, June

Bentwich, Norman (1960), The Social Transformation of Anglo-Jewry, 1883-1960, London

Black, Eugene C. (1988), The Social Politics of Anglo-Jewry, 1880-1920, Oxford, Basil Blackwell Ltd.

Bross, J. (1950), “The Beginning of the Jewish Labour Movement in Galicia,” in YIVO Annual, Vol. 4,
Bunzl, John (1975), Klassenkampf in der Diaspora: Zur Geschichte der judischen Arbeiterbewegung, Vienna, Europaverl.

Burgin, Hertz (1915), Die Geshichte fun der Idisher Arbayter Bavegung in America, Rusland, un England, New York: ???

Carrier, J. W. (1967), “A Jewish Proletariat,” in M. Mindlin and Chaim Bermant, eds., Explorations: An Annual on Jewish Themes, London: ???

Cesarani, David, ed. (1990), The Making of Modern Anglo-Jewry, Oxford, Oxford University Press

Cesarani, David (1992), “The Remaking of the Jewish Immigrant Working Class in England,” paper delivered at the conference, Jewish Workers: Integration and Jewish Movements: A Comparative Approach, Amsterdam, March 27

Cohen, Stuart A. (1982), English Zionists and British Jews: The Communal Politics of Anglo-Jewry, 1895-1920, Princeton, Princeton University Press

Dyche, John A. (1898), “The Jewish Workman,” in Contemporary Review, Vol. 73, January

Dyche, John A. (1899), “The Jewish Immigrant,” in Contemporary Review, Vol. 75

Elman, Peter (1951-1952), “The Beginnings of the Jewish Trade Union Movement in England,” in Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, Vol. 17, pp. 53-62

Englander, David, ed. (1994), A Documentary History of Jewish Immigrants in Britain, 1840-1920, London, Leicester University Press

Feldman, David (1994), Englishman and Jews: Social Relations and Political Culture, 1840-1914, New Haven, Yale University Press

Fine, J. L. (1953), “The Jewish Trade Unions,” in Jewish Vanguard, no. 123, 31 July

Frankel, Jonathan (1981), Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism and the Russian Jews, 1862-1917, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Gartner, Lloyd P. (1960), The Jewish Immigrant in England, 1870-1914, London, Allen & Unwin

Gartner, Lloyd P (1994), “The Jewish Labor Movement in Great Britain and the United States,” in Tami Friedman-Manor, ed., Workers and Revolutionaries: the Jewish Labor Movement, Tel Aviv: Beth Hatefutsoth, the Museum of the Jewish Diaspora

Gerard, John A. (1970), “Trade Unionism and the Jewish Immigrant,” in Wiener Library Bulletin, New Series No. 24

Gorny, Joseph (1983) The British Labour Movement and Zionism, London: Frank Cass

Gould, Julius and Esh, Saul, eds. (1964), Jewish Life in Modern Britain, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul

Green, Nancy L., ed. (1998), Jewish Workers in the Modern Diaspora, Berkeley: University of California Press

Gross, Feliks and Vlavianos, Basil J., eds., Struggle for Tomorrow: Modern Political Ideologies of the Jewish People, New York: ???

Helfgott, Roy B. (1961), “Trade Unionism among the Jewish Garment Workers of Britain and the United States,” in Labor History, Vol. 2, no. 2

Infield, H. F. (1962), Essays in Jewish Sociology, Labour and Cooperation, London: ???

Kushner, Tony, ed. (1992) The Jewish Heritage in British History: Englishness and Jewishness, London: Frank Cass

Lerner, Shirley W. (1961), Breakaway Unions and the Small Trade Union, London: ???

Levin, Nora (1978), Jewish Socialist Movements, 1871-1917, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul

Lipman, Vivian David (1990), A History of the Jews in Britain since 1858, Leicester: Leicester University Press

Lipman, Vivian David (1975), “Jews in British Urban Society, 1880-1914: From Ghetto to Suburb,” paper read at the Economic History Society Conference, Leeds

Lipman, Vivian David (1954), A Social History of the Jews in England, 1850-1950, London: Watts & Co.

