Geoffrey Alderman

Up to the founding of the London County Council in 1889, the Jewish role in municipal politics was marginal. However, with the influx of Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe, an anti-alien agitation developed in which London politicians (including some Jews) participated. During World War I, hostility to foreign-born Jews increased, especially to Russian Jews reluctant to fight for an ally of Tsarist Russia. During the 1920s the Conservative LCC discriminated against foreign-born Jews (even when naturalized) in housing, education, and employment. As a result, Jews moved towards Labour. Jewish official bodies were reluctant to protest openly or exploit their electoral strength, especially when antisemitism increased with the arrival of refugees from Nazi Germany and with the rise of fascism. With the drift to the suburbs after 1945 and support for the Conservative Party, Jews were inactive in the new Greater London Council and were thus taken by surprise when a radical anti-Zionist Labour group, associated with anti-Jewish militant Black politics, took over the GLC in 1981. The clash between them ended only when the government abolished the GLC.

Books like London Jewry and London Politics, 1889-1986

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