Lipman, Vivian David, ed. (1961) Three Centuries of Anglo-Jewish History, Cambridge: W. Heffer

Mendelsohn, Ezra (1964), “The Jewish Socialist Movement and the Second International, 1889-1914: the Struggle for Recognition,” in Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 26

Menes, Abraham (1955), “The Jewish Labor Movement,” in The Jewish People Past and Present, Vol. IV, New York: Jewish Encyclopaedic Handbooks

Mishkinsky, Moshe (1969), “The Jewish Labor Movement and European Socialism,” in H. H. Ben Sasson and Shmuel Ettinger, eds, Jewish Society through the Ages, New York: Schocken Books

Patkin, A. L. (1947), The Origins of the Russian-Jewish Labour Movement, Melbourne: ???

Pollins, Harold (1977), Anglo-Jewish Trade Unions, 1870-1914, paper delivered to the Jewish Historical Society of England, 16 March

Pollins, Harold (1982), Economic History of the Jews in England, Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Prager, Leonard (1990), Yiddish Culture in Britain: A Guide, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang

Reutlinger, Andrew S. (1977), “Reflections on the Anglo-American Jewish Experience: Immigrants, Workers, Entrepreneurs in New York and London, 1870-1914,” in American Jewish Historical Quarterly, Vol. 66, no. 4

Rollin, Aaron R. (1966), “Bletlach zu der Geschichte fun der Yiddisher Arbeter-Bewegung in England,” in YIVO Bleter, Vol. 43

Rollin, Aaron R. (1956), “Industry and Commerce,” in the Jewish Chronicle Supplement: Tercentenary of British Jewry, 27 January

Rollin, Aaron R. (1968), “Russo-Jewish Immigrants in England before 1881,” in Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, Vol. 21

Samuels, Leon (1956), “The Jewish Labour Movement,” in the Jewish Quarterly, Vol. 11, no. 3, Winter

Schloss, D.F. (1891), “The Jew as Workman,” in Nineteenth Century, Vol. 29

Tcherikower, E. (1929), Der Onheyb fun der Yiddisher Sotsialistisher Bavegung (Liebermans Tekufeh), Warsaw

Weinstock, Nathan (1984), Le Pain de misere: Histoire du mouvement ouvrier juif en Europe [Volume II: L’europe Centrale et Occidentale jusqu’en 1914, which has a chapter on London], Paris: La Decouverte

Wischnitzer, Mark (1965), A History of Jewish Crafts and Guilds, New York: Jonathan David

Local Studies

Adler, Henrietta (1934), “Jewish Life and Labour in East London,” in H.. Llewelyn Smith, ed., New Survey of London Life and Labour, Vol. 6, London: P.S. King and Son

Alderman, Geoffrey (1989), London Jewry and London Politics, 1889-1986, London:Routledge

Bermant, Chaim (1975), Point of Arrival: A Study of London’s East End, London: Eyre Methuen

Booth, Charles, ed. (1889), Life and Labour of the People of London (2 vols), London

Booth, Charles, ed. (1892-97), Life and Labour of the People of London (9 vols), London

Bush, J. (1984), Behind the Lines: East London Labour, 1914-1919, London ????

Buckman, Joseph (1980), “Alien Working-Class Response: The Leeds Jewish Tailors, 1880-1914,” in Kenneth Lunn, ed., Hosts, Minorities and Immigrants: Historical Responses to Newcomers in British Society, Folkestone: Dawson Press

Buckman, Joseph (1968), “The Economic and Social History of Alien Immigration to Leeds, 1880-1914,” PhD. dissertation, University of Strathclyde

Buckman, Joseph (1983), Immigrants and the Class Struggle: The Jewish Immigrants in Leeds 1880-1914, Manchester: Manchester University Press

Cesarani, David (1987), “The East End of Simon Blumenfeld’s Jew Boy,” in London Journal 13, no. 1

Collins, K. E. (1990), Second City Jewry: The Jews of Glasgow in the Age of Expansion, 1790-1919, Glasgow: Scottish Jewish Archives

Dobbs, S. B. (1928), The Clothing Workers of England, London: ???

Englander, David (1989), “Booth’s Jews: The Presentation of Jews and Judaism in Life and Labour of the People in London,” in Victorian Studies, Vol. XXXII

Eyges, T. B. (???), Zikhroines un die Yiddishe Arbeter Bavegung in London, England, ms., at YIVO Institute, New York

Feldman, David (1986), “Immigrants and Workers, Englishmen and Jews: Jewish Immigration to the East End of London, 1880-1906, PhD. dissertation University of Cambridge

Feldman, David (1989), “Jews in London, 1880-1914,” in Raphael Samuel, ed., Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity, Vol. 2, London, Routledge

Fishman, William J. (1986), The Condition of East End Jews in 1888: Reflections in Retrospect, London: West Central Counseling and Community Research

Fishman, William J. (1975), East End Jewish Radicals, 1875-1914, London, Duckworth

Fishman, William J. (1988), East End 1888, Life in a London Borough among the Labouring Poor, London, Duckworth

Fishman, William J. (1974), Jewish Radicals: From Czarist Stetl to London Ghetto, New York: ???

Fishman, William J. (1985), Morris Winchevsky and the Poilishe Yidl: First Chronicle of the East London Immigrant Ghetto,” in Christiane Harzig and Dirk Hoerder, eds., The Press of Labor Migrants in Europe and North America, 1880s to 1930s, Bremen: Universitat Bremen

Fishman, William J. (1985), Morris Winchevsky’s London Yiddish Newspaper: One Hundred Years in Retrospect, Oxford: Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies

Friedman, S. (1899), “Condition of the Jewish Workers of Leeds,” in The Trade Unionist, August

Friedman, S. (1899), “Sketch of the Leeds Jewish Tailors’ Union,” in The Trade Unionist, July

Gillespie, J. A. (1984), “Economic and Political Change in the East End of London in the 1920s,” PhD. dissertation, University of Cambridge

Green, Joseph (1991), A Social History of the Jewish East End in London, 1914-1939: A Study of Life, Labour and Liturgy, Lampeter E. Mellen Press

Hall, P. G. (1962), “The East London Footwear Industry: An Industrial Quarter in Decline,” in East London Papers, Vol. 5, no. 1

Halpern, Georg (1903), Die Judischen Arbeiter in London, Stuttgart: J. Cotta’sche

Hendrick, June (1970), The Tailoresses in the Ready-Made Clothing Industry in Leeds, 1889-1899: A Study in Labour Failure, MA. thesis, University of Warwick

Holmes, C. (1973) “The Leeds Jewish Tailors’ Strikes of 1885 and 1888,” in the Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, Vol. 45

Hourwich, I. (1904), “The Jewish Labourer in London,” in the Journal of Political Economy, December

Kershen, Anne J. (1990) “Trade Unionism amongst the Jewish Tailoring Workers of London and Leeds, 1872-1915,” in David Cesarani, ed., The Making of Modern Anglo-Jewry

Kershen, Anne J. (1995), Uniting the Tailors: Trade Unionism amongst the Tailoring Workers of London and Leeds, 1870-1939, Ilford, Essex: Frank Cass

Krausz, Ernest (1964), Leeds Jewry: Its History and Social Structure, Cambridge: W. Heffer

Kushner, Tony (1986), “The Manchester Jewish Museum,” in Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, Vol. 51, no. 3, pp. 18-19

Lerner, Shirley W. (1966), “The Impact of the Jewish Immigration of 1880-1914 on the London Clothing Industry and Trade Unions,” [summarized] in Bulletin of the Society for Labour History, Vol. 12, Summer

Lerner, Shirley W. (1966), “A Voice from the Aliens about the Anti-Alien Resolution of the Cardiff Trade Union Congress (1895),” in Bulletin of the Society for Labour History, Vol. 12, Summer

Lestchinsky, Jacob (1907), Der Idisher Arbayter (in London), Vilna: ???

Levy, Abraham Bernard (1951), East End Story, London, Constellation Books/Vallentine Mitchel

Litvinoff, Barnett (1950), “Zangwill’s Ghetto Is No More: The Passing of Whitechapel,” in Commentary, Vol. 10, October

Maitles, Henry (1991) “Jewish Trade Unionists in Glasgow,” in Immigrants and Minorities, Vol. 10, no. 3

Massil, William I. (1997), Immigrant Furniture Workers in London, 1881-1939: And the Jewish Contribution to the Furniture Trade, London: Jewish Museum

Meltzer, Albert (1976), Anarchists in London, 1935-55, Orkney Islands: Cienfuegos Press

Mindel, Mick (1986), “Socialist Eastenders,” in Jewish Socialist, 6/7, Summer/Autumn

Oliver, J. Leonard (1961), “The East London Furniture Industry,” in East London Papers, Vol. 4, October

Newman, Aubrey, ed. (1981) The Jewish East End, 1840-1939, London: Jewish Historical Society of England

O’Brien, Rosalind (1975), “The Establishment of the Jewish Minority in Leeds,” PhD. dissertation, Bristol University

Rose, Millicent (1951), The East End of London, London: Cresset Press

Rollin, Aaron R. (1949), “A Jewish Tailors’ Strike of 60 Years Ago,” in Jewish Chronicle, 14 October

Schmiechen, James A. (1984), Sweated Industries and Sweated Labour: The London Clothing Trades, 1860-1914, London: Croom Helm

Schonenbohm, Dieter (1987), Ostjuden in London: der Jewish Chronicle und die Arbeiterbewegung der judischen Immigranten im Londoner East End, 1881-1900, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang

Selitrenny, L. (1896), “The Jewish Working Woman in the East End,” in Social Democrat, Vol. II

Sherman, A. V. (1960), “Epitaph for the East End,” in Commentary, Vol. 30, November

Smith, Elaine R. (1992), “Class, Ethnicity and Politics in the Jewish East End,” in Jewish Historical Studies 1990-92, Vol. 32, pp. 355-369

Smith, Elaine R. (????), East End Jews in Politics, 1918-1939: A Study in Class and Ethnicity, PhD. dissertation, University of Leicester

Smith, Elaine R. (1986), “East End Tailors, 1918-1939: An Aspect of the Jewish Workers’ Struggle,” in Jewish Quarterly, Vol. 34, Summer

Smith, Elaine R. (1990), “Jews and Politics in the East End of London, 1918-1939,” in David Cesarani, ed., The Making of Modern Anglo-Jewry

Tcherikower, E. (1929), “Der Yidisher Imigrant in London in di Zibetsiker Yorn,” in Yidishe Emigrantsye, April

Thorn, G. (1983), “The Politics of Trade Unionism in a Sweated Industry: Boot and Shoe Makers in Late Nineteenth Century London,” PhD. thesis, Warwick University

Wechsler, Robert Stephen (1979), “The Jewish Garment Trade in East London, 1875-1914: A Study of Conditions and Responses,” PhD. dissertation, Columbia University

White, Jerry (1980), Rothschild Buildings: Life in an East End Tenement Block, 1887-1920, London: Routledge & Keegan Paul

Williams, Bill (1980), “The Beginnings of Jewish Trade Unionism in Manchester,” in Kenneth Lunn, ed., Hosts, Minorities and Immigrants: Historical Responses to Newcomers in British Society, Folkestone: Dawson Press

Williams, Bill (1990), “`East and West’: Class and Community in Manchester Jewry, 1850-1914,” in David Cesarani, ed., The Making of Modern Anglo-Jewry

Williams, Bill (1976), The Making of Manchester Jewry, 1740-1875, Manchester: Manchester University Press

Working Lives, Vol. 1: 1905-1945; A People’s Autobiography of Hackney, (n.d.), London: ???

Young, James Douglas (1974), Working Class and Radical Movements in Scotland and the Revolt from Liberalism, 1866-1900, PhD. dissertation, University of Stirling

Other Works

Aronsfeld, C..C. (1947), “Communists in British Jewry: A Zionist Socialist Analysis,” in Jewish Monthly, Vol. 1, November

Cohen, Max (1945), I Was One of the Unemployed, London: ???

Cohen, Max (1953), What Nobody Told the Foreman, London ???

Dobbs, S. P. (1928), The Clothing Workers of Great Britain, London: ???

Eyges, T. B. (1944), Beyond the Horizon: The Story of a Radical Emigrant, Boston: Group Free Society

Fox, Alan (1958), A History of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives, 1874-1957, Oxford: Basil Blackwell

Frumkin, A. (1940), In Friling fun Yidischen Sozialism, New York:???

Graur, Mina (1997), An Anarchist Rabbi: The Life and Teachings of Rudolf Rocker, New York: St. Martin’s Press

Hyman, R. (1971), The Workers’ Union, London: ???

Jacobs, Julius (1978), Out of the Ghetto: My Youth in the East End, Communism and Fascism, 1913-1939, London: ???
Kadish, Sharman (1992), Bolsheviks and British Jews: The Anglo-Jewish Community, Britain and the Russian Revolution, London: Frank Cass

Kushner, Tony (1990), “Jewish Communists in Twentieth-Century Britain: The Zaidman Collection,” in Labour History Review, Vol. 55, Autumn

Lerner, Shirley W. (1956), The History of the United Clothing Workers Union, PhD. dissertation, University of London

Levenberg, S. (1945) The Jews and Palestine: A Study in Labour Zionism, London: ???

Litvinoff, B. (1969), A Peculiar People, London: ???

Litvinoff, Emanuel (1972), Journey through a Small Planet, London: ???

Orbach, Maurice (1962), “Noah Barou and the Trades Advisory Council,” in Henryk F. Infield, ed., Essays in Jewish Sociology, Labour and Cooperation in Memory of Dr. Noah Barou, 1889-1955, London: Thomas Yoseloff

Piratin, Phil (1978), Our Flag Stays Red, London: ???

Reid, Hew (1986), The Furniture Makers: A History of Trade Unionism in the Furniture Trade, 1865-1972, Oxford: Malthouse Press

Rocker, Rudolf (1952), In Shturem: Golus Yorem, London [a segment of which was published in 1956 in English as The London Years, trans. and intro, Joseph Leftwich, London: ???]

Shimoni, Gideon (1986), “Poale Zion: A Zionist Transplant in Britain (1905-1945),” in Peter Y. Medding, ed., Studies in Contemporary Jewry II, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press

Shinwell, Emanuel (1909), “Jewish Characteristics-by One of Them,” in Clothiers’ Operatives Gazette, September

Silberner Edmund (1952), “British Socialism and the Jews,” in Historica Judaica, Vol. 14, April

Srebrnik, Henry Felix (1986), “Communism and Pro-Soviet Feeling among the Jews of East London, 1935-45,” in Immigrants and Minorities, Vol. 5, November

Srebrnik, Henry Felix (1983), “The Jewish Communist Movement in Stepney: Ideological Mobilization and Political Victories in an East London Borough, 1935-1945,” PhD. dissertation, University of Birmingham

Srebrnik, Henry Felix (1995), London Jews and British Communism, 1935-1945, Ilford, Essex: Vallentine Mitchell

Stewart, Margaret and Leslie Hunter (1964), The Needle Is Threaded: The History of an Industry, London: Heinemann/Newman Neane

Workers’ Circle (1929), The Workers’ Circle Jubilee Publication, 1909-29, London: Workers’ Circle

Workers’ Circle (1959), The Circle Golden Jubilee, 1909-1959, London: Workers’ Circle

Workers’ Circle (1969), Diamond Jubilee: The Workers’ Circle Friendly Society, 1909-1969, London: Workers’ Circle

Yanofsky, Sh. (1948), Ershte Yorn fun Yidishen Frayhaytlekhn Sotzializm, New York
Anonymous said…
The quotes said that his relatives were being rounded up in the 1930s. I assume that really was the 1940s.

Also, I'm curious as to why people like Henry were so community oriented but anti-democratic. And why they couldn't see that this would lead to abuses.

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